Once and for all

[ski2me]

I'm not an experimenter. I just want to reload so I can afford to shoot more. I have S&S 9mm 125gr LRN and S&S 40/10mm 180 GR LFP. I have WST powder and Fedral primers.

I shoot a Glock 20 with a Lone wolf 40 S&W conversion barrel and a Glock 22 with a Lone Wolf 9mm conversion.

Please someone with experience give me some recipes for these components.

[geargnasher]

If only it were that simple. Not to mention two of the most troublesome pistol calibers for cast boolits if you don't get your tooling just right for the guns. Let's start with a chamber/throat cast of each, the ID of the mouth of a case fired in each after removing the crimp, and the dimensions of a soft lead slug pounded through the barrel of each to give the true groove dimensions. Having that data will make giving you a recipe much easier, but you should be prepared for the recipe to include some specific tooling recommendations, and possibly some custom tooling.

Gear

[runfiverun]

measure and know.
best recipe for success i know.

[Wal']

Starting out, use the K.I.S.S. method & also check out Hodgdons site.

From then on you can start to experiment with your loads

http://data.hodgdon.com/main_menu.asp


:-)

[10mmShooter]

SKI

Let me know if cant find data on WST powder, Winchester Super Target I have several older Winchester load manuals and I'll scan the pages for the 9mm and .40 pages for you.

I used to use WST for my 10mm, and for that matter WAP remember it Win Action Powder.

Anyway my 10's like AA#5/#7 and Win 231 now. I have SW and Colts...sorry I have no glocks to offer suggestions.

[captaint]

ski - Welcome to the madness. While it does sound like a lot, you really to follow the advice of gear and r5r. By putting in the time in the beginning, you will save grief down the line. A good beginning would be to find some sort of boolit or soft lead slug, remove your barrels and, with a brass rod or maybe a wood dowel (be careful not to split the dowel) just tap a well greased slug through your barrel and measure carefully with micrometers. That'll tell you what your groove diameters are - then you can check to see that your finished boolits are at least .001 or .002 larger than groove. There's your beginning. enjoy Mike

[462]

"I'm not an experimenter."

Much experimenting is and will be required for you to be successful at getting your boolit/bullet on target. You will received much excellent advise, here, but you will still have to experiment with it and find what works best for you and your gun. As much as we would like it to be, there are no quick and easy, one-size-fits-all answers.

Keep an open mind. Good luck.

[Larry Gibson]

WST is a tudge slower than Bullseye and a tudge faster than 231, according to the charts. I've used WST in the 9mm and in the 45 ACP with very good success. Since your commercial S&S cast are what they are I suggest loading the 125s over 4 gr WST in the 9mm. I suggest 4.7 gr WST under the 180 gr cast in the 40 S&W.

Those are suggestions and some "experimentation" or "working up" is always advisable. I suggest starting 1/2 gr less with the 9mm and .7 gr with the 40 and working up. Also if those commercial cast have a hard wax lube you might encounter some leading. If so an application of LLA may help.

Larry Gibson

[gray wolf]

You haven't even said what your problems are ?

Please someone with experience give me some recipes for these components.
exactly what does that mean ? do you want load data, or are you frustrated with what you have gotten so far. What is the problem ??
Theses guys will bend over back words to help, but it takes a little
work on our/ your part also.

I'm not an experimenter.
You may have to be, no one can give you a straight up answer to your question that will get you from here to there without overcoming the little problems that will come up.
Sure glad to have you here, and don't give it up, put a little time in and it can work out. Sorry if my answer is not the one you wanted.

[Harter66]

My method.

1 slug the bore,this may be moot shooting commercial cast , use a boolit .001-.002 larger than bore,or as large as will chamber.

2 make dummies at least 3 for each boolit. No primer or powder just a case w/a boolit.

3 manualy run them from the magizine to the chamber . This let's you adjust feedable length and ensure that the action will lock w/that boolit ,some times it just won't work.

4 use all of your books choose the lowest average minimum load for your boolit weight and powder.

5 load 5 rd , add 0.1gr load 5 more,repeat. W/ loads/cartridges that have larger load windows you can use larger separations . I like to shoot at least 5 different load steps 10 is better. Also the last 5 in the mag are most likely to have feed issues as the spring tension is reduced.

6 shoot for groups,feed/ejection,and desired ejection/groups.

I shoot every work up load for groups I've found best groups many times to be at or just over proper function.

Hope this helps. Err to the light side and you should be ok.

This is just how I do semi-autos and seems to yield the fastest,least wasted work up efforts. I'm still polishing the delivery.

[geargnasher]

Step one is fit the boolit to the gun, step two is establish seating depth and amount of crimp, step three is pick a powder that matches the alloy and work up a load.

Step one requires some measurements be made of certain critical gun dimensions. Not tough, but if you don't like lots of trial and error and scrubbing lead out of your barrel, it's absolutely essential. You will need to order a boolit sizing die based upon the groove dimension. Next, you will need to make "Dummy" rounds like Harter said, but take it ones step further: Seat/crimp a few dummy cartridges, and when you get the OAL set and the crimp like you want, pull a few boolits and measure them. This is the most important thing you can do for a .40 or 9mm next to slugging the bore because the hard, tough, thick brass is murder on boolits and usually swages them undersized when seated, resulting in barrel leading. You may have to have a custom expander spud made, or modify and existing one in order to pre-expand the cases deeply enough and large enough to hold the boolit with the correct tension without crushing them when seated.

