heavy leading 9mm

[muzzleblastm38]

:confused::confused:heavy leading with different gun in 9mm luger,my load 3.5gr titegroup 124gr lee tumble lub with liquide alox. i have trid diffente oal ,load, primer and always lead?:roll:

[donjose]

What is the boolit hardness?

[HeavyMetal]

O.K. Let's go through this one step at a time.

1 fit is king ( yes I stole that line) if you have not slugged your bore at least mention the brand of gun. Foreign 9's can favor larger boolits.

2 how hard is your alloy? No this is not a harder is better statement but it is a to soft an alloy in a tumble lube design can be "shrunk" veery easily when the boolit is seated in the case statement resulting in an undersized boolit going down the bore.

3 Was / is your die set set up for lead boolit? Please check your expander die plug, that the die piece that enters the case, and makes the case big enough for your lead boolits to seat without being shaved or crushed.

4 are you chamfering the case mouth before sizing and or otherwise preparing to load the case? Sharp edges on the inside of the case mouth can cause shaving of the boolit during seating creating the same effect ast to tight an expander plug.

5 do you have another 9mm mold to try, hopefully not tumble lube?

Any or all or any combonation of the above can cause leading in any gun but much more easily in a 9mm because case's are so much "stiffer".


Finally once you have double checked all of the above and positively made sure that none of these issues is causing a problem start looking at more or different lubing ideas.

Tumble lube is fast and cheap but is not the best simply because of this. try more or try pan lubing with a more traditional lube and the problem may go away after you check the first five things I mentioned!

[462]

I don't have a 9 mm, but it seems that whenever a leading problem is experienced by those who do, invariably they are using Lee Liquid Alox and it ends up being the culprit.

[9.3X62AL]

Lee Liquid Alox = The Usual Suspect.

LLA seems to do its best work in cast-friendly environments. 9mm and 40 S&W are anything but a cast-friendly environment--they are short rifles, as a practical matter, owing to their high pressures and often fast twist rates. NOT magazine-fed 38 Specials, by any means.

What Heavy Metal said, 10X over.

[legi0n]

try double lubing in LLA.
it works well in my 4" 9mm 358-140-SWC, 12BHN, 3.3gr Unique, COAL 1.067", 28ºC (82.4ºF)

[sargenv]

If lla doesn't work so good, give JPW a try.. it workes great in my 40 cal revo and Para P16.. no leading with a .401" 185 RN using quenched WW's.

[MtGun44]

+1 on what Al said. Frankly, I am getting sick of this same-ol thread - we get a newbie with this
same problem every week, it seems. I am getting to really dislike Lee alox just because
of the 'mess' we get to clean up here. And as much as I like my 9mms (not favorites, but they
are fine) I am getting to not be a fan of newbies reloading the caliber. Seems like the caliber
that should be voted as 'least likely to succeed' in reloading with home cast boolits, at least
without some more guidance.

Thanks Heavy Metal, you had the duty this week- well done. We'll just rotate it around when
these come up, and they will!

Bill

[fecmech]

We can probably blame this oft repeated thread on the recent increase in price and shortage of jacketed bullets and ammo. A couple years ago guys were laughed at for even reloading 9MM's, let alone with cast bullets! Maybe we should have a 9MM leading Sticky??

[patsher]

I agree, a Sticky is a great idea, especially one which starts with the question: "Have you slugged your barrel yet?", followed by the statement "Lead bullets need to be .001 or .002 larger in dia. than your barrel as long as they will chamber properly", followed by instructions on how to slug your barrel.

Just my two cents worth. :coffeecom

Pat

[EMC45]

Is it a Beretta 92FS by chance?

[Edubya]

I have two XD-9s and one is stock, it will lead up in fifteen or so rounds with .357 lead cast in BHN 10 to 20. The other one has a Bar-Sto match grade barrel and will shoot all day with the same boolits with only a thin coat that cleans up in minutes.
I cast for 9mm, .38, .44 and ,45. The 9mm (stock) is the only one that gives me any problems.

EW

PS: I do not use the LLA (mule snot)!

[bhn22]

Shortcuts, (like LLA) seem to be the longest, most tortuous routes of all.

[MtGun44]

Edubya,

Have you tried a .358 boolit in the "lead-er"? Have you slugged the barrels? My bet is that
one has a fat barrel.

