A year ago I got permission to collect boolits from the dirt bank at the gun club I belong to.
I read reams of information from a ton of sites along with YouTube videos.
So I sifted dirt and finally collected four 5 gal. buckets of spent ammo. Also collected and cleaned , prepped about a thousand 9mm range brass.
Bought a 150,000 bTU propane burner, large cast iron pot and the muffin pans etc.
Then bought a twenty pound Lee pot, 9mm 124 gr. RN six cavity mold and a truncated cone 120 gr. six cavity mold as well.
Got into powder coating, buying everything for that- Smoke's triple sample pack, new toaster oven, etc.
Now I've bought a used RCBS single stage press with accessories- dies, Uniflow gunpowder dispenser, etc.
I'm finally at the final stage of starting to charge the brass and seating the powder coated boolits.
Man, it feels GOOD!
But I now have a situation.
I'm targeting 1.150 for the OAL. (A friend teaching me reloading came up with this OAL and powder charge.)
Although I'm getting a few of those 1.150, the rest are ranging from 1.139 up to 1.160 in length.
Is this due to variation in the powdercoat thickness on the boolits?
Most of them were coated with my new Harbor Freight vibratory tumbler.
So my obvious questions are how to reduce the broad range of the OAL?
And what amount of OAL range is OK?
Especially the shorter side since that will increase internal case pressure to some degree.
I'm charging at the middle of the manual's range for Winchester 231: 3.5 grains or 226.8 mg.
The new Lyman manual's case charging range for my Lee boolits [TL356-124-2R] I think is: 3.0 - 4.1