Shooting problems with 9mm powder coated boolits

[Hastings]

My main problem is keyholes (tumbling), about 1 out of 10.

The bullet alloy is clip-on WWs dropped from the 9mm Lyman mold #356637 and weight about 158 gr, .358 in diameter. I shoot these out of a CZ Shadow and CZ 75B Matt Stainless. Applied is a single THIN coat of Emerald Tool Blue via shake 'n bake, 400 degrees @ 20 minutes. Yes, they pass the hammer test. These then go easily through a .358 Lee sizing die. They are then powered by 2.8 or 3.0 of VV N320. The 3.0 grains is a bit snappy. 2.8 gr is what I used for this bullet with old fashioned lube using a Lyman .358 lube-sizer, and they easily make power factor with room to spare. I've shot 10's of thousands of these bullets before, and never had a single keyhole. Thoughts?

My second problem is I'm having difficulty chono'ing these. I'm using a CED M2 with sky-screens on. I was out today, and every single plain lead lubed bullet registers and gives a normal reading I'd expect for this load. The PC'd bullets on the other hand would either not register, or give some crazy high reading like 6433 fps. I tried shooting these 7 ft from the chrono to 17 feet and everything in between. Not ONE PC registered correctly. All plain lead registered correctly. I did 20 shot strings, dozens of them of each alternating! Is it because it doesn't like that beautiful shiny blue boolit? It's about the shade of a Dillon blue, perhaps a bit lighter. Conditions today were sunny blue sky. It's driving me nuts! Hahaha

[Grmps]

Lyman Bullet Mold #356637 9mm (356 Diameter) 147 Grain Flat Nose Bevel Base
If you're getting 158grns out of it it's either a different mold or you are using soft lead

Q1 have you slugged the barrel?
Q2 have to tested the COWW for hardness? Sometimes my lead gets mixed up :( I'll do a quick pencil hardness test to make sure before using it.
Q3 have you pulled and measured a loaded boolit recently?
Q4 look down your barrel. has anything changed or is there buildup?

I'm not familiar with your gun or powder so maybe another member can be more help

[bruce drake]

put sky shades on your chrono if its not reading the bullets correctly. That way you can ensure you have a contrast between the sky and your baby blue bullets...

[nagantguy]

put sky shades on your chrono if its not reading the bullets correctly. That way you can ensure you have a contrast between the sky and your baby blue bullets...

Yes had the same problem with my first ever batch of Carolina blue boolits in .45 ACP once I used a screen got almost exactly the same fps as my tumble lubed ones;matter of fact a mixed string of 5 each showed less than 10 fps deviation

[Hastings]

As my post states, yes... I had the sky-screens on.

[Bzcraig]

I agree with the screens for your Chrono. Keyholing is caused by a bullet not stabilizing. The PC will not change whether or not your boolit stabilizes unless somehow your boolit is just barely engaging the rifling and the PC makes it skid down the bore but that would be a huge stretch. Not sure where to tell you to look except to ask groove diameter.

[Hastings]

Lyman Bullet Mold #356637 9mm (356 Diameter) 147 Grain Flat Nose Bevel Base
If you're getting 158grns out of it it's either a different mold or you are using soft lead

Q1 have you slugged the barrel?
Q2 have to tested the COWW for hardness? Sometimes my lead gets mixed up :( I'll do a quick pencil hardness test to make sure before using it.
Q3 have you pulled and measured a loaded boolit recently?
Q4 look down your barrel. has anything changed or is there buildup?

I'm not familiar with your gun or powder so maybe another member can be more help

Most folks get 157 to 158 grains from this mold with WW lead. I'm no exception. .358 is perfect for my CZ barrels, it swags them down and zero leading with plain lubed bullets, even after 100's of rounds. I just use a patch to clean. Plus I would think clip-on wheel weight lead even though softer than Linotype would be find powder coated in a sub-sonic round just over 800 fps? I'm not shooting high velocity rifle loads here.

And yes, I pulled these bullets to ensure that the crimp die doesn't swag the bullets down as part of my normal reloading ritual. Not even a line or mark where the end of case meets the bullet, and still .358 in diameter. It's all very weird.