Bill

[HeavyMetal]

Ya know a newbie sticky dedicated to 9mm and 40 S&W might help a lot of guys reloading these calibers get through a loading shooting sesion with out to much hassle.I have told people right up front that the 9 is not the caliber to start reloading with lead boolits or not and the 40 is not far behind it.For beginning loaders I think 38 special and 45 auto should be required before moving on to other calibersI also think an easy to use pan lube set up might make the change to a better lube easier as well.* I may explore putting together a kit some time this weekend* and see how hard it will be to do "successfully"

[GabbyM]

I believe the problem in general with loading 9x19mm is the die sets with poorly designed expansion plugs. 124Gr RN bullets will about seat and then you're out of luck with deeper seating bullets. Lee TC-TL probably wants to seat deeper than the O.P.'s expansion plug reaches.

Most 9x19mm expansion plugs are an 1/8th inch short for anything but the round nose bullets. On top of that most are to small a diameter for even .356” cast bullets.

I have a popular Magma mould in 124 grain RN-BB bullet. Seating depth on this bullet not counting the small bevel base is a few thousandths over .150” if you make a long round at 1.145”. All my truncated cone bullets plus the Magma 147gr FP have a seating depth of the body diameter at .250” to .255”. TC-TL Lee bullet is probably close to this also. My Lyman M die is the only one with adequate length and even then just barely as you need to make a long round. All my other die plugs are around 1/8th inch to short.

All my dies are a couple decades or more old. Perhaps die sets made post FBI load with 147 grain bullets have longer expansion plugs? I'm thinking not.

My recommendation to the O.P. Would be buy a Lyman M die. Even then the one I have at .3525” is a little small. But at least it's almost long enough if you make your bullets out to C.O.L. of 1.145". I have successfully seated plenty of .356” and .357” bullets after this Lyman M die and they do push in much easier. Another trick to try is adjusting your size die up to reduce sizing. If all your brass is the same head stamp and you have a tapered die. Not a carbide ring size die. It will work as fired case I.D. at 1/4” depth is usually around .355”. I did it this way for years with a standard RCBS die. But it may not work with brass fired in an unknown gun. As the base may be to large to chamber. Its tricky. Much depends upon how your die is dimentioned. European mil surplus cases may be hopelessly thick walled.

[Edubya]

Edubya,

Have you tried a .358 boolit in the "lead-er"? Have you slugged the barrels? My bet is that
one has a fat barrel.

Bill

Yes, I have slugged the chamber and barrel. I slug all of my barrels and I have the information on each one listed in my notes for each separate gun. The 9mms are within .0005 of each other. Initially, I questioned this too, I slugged it and measured it a second time (results were the same).

EW

[muzzleblastm38]

ok guy's i use liguide alox, but it work great in rifle bullet that i shoot with muzzle speed of 2200fps with no leading, so why leading in 9mm .

[bhn22]

Pull a bullet & measure it. One of the most common causes of leading is caused by the bullet getting swaged down during the seating & taper crimping processes. LEE handgun factory crimp dies are prime offenders in this issue.

[ph4570]

+1 on pulling a boolit and measuring to see if it got sized down in the seating and crimping stations. That was the final issue on getting my P226 and 92F happy with cast.

[HeavyMetal]

9mm case's are very "stiff"! Do some measuring and you'll be surprised at how thick the case walls are compared to other pistol cases of the same caliber and pressure range ( check 357 mag case)

Again I will refer you to number 3 and 4 in my original answer to your post. The likely hood that the boolit is being sized as it is seated is very high in the 9mm, even higher with tumble lube boolits because the bearing are is the little bitty ridges between the little bitty valleys that are supposed to hold LLA.

Use mixed cases with untrimed lengths and don't be burr the inside case mouth and you have a 110% reason for leading!

A lee factory crimp die in 9mm can also, but not always, contribute to this issues.

So load and pull a dummy round before you crimp ( thats if you use the Lee FCD die) and measure the boolit a second time.

If you use an FCD die load a dummy round and crimp it and then pull and check.

Some where in all this crimping and seating you'll find your problem.

[GabbyM]

Started a new thread over on the Reloading Equipment forum. Subject: Short Expander Plugs In 9mm Die Sets .

Seams to me when you have an expander that only goes in the case .150” and a bullet that wants .250” to seat you'll have an issue with swagging your bullets tail.