Step two means use the barrel's chamber for a case gauge, seat so the cartridge headspaces on the boolit and give yourself another .010" headspace. After that, check to see if they'll still fit the magazine, and check function. You may have to trade seating depth for function, it depends on the individual gun. Aftermarket barrels especially need to be checked this way and for cycling with dummy rounds.

Step three, establish a goal for the ammunition up front, and stick to it. If you want target or competition ammo, or full-house SD ammo, the requirements will be a bit different.

Gear

[MtGun44]

Here is a recipe.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=121737

If you want canned reloading use jacketed.

Cast - especially in the two cartridges you are using - can work reasonably well if you
follow instructions, but just random stuff will take a long time with some guns. The
sticky above will get you very high probablity of success with the 9mm if you do just
what is recommended with cast.

Bill

[geargnasher]

Another "hit and run"? Well, we tried.

Gear

[Larry Gibson]

Another "hit and run"? Well, we tried.

Gear

Considering the OP was a confessed non "experimenter" and had already purchased the commercial cast bullets he is probably just out shooting instead of getting wrapped around all the you got to experiment advise we gave him. His bullets are what they are and slugging the barrel, etc. isn't going to make them shoot any better....they are what they are.

Thousands of shooters do just buy commercial cast bullets and use genaric loads in most any cartridge and just go shooting. They enjoy that and find no need to go through the gyrations many of us do. Are they wrong? No I don't think so. Are they happy and satisfied with the ammo they load? Probably.

Larry Gibson

[ku4hx]

Buy Lyman's Cast Bullet Handbook. Excellent source for all sorts of cast boolit data. Most powder makers have load data that includes some cast data. You can find them online or you can request a free manual.

[gray wolf]

I am not of fan of the people that just jump on and say:
I need a load for ??
just what was said by the men here in this post would have been a good start for anyone.
What's that they say about a Horse and water.

[ski2me]

It may not have been what I wanted to hear but it makes good sense. So any more directions you may have for a newbie to lead reloading will be greatly appreciated. I've been used to opening a reloading manual an have all the data there.

[Harter66]

As a minimum reference manual of maximum value, get a Lyman reloading book. They have bullet data from many manufacturers and cast data w/many powders.

[runfiverun]

loading data is right there as you say and is the same we use to start with also.
many go with the slow end of powders and many use the fast end.
there are no exact hard and fast rules with cast because my ww's and Larry's are different.
i might just throw some stick on's in my alloy or leave them in the clean up pot.
i had a lot of big truck weights,and a lot of weights from one company.
and most get everybody's and melt them together.
so our alloy's while being similar are not the same.
my tokarovs and someone elses XD,aren't exactly compatible either.
plus my magma 125 rnfp mold versus thier lee tumble lube mold isn't even on the same playing field
so we have to use slightly different approaches to make things work.

the basics of pour technique,sizing,and the loading of the rounds will be pretty much the same however.

[Willee]

It may not have been what I wanted to hear but it makes good sense. So any more directions you may have for a newbie to lead reloading will be greatly appreciated. I've been used to opening a reloading manual an have all the data there.

If you are not going for max accuracy and just want to load plinking and range ammo then try Barry's Bullets that are copper plated.
They are about .355 diameter out of the box and need no lubrication.
Almost a copper jacketed class bullet but start loading them as a cast bullet until you see how they work in your guns.

[geargnasher]

It may not have been what I wanted to hear but it makes good sense. So any more directions you may have for a newbie to lead reloading will be greatly appreciated. I've been used to opening a reloading manual an have all the data there.

It really isn't that hard if you have the right information. Lead alloy is much more fragile than copper so you have to take a lot of new factors into consideration with it. Powder selection, proper case "neck" expansion, overall length, and boolit diameter are critical factors to success with cast in any gun, and often you'll find that a load build for one gun will shoot poorly or lead in a different gun. Copper jacketed bullets band-aid a lot of problems you never even thought existed before shooting lead, so it will come as an eye opener.

Once you get the right boolits for your gun (the ones you have may be ok, but you won't know until you measure things) and get a good "dummy" setup that will rack through the gun, all you need to do is decide what you want the load to do and pick a powder in the right burn rate, then work up the loads like you normally would. At that point you can apply "recipes", working up to them in several increments of course. Not rocket science, but if you skip the fitting part you could spend years guessing at things and never get it right. .38 Special and .45 ACP are much easier to load with cast boolits because they have thinner cases and don't have the boolit swage issues that the magnum-pressure automatics do, so that's why you don't hear as many lamentations about them.

I highly recommend going to the Los Angeles Silhouette Club website and read the "book" From ingot to target, it will tell you more than you wanted to know, but once you know it, you will find loading cast for all your pistols will be much easier.

Gear

[MtGun44]

Did you read the sticky?

Bill