[glockfan]

first of all,your load is very anemic to me.

i'm a vithauori user in and out,and my rabbit fart load is 3.3 grs loaded with a 147 at 1.130 coal which is cruising under 125PF. the load you're using is maybe too slow, perhaps driving to the phenom you experience right now.

[razorfish]

I load 3.6 grains of VV N320 under a 135 grain coated bullet and I get about 130 PF out of my CZ Shadow. 3.0 grains sounds about right with that large of a bullet but it may be a bit under PF.

Use a sharpie to darken up a few bullets and run them over the Chrono again.

[Hastings]

Is it possible that the more slippery coating results in lower pressures which needs more powder to achieve the same velocities? Or maybe the layer of PC doesn't engage the rifling as well as bare lead or copper plating? My lead lubed bullets clock at 830 fps and a bit over with my standard N320 2.8 gr load which does make PF. The Spear 147 grain plated bullets which I use for indoor matches have to be powered with 3.4 gr of N320 to achieve the same PF. Both have been chrono'd at matches as well. The 3.0 gr charge showed the same or even worse tumble rate as the 2.8 gr PC'd bullets.

razorfish: Great idea about taking a sharpie to the bullets! Obviously I can't solve this until I know what's going on, and getting some accurate readings would be a first step.

I managed to recover a couple bullets from the berm.
216931

[Motor]

Judging by the photo I'd say they look great. No skidding and definitely no bullet failure. That simply leaves stability issues.

Motor

[res45]

As my post states, yes... I had the sky-screens on.

Depending on the angle and brightness of the sun the sky screens may not work as intended. On bright day when the sun is in less than an ideal position I put a paper box carton lid over my screens or just tape a piece of white paper across the top over the screens to defuse the light, pretty much takes care of the issue. As far as the bullets occasionally tumbling you can pretty much always attribute that to a undersized bullet or bullets, it's the only time I ever had that issued in handguns. In the case of my 9mm handguns I find it best to just purchase custom molds that cast bullets at least .001" larger that I need and size them down according powder coated or traditionally lube and tumbling bullets haven't been an issue since. I think you might be just getting an occasional bullet that is slightly undersized and not engaging the rifle properly. I've also found that bullet cast from 50/50 alloy seem to feed and function just fine in my 9mm handguns.

[joebaja]

The best luck I have had with that mold is with fairly stout charge of Power Pistol. Faster powders keyholed terribly. I also got a bit of improvement when I beagled the mold. Prior to that they weren't dropping fat enough to have any resistance in the push through sizer at .357. I have a Turkish clone of the CZ that has the same 1-10 twist. I Hi-Tek coat mostly and haven't had the chrono issue, but the stability has been a problem. The ones that do stabilize shoot well, but even then I only have about 80-90% going through the target pointy-end-first. I'm going to try Blue Dot next, since that has worked well for me with other heavy 9s.

[Hastings]

Well I now have a bunch of reloads with bullets I took a black marker too, so hopefully I'll get some readings tomorrow. The forecast is mostly cloudy but bright, so maybe that will work better. At this time of year the sun is still pretty low in the sky up here, even at noon. I should probably invest in some IR screens. These bullets do go through with some resistance through the Lee .358 sizer since they're about .360 before being sized. Depending on my results tomorrow, I might try a different powder as suggested. Sadly all I have other than N320 is some Unique and 231 on the shelf that I haven't opened in years. I may have to do a powder run!

[Hastings]

first of all,your load is very anemic to me.

i'm a vithauori user in and out,and my rabbit fart load is 3.3 grs loaded with a 147 at 1.130 coal which is cruising under 125PF. the load you're using is maybe too slow, perhaps driving to the phenom you experience right now.

Well I hate to admit you're right since you're a Glock Fan (kidding!), but I was out today and finally got some realistic readings. I didn't get any bullet tumbling today at any load amount which I found weird... but okay. They're all going nose first which is great. My 158 grain bullets driven by 3.0 grains of N320 were averaging about 785 fps. With 2.8 grains I was barely breaking 700 fps! So it looks like my sweet spot might be 3.1 or more likely 3.2 grains with these bullets.

