Another successful PC story.....

[Gun-adian]

Okay, here's my happy powder coat story....

I have an extra upper for my Glock 20 that is set up for 9x25 Dillon (10mm case necked down to 9mm). This round is an absolute screamer with light J-word bullets....2000fps out of a 6 inch Lone Wolf barrel with 90gr. Hornady XTP's!!!!

Big boom, bigger flash, not very practical but who cares......it's fun!!!

Now.......how to make this work with light lead boolits?? Any mould I can find that's light enough doesn't fit properly because of this cartridge's rather short case neck. The lube groove interferes with neck tension and seating depth. I'm also concerned with how a lead boolit will hold up at that velocity, considering most light 9mm moulds don't have gas checks.


http://i.imgur.com/pmo5L0sl.jpg


Turns out I have an old CH4D swage set in .38 caliber. After much monkeying around, I was able to swage a .32 wadcutter directly into a .38 cal gas check. Total weight came out at about 98grs....

http://i.imgur.com/PRBQmD4l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/HZAHIiNl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/1kaeTryl.jpg

I gave them two dry tumble/BB coats of Harbor Freight red and ran them through a Lee .358 sizer....

http://i.imgur.com/OaR9D7Ol.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/M8ycMy7.jpg


After that, I loaded up 20 rounds on top of a healthy dose of Blue Dot....

http://i.imgur.com/Nx5kt3Pl.jpg

Range day came and they work!!!

http://i.imgur.com/2fiI3Hql.jpg (http://imgur.com/2fiI3Hq)

Aside from some powder residue, the bore looked good...

http://i.imgur.com/74bCY0kl.jpg

I couldn't check the velocity because my Chrony suffered a *ahem....* fatal perforation some time ago and has yet to be resurrected.

More experimentation and accuracy testing is needed, but I'm happy with the results so far.

Thanks for looking.

Mike.

[flyingmonkey35]

Neat,o

[el34]

That took a lot of innovation, congrats on your victory! :drinks:

[doctorggg]

awesome. I love the powder flash.

[Bullshop]

Am very interested to know what level of accuracy you achieved.

[fcvan]

Wow, that was a great write-up, awesome pictures, and an inspiring project! I make and use plain based gas checks from soda (ok, beer) cans for light ones at zippy speeds. After i started powder coating I put a few PB checks on those. Quite recently, I started tumble powder coating but as yet have not tumbled any with the checks already on. Thanks for the inspiration, I'll have to mess with that on my next days off.

I'm been running the little Lee 356-95 RF for a couple months now after many years using the 356-102 1R. Ya, its mostly been used in .380 ACP pistols and occassionally in a 9mm. The only problem I've had was they printed much lower than my standard loads when fired in my Glock 22 using a Lone Wolf conversion barrel.

I recenly built an AR in 9mm and unfortunately the little guys don't feed well. They hang up too much. I might try some more in the Marlin Camp 9, but why bother. The 356-125 2R feeds and fires so well, and when ESPCd with copper colored powder they look like factory ball.

Harbor Freight flat black is still my favorite because it looks great and is quite cheap, but the Ink Black from Prismatic Powders isn't much more. Ink Black covers much better, sticks better, and has less overspray so it may work out to be an improvement. We'll see. As far as accuracy goes, each of the rounds were pummeling a 3" rock at 100 yards off hand. I'll work on bench rest groups and hopefully have some targets to post to compare the 5.56, 300 blk, and the 9mm ARs. For now, I'm just having way too much fun killing tin cans.

[Gun-adian]

Thanks for the kind words, everyone :)

Bullshop, me too!!! That's #1 on the to-do list as soon as I can get back up there. Sourcing out another Chrony is #2. I know when I shot XTP's the accuracy was very good. If the PC boolits hold up to the speed, I believe they should perform well. I should know in a couple of weeks.....I hope.

fcvan, I'll have to look into Prismatic Powders. I love the HF black too, but it doesn't dry tumble worth a darn!! It does look amazing when sprayed on using the ES gun, though. Nothing looks cooler than flat black boolits :)

Mike