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I would like to start reloading 9mm rounds. I already have a way to melt lead and have a bucket of old wheel weights. I bought 9mm ammo at Cabela's for under $10 a box last week. I get a kick out of reloading but it is not cost effective unless you cast your own bullets. If the cast 9mm reloads need gas checks that will pretty much kill reloading the 9mm.
I have never used gas checks on my cast 9mm slugs. Never harmed the barrel or caused any cleaning problems.
I do not load my 9mm ammo to the scorching velocities that would liquefy the bullet bases, which is what gas checks are for. I keep the speeds below 1000 fps and I tend to use a heavier than standard 130-140gn bullet, which almost duplicates a .38spl load.
Been casting 9mm since about 1970. Lost count of how many tons that would make.
I do "temper" my 9mm slugs. I drop them straight out of the mold into a bucket of water. It seems to make them a little harder and stops any deformation of the still soft slug bouncing off the casting table. 9mm takes a pounding right on the nose each time the bullet feeds from the magazine to the chamber and I hope the harder lead will survive that trip.
When you really get to rocking on a casting effort you will be pouring, smacking the sprue plate ad plopping the slugs out faster than you just read this line. After about 100 slugs the mold will get so hot that the bullet will barely be cooled to solid state before it leaves the mold block. If it hits a hard surface it will actually go "splat" and deform. That is one reason I use the water bucket.
Some folks keep two or three mold blocks ready so they can switch from one to another and let the blocks cool in turn.
If you are using the big 6 cavity blocks it is not much of a problem. They have more mass and do not heat up as fast as the little two cavity blocks.
When you buy your molds be sure and buy the tumble lube blocks. It cuts out the need for resizing and lubing. You just cast the bullets and roll them around in the liquid alox and let them sit for a couple of hours before loading.
It always amazes me that Lee can produce their gear to such precise tolerances so cheaply. I have several of their 6 cavity blocks and the individual slugs do not vary by even .001 out of the same block.
Any tine I have had a problem I soon realized it was MY problem and not the equipment.
Now back to the gas checks. I only use them on rifle bullets and only when accuracy demands it. I have a .223 55gn slug that will not shoot into a foot at 25 yards without a gas check.
I also have .30 caliber slugs that shoot well without GC and others that need them. Any time I am approaching 1500fps I feel like I need them to protect the bullet base and the bore.
Thanks for the info. I cast some bullets for the 300 blackout and they did not perform well at all. I blamed the red dot sight. Never did try gas checks but I think the 225 gn bullet was just to heavy. I noticed the target had key holes in the paper and lots of bullet drop. I tried
some 110 grain bullets and they were all over the target. Found some Hornady 150 grain bullets at Cabela's and they shot quite well, just as good as store bought ammo.
The new AR-15 shooting 9mm is a great shooting rifle. I took it to the 100 yard range and thought it shot better than expected. I'll probably try taking down a wild hog with the 9mm, at close range.
What powder do you recommend for reloading 9mm?
Anything that burns clean and is safe.Quote:
Originally Posted by jim Glass
There are dozens to choose from. I have used Unique for decades. I have also used Green Dot, Accurate #5 and #2, Zip, and I am currently working my way through a barrel of ETR7 which is claimed to be a Spanish made powder used in their NATO pistol loadings. I am using the ETR7 in about all pistol calibers known to man. It is a bit smokey.
HP38 is supposed to be good and I hear real good things about Clays. There may be other good powders and I am not familiar with them.
Check the books and make a selection. but I would base that selection on availability of powder now and in the future and how many different calibers one can load using that powder. Unique has the all time record of use in the most calibers, including most shotgun loadings and many lead bullet rifle loads. Problem is that it is the first powder that goes missing from the shelves during crisis such as we saw during our previous administrator's rule.
I was caught short during that fiasco and had to scramble for resources. The fact that it lasted for 8 years and could have gone for longer was my wake up call. From today until my demise, or it is made illegal, I will have a 10 year supply of powder on hand.
If this reloading thing is going to become a serious hobby with several calibers involved then I suggest you pick a powder and buy an 8 pound keg. That would be from 8,000-15,000 reloaded rounds, depending on the powder and the pistol caliber.
Loading a couple of rifle calibers you might want to put away whatever you use for that also.
If there is a mushroom cloud over Kentucky it won't be the N. Koreans. Kyrat's house will have caught fire. I should have some warning though. I'm sure he'll go running past here before the whole thing goes up.
I'm fast,
But not that fast!