[fredj338]

I use Smokes Carolina blue. It registers fine over my Oehler screens. The diff in vel between lubed & PC & HT is very nominal, about 20-25fps depending on powder & the PC is a bit faster, not slower. YOu said easily slips thru the sizer, so not sizing? I size to 0.357" & my 147gr are accurate, never seen a keyhole. I also worked up a 158gr load with truncated cone running about 820fps, never sen a keyhole from my Glock or 1911.

[Hastings]

I use Smokes Carolina blue. It registers fine over my Oehler screens. The diff in vel between lubed & PC & HT is very nominal, about 20-25fps depending on powder & the PC is a bit faster, not slower. YOu said easily slips thru the sizer, so not sizing? I size to 0.357" & my 147gr are accurate, never seen a keyhole. I also worked up a 158gr load with truncated cone running about 820fps, never sen a keyhole from my Glock or 1911.

I think my chrono problem had to do with some patches of snow near the tripod on the ground that was reflecting light back up to the underside of the very shiny light blue bullets, compared to the dull surface of the lead. In my last session, all snow was gone and I managed to find some shade over the sensors in a walled narrow handgun bay. Everything registered!

Yes the bullets are sizing because they come to about .360 to .361 after PC, and these are pushed through a Lee .358 sizer. I think it's that resizing factor that might be causing lower pressures at similar charges, since the lead underneath the PC must be resizing .002 to .003 smaller than my lubed bullets, and in perhaps 1 out of 10 bullets even more with some badly done PCing on my part. That could explain my keyholing too. With the last batch I reloaded I made sure I had a really thin coat of PC, and everything I shot hit the target nose first.

[Lloyd Smale]

handguns have shallow rifling. some like glocks use even shallower rifling then others. Some see pc as a way to use softer alloys or higher velocitys without leading and it does accomplish that. What it doesn't do is stop bullets from deforming (bumping up) or stripping through rifling because there to soft of an alloy for the speed there being shot at. Ive been doing this a LONG time and in all my years of shooting cast I can count on one hand when softer alloys outperformed harder ones. Id bet I could narrow down all of those cases to a gun problem. Just for grins water drop some and try them again. Todays clip on ww isn't as hard as it was even 10 years ago.

[popper]

Your recovered looks like it has wear on the front band but not the base band (bore part) should get it in both. My guess some are getting base swaging at loading and some aren't. I had the same keyhole problem with 9, a few would hit sideways. Chalked it up to different cases. You should get abrasion wear on any part that touched steel.

[Hastings]

Your recovered looks like it has wear on the front band but not the base band (bore part) should get it in both. My guess some are getting base swaging at loading and some aren't. I had the same keyhole problem with 9, a few would hit sideways. Chalked it up to different cases. You should get abrasion wear on any part that touched steel.

That's very interesting because I've been pulling the odd loaded bullet and noticing some are being swagged down; like the pressure of just seating a large bullet is perhaps causing the swagging where the case thickness increases. Is that even possible? I've measured .357 from the bottom to the lube groove when measured .358 before loading. The die I'm using for seating is a Redding competition die on a 650 press. My crimp die has now been backed off and basically does nothing.

I had good results today shooting over 500 rounds in my Shadow, while my wife shot a couple hundred in my other CZ. Every round went nose first into the targets except one, and all functioned flawlessly in my Shadow and CZ mat stainless. 3.2 grains of N320 seems to be the sweet spot, and all the strings tested exceeded power factor by a safe margin. Chrono worked great too - no more snow and puddles of water everywhere so I think my theory has some merit concerning the high gloss bullets getting the reflected sunlight on the undersides as it passes over the sensors.


As far as bullet hardness, I am water dropping mainly for the convenience. I also dump my PC'd bullets into a bucket of water straight from the toaster oven, but I'm not sure if that makes any difference in regaining any hardness lost during the bake. I do have a hardness tester, but haven't bothered to use it for my heavy sub-sonic handgun bullets. The plain lubed bullets don't lead the barrel from the same alloy, so I never felt the need.

The best part was coming home and cleaning both guns with half a paper towel and a single patch dampened with some CLP for the barrel. Normally I'd have to literally power-spray my handgun's internals with crud-cutter after 500 rounds of my lubed lead bullets and take the tooth brushes to it. I'm starting to like this!