9mm reloading attempts driving me nuts!

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Skyhawk

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I cast a few thousand bullets using Lee's 356-125-2R. They actually drop at 130 grains and are .358 wide. I lightly LLA'd them, pushed through Lee's .356 resizer, and lightly LLA'd again. I then proceeded to load these in front of 3.5 grains of W231 and went for a 1.140" OAL. In other words - a nice gentle starting load. So far, so good. So I loaded a a couple dozen.

A few minutes ago I decided to dismantle my 9mm pistols and try them in the chamber for fit. First up was the Ruger SR9. It dropped in with a satisfying clunk right to the rim edge, and dropped out again by itself even after I pressed my thumb on the bottom of the case while it was in the chamber - just like factory ammo! Ya!

Next up was the Norinco NP-17 (a T-33 - Tokarev clone variant). It wouldn't even fit. Period. I had to work down the OAL to 1.110 even before it would actually fit to where it's supposed to fit, but it still wouldn't drop in. It would need to be pried out because the bullet ogive was getting stuck at the ledge at the end of the chamber where the rifling starts. I had to go down to a length of 1.093 to 1.097 before it would drop in and fall out like a normal factory round such as American Eagle 124gr RN FMJ that has an OAL of 1.150"! WTH?

The factory rounds are shaped differently, with the olgive tapering in at a steeper angle from the very start, and thus have a pointier look to them.

I did resize the ammo I already put together so it would work in all my guns. Here are my questions:

1. Obviously pressures will now be considerably higher with the reduced OAL. Too much?

2. I don't have anything that even comes close to supplying load data for 130 grain cast lead round nose with an OAL of 1.095 using W231 powder. This is a popular mold. Has anyone here had experience with this bullet and powder combination?
 
My OAL on that bullet is 1.16. I use a Lee carbide factory crimp die at my last station. It resizes the whole cartridge after assembly. Mine has 4.1 grains of W231 in it.
You could have your bullet seating die too deep so that it bulges the case a little, when it crimps the case on the bullet. The bullet gets crimped by the case but is still being seated down and the case swells because something has to give.
Next I would use a black marker and color the entire bullet. Shove it in and see whats rubbing.
 
tigrr said:
My OAL on that bullet is 1.16. I use a Lee carbide factory crimp die at my last station. It resizes the whole cartridge after assembly. Mine has 4.1 grains of W231 in it.
You could have your bullet seating die too deep so that it bulges the case a little, when it crimps the case on the bullet. The bullet gets crimped by the case but is still being seated down and the case swells because something has to give.
Next I would use a black marker and color the entire bullet. Shove it in and see whats rubbing.
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I'm using the Lee carbide factory crimp die too. Actually, the cases fit fine even after just using the bullet seating die without a bullet before the FCD. So it's definitely not a case mouth diameter issue. Plus as I mentioned, the rounds fit fine if the OAL of the cartridge is around 1.095. The Norc just seems to have a very short chamber compared to the SR9 and CZ I own (although the CZ chamber seems to be also shorter than the SR9).

This affair is just reminding me again why I love .45 ACP so much.
 
I decided to try the black marker trick as you suggested since I still have my gun disassembled and a marker handy. Well, there's a perfect shiny ring lined around the bullet about .0800" from the case mouth on a cartridge sized to 1.130. Good grief. That rather sucks. At least that confirms it is the bullet as I originally thought and not a case issue.
 
Actually the Lee manual says OAL of 130 gr lead bullet has a minimum of 1.095. It says the same for a 124 grain lead bullet as well.
 
tigrr said:
Actually the Lee manual says OAL of 130 gr lead bullet has a minimum of 1.095. It says the same for a 124 grain lead bullet as well.
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Yeah, I have it here. Sadly those figures are based on using ACCUR#7, 5, and 2. They do mention 4.3 grains of HP38 (same as my W231) with an OAL of 1.120. But that's for jacketed.

But get this, Lee also says only 3.3 grains of W231 for 124 grain lead bullet @ 1.095 OAL. It says 4.0 max, so I assume I'm within within the range anyway, even with the heavier bullet that will take up slightly more case volume at the same OAL.
 
Thanks saskgunowner101 and caperbound, I guess this is more of a gun issue than a reloading issue. But darn, my NP-17 (after a lot of free work - thank you Marstar!) has a decent trigger, shoots 100% reliably, and is accurate as any other gun I own ... errr to the limit of my shooting ability.

After changing out those frighteningly bad wrap-around grips that give you hammer bite to those Turkish walnut thin grips, it feels like my 1911 in my hand. I like it now, and I want my darn reloads to work in it. The CZ 75B also doesn't seem to like anything bigger than 1.140 with that bullet shape. For some reason, my wife's SR9 doesn't care in any range I've tried.

Edit: CZ is very short too.. 1.100 seems to be best with this bullet too.
 
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Just for comparison, I used a borrowed TL356-124-TC and size to .358. Put 4 Grs of Bullseye behind it and not a single FTF or FTE. I honestly haven't tried the drop the bullet into the chamber trick, but I will try it tonight and see. Mine's also an SR9, so maybe its the same generous chamber?

