Which one .356 or .358?

[Jimlakeside]

I have cast my ingots and now I am ready to buy my Lee molds to make 124 grain 9MM boolits. I purchased a Lyman 450 sizer off evilbay. Now my question is, do I buy the .356 or .358 molds? From reading the threads on Lee molds, it seems that they cast a little under their stated diameter.

Thanks for your help.

Jim

[454PB]

I guess I've been really lucky, all my Lee moulds cast at or over the advertised diameter. I only own one 9mm mould, and it casts a .357" boolit in WW alloy.

[trickyasafox]

I'd say get the bigger- you can always size down if you need to.

[vernm]

If you have not already, I suggest slugging the barrel. I have an old SIG 226 with a .3572" barrel. This is bigger than 9mm were supposed to be in the
1980's Couldn't find a 9mm style mould bigger than .356.

I called this young man in Arizona by the name of Veral Smith. He fixed me up.

I think you will need the .358 mould.

[oso]

Ask your gun, as vernm suggests. What 9mm(s) do you have? My advise is to consider a heavier bullet for shooting cast in 9mm.

[Jimlakeside]

I shoot a Glock with a Lone Wolf barrel and my wife shoots a Kimber. I have purchased 125 grain lead bullets off the Internet and they have shot fine. Are you thinking that a 147 grain bullet might be better?

Jim

[Boomer Mikey]

Searching the forums will answer all your questions, this is one of the most asked questions on this site.

The 9mm isn't easy to load cast boolits with and wouldn't be my first choice to learn cast boolit loading with. The 9mm can be frustrating to work with as many have fast twist rate barrels that don't like lite cast bullets. You didn't say what kind of firearm you want to load for... Glock's will require an after market barrel with non-polygonal rifling and Glock doesn't recommend reloads in their product.

Any of the straight wall case revolver/rifle cartridges would be better to start with... 38 Special, 357 Magnum, 44 Special, 44 Magnum, 45 Long Colt, 45-70.

If you're still on the 9mm path, search the forums... all the answers are there for the searching and you won't need to wait for replies.

This threads contents were good:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=25146&highlight=9mm

A good article well founded in the basics for autos by John Taffin:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BQY/is_3_47/ai_70650327/pg_1


Boomer :Fire:

[Lloyd Smale]

the 9s ive got seem to prefer .357

[warf73]

Slug your bore so you know what to get. I slugged my SP101 came out at .3564". I got the Lee push threw sizer that was .358" but the boolits mic out at .3583".

Good luck with 9, hope if your using a Glock that it's an after market barrel with rifling and a fully supported bottom.

[MtGun44]

You must slug the bore. Then conventional wisdom is to size .001 to .003"
larger than the bore diameter. Unfortunately, a significant number of gun
barrels have not heard the conventional wisdom and will require something
different. In my experience trying commercial cast 9mm bullets in European
9mm Luger pistols is an trying experience. I have a HiPower that dearly loves
Lee's little 105 SWC at .356" from wwts, but it does fairly poorly (3-4" at 25ft)
with some commercial hard cast .356" bullets. The story that I have been told
(and it sure looks like it to the eye) is that Euro barrels use very shallow rifling
which doesn't grip cast boolits well. I suspect that oversized bbls is another
cause but haven't spent any time fiddling with the few 9mms that I own to have
real data.

Slugging the bore is mandatory for any real certainty in sizing your boolits, you could, however get lucky by just trying something. :)

Bill

[Ricochet]

I recently bought a 6-hole TL356-124-TC mould. Casting from my nondescript soft, nearly pure mixed scrap lead and water dropped, my unsized boolits came out with .357" top bands and .360" bottom bands. Very uniform.