9mm boolits

[papa bear]

Has anyone done any work with 9mm cast bullets? Do you know the hardness, what alloy did you use and how fast did you drive them? Did you try them in pistol or carbine?

[quilbilly]

For several years I have had a 9mm Luger T/C carbine. I thoroughly enjoy it for plinking and close in coyotes. I found that I could drive the 125 gr j-word bullets at up to 1500 fps in the carbine but accuracy was awful so dialed back the load to 1100 fps with a 125 gr rnfp. The accuracy is now dependable out to 80-90 yards. My load is now 4.6 gr of Unique but my inaccurate hot loads were around 8.2 gr AA-7 if memory serves.

[captaint]

bear - I am currently using straight WW's for my 9mm boolits. Have also tried 50/50, WW's and Pb. I can assure you that size is more important than alloy or hardness. In my experience they need to be at least .001 over groove diameter and possibly bigger than that, to avoid leading the barrel. Start with getting them the right size, then fool with alloys and hardness, etc. enjoy Mike

[MtGun44]

Look for the sticky in the handgun section or in the stick section on
"Setting up an new 9mm for boolits".

9mm can be a signficant PITA with cast, but if done right, will work just fine. Done
wrong - and you'll be unhappy. It is not as forgiving as many cartridges are.

Bill

[fcvan]

I have loaded and shot over 100K 9MM 125RN Boolits from a Lee mold through various 9MM pistols and one carbine. 90% of those loads were range lead from a police range that fired soft lead swaged wadcutters. The load is 5 grains of unique which is slightly under Alliant's recommended 5.4 to 6 grains of unique. That load has worked well in every 9mm i have ever shot. I started out shooting a S&W 459 and it liked .358 boolits so I stuck with that.

The boolits were lubed in a .358 sizer and the brass was expanded enough to not swage the boolit further. I crimp with the standard Lee die set enough to hold the boolit and to headspace properly.

I have read where many folks have had problems with this cartridge but that has not been my experience. I was a rookie reloader back when I started loading for 9mm and must have gotten lucky. After reading on this site about other people's experiences I learned that what I was doing (by luck or whatever) was the right sort of things for this cartridge.

I hate dealing with military crimped primer brass because of the extra case prep but other than that I like loading for this round. I am still using the 5 grain load but now using homemade loob from a recipe found on this site. Good luck! Frank