OAL, I'm not sure as I'm using borrowed Lee dies now whilst waiting for mine to arrive. Truth be told, I'm experiencing some tumbling (not quite round holes in targets) but that's another story altogether. Maybe load-related. I'll check what my OAL is, but if you look at this picture, mine looks just like that.
 
9mm reloading

Well I'm glad someone else has been going crazy trying to reload 9mm this week and not just me. I just picked up an older CZ 75 and have'nt reloaded 9mm in over 20 years . well I have some old cast bullets and when I measured a Nato 9mm it came out to 1.160 and it chambered just great in the barrel which I had out of the pistol of course.

so then I reloaded this truncated type cast bullet in the brass I had prepped and it would'nt feed into the barrel to the depth of the Nato round. and the lube was still exposed when I seated it to the same length of the Nato round. I phoned a buddy and he told me I had to seat the bullet into the case till it chambered in the barrel to the same depth of the Nato round.

I have been reloading revolver rounds lately so when it came to the 9mm it was back to learning what I have'nt done for years again.
 
Ganderite said:
I find all my Norv pistols have very short throats and require bullets to be seated more deeply than other guns.

Just start mild and work up til you find the load you like.
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Yup, so now I've just made a bunch of various configurations in both OAL and load ... within the range of all the reloading manuals of course. This is for a mild starting load. Actually I have exactly 6 versions of my 9mm reloads labeled and ready to go for tomorrow at the range.

One of my concerns is that using my shorter OAL's in the much more generous space in the SR9 might cause accuracy issues with that particular firearm. Then again, since it's my wife's gun, I might get a secret edge on her shooting accuracy! Shhhh.... no one ever repeat that EVER please.
 
a short free bore [throat, forcing cone], is not uncommon & can give you better acc if you load for it, it's a pain in the ass if don't check first & if you've got more than one of the same cal , it's best to have them all reamed the same , saves a lot of BS, rifle guys live with this as a matter of course, but then they build loads per gun & think it's cool to have a diff load for every 3006 they own, thats why i got rid of my long ones
 
cement head said:
Well I'm glad someone else has been going crazy trying to reload 9mm this week and not just me. I just picked up an older CZ 75 and have'nt reloaded 9mm in over 20 years . well I have some old cast bullets and when I measured a Nato 9mm it came out to 1.160 and it chambered just great in the barrel which I had out of the pistol of course.

so then I reloaded this truncated type cast bullet in the brass I had prepped and it would'nt feed into the barrel to the depth of the Nato round. and the lube was still exposed when I seated it to the same length of the Nato round. I phoned a buddy and he told me I had to seat the bullet into the case till it chambered in the barrel to the same depth of the Nato round.

I have been reloading revolver rounds lately so when it came to the 9mm it was back to learning what I have'nt done for years again.
Click to expand...

This is a common problem with the CZ's in 9mm.

My first range trip with mine and 100 9mm loads(G17 loads) didn't go too well. LOL
 
Well ... back from the range. Everything worked in the Norc. Nothing worked in the SR9 - not cycling properly. It turns out that 3.5 grains with a 1.095 OAL is an extremely light load and likely too light for the SR9. Even 3.2 grains cycled perfectly in the Norc! I couldn't believe it. It felt somewhat like shooting our Ruger Mk III. I had the chrono out and they clocked around 680fps, but I may have had the chrony too close so I'm not sure if I believe the readings I got. Although they didn't tumble, it was smokey and not incredibly accurate at 8 to 10 yards (although I was landing them in the black at least).

So for tomorrow, I'm trying 3.7 and 4.0 grains @ 1.095 OAL. Hopefully one of those loads convinces the SR9 to cycle properly. It is fairly new, so it's probably a bit tight at well, while the Norc has seen thousands of factory rounds through it.
 
Skyhawk said:
Well ... back from the range. Everything worked in the Norc. Nothing worked in the SR9 - not cycling properly. It turns out that 3.5 grains with a 1.095 OAL is an extremely light load and likely too light for the SR9. Even 3.2 grains cycled perfectly in the Norc! I couldn't believe it. It felt somewhat like shooting our Ruger Mk III. I had the chrono out and they clocked around 680fps, but I may have had the chrony too close so I'm not sure if I believe the readings I got. Although they didn't tumble, it was smokey and not incredibly accurate at 8 to 10 yards (although I was landing them in the black at least).

So for tomorrow, I'm trying 3.7 and 4.0 grains @ 1.095 OAL. Hopefully one of those loads convinces the SR9 to cycle properly. It is fairly new, so it's probably a bit tight at well, while the Norc has seen thousands of factory rounds through it.
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Looks like your Chrony is correct.

s>
 
I had the same issues with the Lee 124LRN bullet in my GP6, it needs to be loaded short. It took a few tries to get a 100% reliable oal but 1.095 was the magic number for me. I tried similar bullets with a slighly different profile and 1.12 were fine, seems like that particular Lee bullet just needs to be shorter.
 
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