Just cast some 9mm bullets

Gunsmithing Ammo | Reloading
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Doesn’t work well in high humidity environments. If I didn’t have a powder coat gun I would use the way method.

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Mac82, the picture taken of the frying pan of bullets… by weight 740 of them.

Today started out absolutely gorgeous, cool and low humidity with no wind. So I started casting again. Like the other day, the heat and humidity came in but I still cast 1141, again, by weight. No pix. I put them all together in one carton after weighing.

No doubt I’ll find more culls as I coat them but today in casting I only found maybe 10 and non of them were due to bad bases.

Now I’m waiting for a rainy day so that I can coat them. Maybe tomorrow will be that day.

I was going to load the 2k Berrys bullets that I have. But I think I’ll put them on the shelf and load what I’ve been casting. I need to work up a load to test them anyway. Before I sink more time into something that might not work. Though I can’t imagine why they won’t.

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They’ll work just fine

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Whew! That’s a lot of bullets!

It took me 2+ hours to give all the bullets their first coating. One more coat to apply then I can size them.

Moisinv’, One other advantage to coating them rather than lubing with waxy grease, they are totally encapsulated greatly reducing airborne lead. That’s why cans stay cleaner with encapsulated bullets.

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The short story for those who don’t want to read to the end. I always thought bullet making was some sort of alchemy. It’s not. Just stick to know procedure and they’ll work fine. If I can cast usable bullets with my rudimentary equipment, anyone can do it. I’m using nothing fancy.

OK, so I got back to using these 135gr 9mm bullets. By design I was out of ammo for competition and for some odd reason I think it’s best to put a more distinctive bullet into a berm than use it elsewhere if we’re forced to do something no one ever wants to do. For the latter use I think it best to use a more commonly encountered bullet. If you get my drift. So save the latter and use the more distinctive bullets on paper and into dirt.

But back to the 135s. I have maybe, if memory serves, near 3500 of them ready to go and on the shelf. What powder? I bought 8# of Red Dot for a project that may never again be worked on. At least that project is on a far back burner. In researching loads online I saw where Red Dot could be used for loading handgun loads. So that’s my first choice for a load that I’ll need lots of over the years. I don’t want to run out of powder and be forced to develop another load if I have an alternative.

But I didn’t have load data for that powder and 135gr bullets. But I did have data for 147 grain bullets. Go lighter on bullet weight and the same load data used for heavier bullets is safe if not accurate. So extrapolating and adjusting the powder charge I figured 3.5grains would give me between 1000-1100 fps. That would be plenty oomph (the technical term) to function the PCC reliably. I tested a few and they were approx’ 1060 fps average (142 pf). It felt like too much recoil so I looked further at factory loadings and hotter SD loads were right near 142 pf. Accuracy was acceptable, but I figured accuracy might get better by dropping velocity. I tried 3.3 grains and got a drop in velocity of about 30fps. Dropped the charge to 3.1 grains for 970fps average and a pf of 131. Since 125 is the bottom value for power factor I’m good with a margin for cycling the gun w/o beating it to death. Accuracy was even better than @ 3.5gr, so Brian is happy. That’s my load.

Another thing that made me happy from the use of fast powder is suppressor use. At 970 fps the load is subsonic. I attached the .45 can and fired a few rounds with electrode gel in it (no rubber wipe at the end) and the sound was nailgun like with the impact on the berm quite noticeable over any sound of firing. All of that out of an <8" barrel on a blowback PCC. Because of the fast burn and pressure build it has the rest of the barrel for the pressure to drop. When the bullet uncorks the barrel pressure has dropped and the can has much less to handle. Use slower powder for less pressure drop inside the barrel and the can has more to handle and it could be louder.

I would be extremely surprised if the load doesn’t work in a handgun, but I didn’t make it for handguns or test it in them. I probably should.

After coming back from the range testing I loaded 300+ and they’ll get tested in competition this w/e. I’ll be very surprised if I get any malfunctions. If I do I’ll come back to this and 'fess up. So no news is good news.

Based on my experience with gas checked .30s if I was to do the mould again, I’d find out if one is offered for use with a gas check. In .30 they produced significantly better accuracy. But while I love accuracy it’s a 9mm and it’s shooting into 1" at 25 yards. I think a 9mm is pushing the limits out to 100 yards and this loads 4" groups are probably sufficient. Still, I wonder how much better it would do with a gas check on the base? I’ll never find out.

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