If this place catches fire while I am asleep there will be no need for a cremation charge.
Little pieces of the Krat will rain down on the Kentucky hills for hours.
I've only used gas checks on 8mm and 30 cal rifle bullets, never handgun bullets. Never saw the need. Now, with that said, one word of caution. I have heard that cast bullets should not be fired in a Glock. Take it for what it's worth or Google it.
Alan
Actually I reload cast and reload a lot more pistol rounds that rifle....mostly because of speeds and gas check issue.......Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan R McDaniel Jr
Usually when I shoot a rifle....it's at "game" so tend to want that shot to count....and be consistent.
That means purchased factory ammo or bullets and reload to my spec's.
Pistols get more "fun shooting" .38. .357. .44 mag, .45lc....so cast and load for those....I gas check the .357's
9mm is real cheap compared to .45 lc or even .45acp....so don't mess with those or the .380.
If I was to take on another set up it would be a 9mm.
As far as autoloaders.....I think every single manual says in the "Thou Shalt not's" tells you to NOT shoot lead bullets or even reloads.....
My opinion the is a big "Cover their A$$" statement.....Warranty issue
The manufacturers have always done the CYA over any reloaded ammo in their products. It is not just Glock, all of them do it. Glock states specifically that lead should not be used in their polygonal riffled barrels but I know guys with thousands of rounds of lead reloads through their with no problems.
All that being said there is the law of numbers in effect. If you do something enough times you will eventually make a mistake or your equipment will fail you. Since my start in reloading in 1969 I have had two incidents out of the hundreds of thousands of rounds I have reloaded.
I once loaded a squib with no powder. It was a .38 reload. I was rattling off some rapid fire double action practice and heard the round squeak down the barrel and backed off the followup DA trigger pull, and I was moving at quite a clip. I looked at the muzzle of the pistol and the nose of the lead SWC was poking out the muzzle. Caught that one just in time.
The other incident was in the late 1970s and was encountered while shooting a brand new 9mm Star BKS. That particular gun was one of the early attempts to put a 9mm onto a .380 frame. To accomplish that the Star company cut away about half the underside of the chamber to get the 9mm to feed.
(Glock did the exact same thing when they produced their first .40 S&W pistols and gained their famous K-boom reputation for that cartridge. It is not the cartridge, it is bad engineering of the pistol)
All went well until the second magazine when a piece of reloaded brass let go. It blew half the bottom of the case out, turned the top three cartridges in the magazine around backwards, locked the magazine in place so it had to be pryed out, shattered the grips and cracked the frame through both sides above the barrel through pin/takedown pin. The shooter's face was peppered with brass but his sight was saved by his shooting glasses. His hand was bruised but not otherwise injured.
I found the piece of brass and it was not identifiable since there was no head stamp on that case. I have never seen another piece of 9mm brass with no head stamp.
We called Star importing agent, packed the pistol up and sent it back but did not include the piece of reloaded brass. They gave my buddy his choice of any Star product, no restrictions, and sent the new pistol and a release for for his signature.
Two mistakes in 50 years, neither of them "serious" to the point of injury, I do not consider a bad ratio. During part of that time I was producing and shoot minimum of 500-1000 rounds per week and I have worn out three sets of .38spl dies and two sets of 9mm dies and two sets fo .45acp dies. Wearing out the die sets stopped when I made the move to carbide resizing dies and bought a case tumbler.
That all occurred back in the days of single stage loading. I had a chance to screw up about 4 times on each cartridge, especially since I was always in a hurry with as many reloads as I produced with a single stage press. Much of my pistol reloading is now done using the semi-automated Lee turret press. I still do the re-priming operation individually and by hand so that I can examine every case before the primer goes in.
For a while I had one of the fancy fully automated loading machines, but I found myself being a slave to the machine and producing fewer rounds due to constantly needed adjustments on the machine and you would have 25 rounds loaded before you realized there was a mistake. I went backwards to the turret press and have been very happy with it for going on 30 years.
Watch this scary video:Quote:
Originally Posted by Rick
http://thegoldwater.com/news/8769-Vi...epot-Exploding
Must have been a small depot.
Not your shed?.....Quote:
Originally Posted by kyratshooter
It's relative depending on where you are when it went boom. Up close, biggest. Far away, nuttin to it.Quote:
Originally Posted by kyratshooter
I have been shooting with 9MM for several years with satisfactory results. I size to .357 with out using a gas check and run them at about 1100 FPS.