size down

[saint_iverson]

When it comes to mold selection, especially in dealing with the 9mm and 357 calibers, what amount of sizing is too much?

I'm looking at the new gb, mihecs 9mm HP, with an optional diam of either .357 or .359. My question is,how much sizing would be considered too much? Can you take a boolit that .359 down to .355? So a reduction of 0.004". The molds appear to have deep lube grooves so I'm personally convinced of its capability, but may experience in dealing with such a drastic size difference is nil.

Or is it better to not be greedy and not feed all of those various calibers and sizes in one sweep?

[saint_iverson]

No takers on sizing limitation? .004? More? Less, if the answer is-it depends, explain?

[BK7saum]

Why do you need to go down to 355? I don't cast for a 9 millimeter but my understanding is they would use a 356 or 357 cast boolit.

[saint_iverson]

.355 would be tight, and barrels are. But a moreover general question is, how much is too much. I've cast a lot of 9mm as I have other, and ran through many many different flavors of guns, bbls, etc. To match the barrel you want to size accordingly, now if that happens to be .355 ( and some cases are) how smushed is too smushed. Once the lube grooves shallow? Once the "cylinder" shape becomes too deformed?

[cbrick]

Could probably do it though that's more than I usually go. If your going to try it do it in at least two steps, take the .359" boolit to .357" with lube in the groove and then to .355" already lubed.

I don't cast for the 9 but it would seem that it too should be a thou or two over groove diameter which would be .356"ish so you would only need to size two maybe three thousands.

Rick

[runfiverun]

a 355 9m barell would be a novelty round here.
all 4 of them i have ever dealt with have liked 358 boolits just fine.
i do have 356 and 357 sizer dies just in case though.

[km101]

I have sized some .38 bullets that cast at .362 down to .358. The lube grooves were very shallow, and I did not think they would have enough lube to do the job. Also, if you did not center the bullet precisely in the die, the lube grooves would be gone on one side. I did not load any of the bullets for the afore mentioned reasons, so I dont know if they would perform well or not, but I didnt want to take a chance and have to break down a bunch of rounds. Sizing down .004 or more seems like a bad idea to me.

[farmerjim]

Its been 45 years, but I use to size the 158 gr RN lyman boolit down to .356 for my 9mm and .358 for my 357 mag.
Both worked fine .002 is not much.