9mm Load

[clyde 72]

Have cast several hundred 125 grain round nose( from lee 356-125) boolits and its time to load some of them. Plan to start with 4.0, then 4.2 and 4.4 Unique. Data I have found is scattered all over the place and this seem somewhat middle ground. COL 1.14. Since these will go through my Glock 19 my desire is to keep loads at the bottom to middle of the speed scale based on posts here. Plan to clean every 100-150 rounds. Comments or suggestions please.

As a side note, THANK YOU to all for the plethora of information and expierence that you so generously provide.
Clyde 72

[Finster101]

If you have some red dot or promo try 4 grains of that and see if you like it. It works very well for me and is pretty clean burning, very mild recoil as well.

[sandman228]

i tried the lower end of unique in 124 lrn 9mm loads a while back they didn't even have enough umph to work the slide on my sr9c till i got up to 4.5 gr. i load my my lrn and ltc 9's with 6 gr of bluedot , or 115 gr fmj with 7.5 gr . unique is ok but if i remember right i had to stay at 4.5 or higher

[captaint]

Clyde - I was gonna say - as long as your pistol feeds & functions OK, go for it. I would PERSONALLY go for a little faster powder. Titegroup, RedDot, maybe Clays or, of course, Bullseye.
enjoy Mike

[gray wolf]

Plan to clean every 100-150 rounds. Comments or suggestions please.
Check the barrel after every 10 or 15 rounds, a quick look will tell you what's going on, Clean according to what you see. If you get leading stay on top of it. 150 rounds is a number pulled out of no place and means nothing. The pistol ill be in your hands so you be the master of it and what it's doing.
All this said in a very friendly way :smile:

[Scharfschuetze]

There's a sticky thread about loading for the Glock pistol in the Pistol forum that may be of some help to you regarding the leading in a Glock's barrel.

I too would suggest a slightly faster powder for the low end 9mm loads that you propose. I use a lot of Unique in the 9mm, but at the upper end of the velocity/power scale for the cartridge.

[gwpercle]

Clyde 72,
The RCBS Cast Bullet Manual shows for the 9mm luger and 125 grain cast RN boolit with Unique powder a Starting load of 5.1 grs. @ 1102 fps, and a max load of 5.5 grains @ 1122.
Under 5.0 grains may not get you what you want. Unique doesn't burn completely at less than minimum charges, thus erratic and not the most accurate shooting loads . And these are dirty leaving unburned powder in the gun. I tried "light" loads with Unique for years without any success . Now I load the 9mm with 5.2 grains Unique with both 124 and 115 grain boolits. I discovered that Bullseye and Red Dot were much better at the lower end loadings....took me a few years to learn this , but as versatile as Unique is it won't do everything.
Gary

[rsrocket1]

I load the Lee 356-120-TC with 4.2g Unique and it works perfectly in my M&P40 with the 9mm barrel. I seat with the entire bearing surface (0.278") below the rim which gives a COL of 1.005". This seat depth compresses the powder just a bit over 10% which makes for a good clean burn. Quickload predicts a Pmax of 28.5 kpsi which is right where I want it. It also predicted a MV of 1083 and fps my average MV's have been 1090 fps so the predicted pressures are very likely spot on.

Unique is definitely not too slow of a powder for 9mm. In fact the faster powders like Clays are too fast and won't get you enough velocity before going over pressure. When loading to max pressure with Clays the lower MV's might not be high enough to properly cycle the action.

Loading to the same Pmax will require 3.0g Red Dot which will only drive the bullet to just over 1000 fps which will be pretty weak.

[jwber]

I'm currently running the 356-124-2R (127gr with my alloy) @ 1.14 OAL and 4.4gr. Still in testing stages but accuracy is acceptable and minor leading near the bore.

[Blanco]

I tried Unique on my 9mm and found I didn't like it. It seemed to be especially dirty and I got bad leading when I pushed it faster. I have been using Power Pistol with smashing success in 9mm 124 gr. RN.
For what its worth it really seems like a slow burning version of Bullseye?

[harley45]

Another vote for blue dot

[sig2009]

I have to go down to 3.5 gn Bullseye in order to not get leading.