njl

For 200gr coated, I'd suggest right around 4.6gr Red Dot. From your 1911, I'd expect about 800fps.

Red Dot should work fine. I've been using Promo recently for most of my .45.

I shot a little more than a mag each of these in my G21, G30SF, and P227. I got exactly the velocity I expected. Decent accuracy as long as I did my part. I had one feeding jam in the 30SF (bullet nose up against the top of the chamber entrance), but it was with a mag previously marked as being unreliable with short (185gr JHP) cartridges. I wanted to see if these would have similar issues...and it seems they do.

Assuming the small quantity I loaded "work" and give expected velocity, I'll shoot up what I ordered and make a note not to order these again. I'm not happy having to seat them so deep.

I'm sure it slows me down, but ever since I bent a Dillon decapping pin by hitting a spent primer that had fallen into a case in the brass bin on my RL550B, each case as I pick it up from the bin gets turned over and rolled in my fingers. During this process, I glance at the headstamp. I've found one SP .45 case doing this in each of my two most recent reloading sessions...in what I thought was already sorted LP brass. I try to separate SP from LP when picking up brass at the range. I store them separately when dirty, tumble them separately, and store the tumbled brass separately.

It's not insufficient crimp/debelling. If it was, I can't see how seating it deeper and deeper would eventually overcome the issue. I just measured and then pulled the dummy bullet, and was actually overcrimping just a bit. Measured right at the case mouth, it was 0.472", and I'd just barely left a ring around the bullet. I started with a new one, backed off the crimp die, and tried again. At 0.474", it won't quite fully seat in the Dillon case gauge. At 0.473", it will drop into the gauge. Just before posting last night, I emailed H&S...not really expecting to hear back until today or next week. I got a response probably while I was writing the first post in this thread. He said he was aware of a sponsored shooter using these bullets loaded to 1.150". I plan to start with what I believe is a bit under minimum (4.2gr Promo was the planned load...and I may even go lower due to the short OAL). Alliant publishes a max load for Red Dot and Speer 230gr LRN of 5.1gr. The heaviest lead/coated I've used before were 225gr truncated cone, and 4.2gr Promo with those avg'd 787fps.

It seemed crazy short to me, which is why I opted not to load any last night. I figured I'd see if anyone else had used them or had to load other similar bullets as short.

Anyone else using these? I've been happy enough with their 147gr 9mm bullets, I decided to try their 230gr RNFP .45 bullets. Using Glock and Sig .45acp barrels to chamber check the first dummy I made, I had to go down to 1.175" before it would drop in, spin, and drop out. It gauged in my Dillon gauge at the original OAL (1.230") that I'd tried starting with, and all the way down to 1.175". That just seems awfully short for a 230gr cartridge.

Grafs has several brands of SPP in stock. Anyone tried the UNIS GINEX? Cabelas has S&B SPP.

As long as their brass holds together for the first firing, it's our problem, not theirs. I've been finding their new American Steel brass at the outdoor range. It rusts through the brass plating pretty quickly when left outdoors in the dirt.

Looks like you're not the first to have this issue with that bullet.

Are you getting any tumbling/keyholing? My 34 didn't like X-Treme 147s. I tried running them faster, slower, made sure I wasn't crimping into them. G17 shot them just fine. G34 would tumble the same load. I stopped buying them and moved to hi-tek coated 147s.

Trouble is, I do a good amount of my .45 shooting from a G30SF or G30S, and these guns are reputed to be SWC-challenged. Something about the geometry of the gun causes extracted cases to hang up on the shoulder of the next round. I suppose with NLG SWC I could play with OAL and try to find one that works...but TC bullets have "just worked."

I shop coated bullets both by price and by preferred bullet shapes. In hi-tek coated, I've tried Black and Blue, Bayou, Missouri, and H&S. For 147s, H&S is the cheapest I've found. I haven't shot too many of theirs yet, but I've got no complaints so far. I may try some of their 230gr RNFP as well. I really like Ibejiheads .45 200gr TCFP shape...but I've not seen anyone else offering that bullet coated. They're a little more $ than H&S 230gr. For .45 I like the idea of a slightly lighter than usual for caliber weight bullet so I can keep the velocity up (safe for reactive targets) and recoil down.

I was kidding. You said you hadn't found anything "impressive" yet.

Who are you trying to impress? 9mm, 147gr coated bullets work well with just about any powder. I've used as slow as Longshot, and as fast as Promo. Use a suitable amount, and any in this range should be able to get you from the very high 120s to mid 130s PF. My favorites are Universal and Promo.

"With the blast shield down, I can't even see. How am I supposed to operate the reloading press?" Imagine what will happen if one of those primers ignites while you're seating it deeper. It's practice ammo, or pull them all apart, and then reseat the primers and reassemble.

Gen4 should come with 3 mags rather than the 2 that a red label Gen3 comes with. A blue label 19G3 would come with 3 mags, but they're for first responders and GSSF coupon purchasers. The other differences are bigger/reversible mag release, much more aggressive (somewhat abrasive) grip texture, modular backstrap system, dual-spring RSA. She should at least hold, if not shoot, both generations, make sure she can rack the slide, and pick whichever is more comfortable. The 43 may be worth considering as well. It's smaller, thinner, easier to carry and easier to carry a spare mag for.

I've actually bought SP .45 brass (once) and would seriously consider switching over to it, since .45 is the only "LP" cartridge I load, and I load several SP ones...but most of the free .45 brass I pick up at the range is still LP.

What's really amazing here, is that if you found 50 in one place, someone made it through a box of that junk without a bunch of jams and giving up. I keep a few pieces of brass in each caliber I load next to the press to stand in for the powder drop station when calibrating the powder drop. A-Merc is perfectly good for that. Maybe even for making dummy rounds. I wouldn't reuse their brass for anything requiring live primers and powder.

Wouldn't CCI also have to make them since at least some aluminum cased Blazer is berdan primed?

I just completed "the exercise". My Glock 17 will chamber these bullets all the way out at 1.167" which just looks silly, spin freely, and drop out. My P226 appears to chamber them, but won't spin and sticks. Not until shortened to about 1.150" will the P226 spin and drop them out. Here they are lined up, 1.148", 1.123", 1.105" To me, the one on the left just looks silly with so much bearing surface exposed.

I dunno about that. I sent back my first Dillon .45acp CG because it wouldn't accept a decent percentage of factory new CCI Blazer. The replacement had the same issue. It's way way tighter than my Glock chambers.

I mentioned the "logic" behind my really short H&S in my original post in this thread: 1.005" would be awfully short for 9mm...but even 1.105" (what I'd really loaded them to) seems pretty short for a "147gr" (really 149gr) RNFP bullet. I know I could load these longer, though I haven't done the necessary exercise to figure out exactly how long my 9mm pistols will accommodate this bullet. I guess it would make sense to do that, even if I don't want to load longer, because at 1.123", all I know for sure is, this length fits the chambers and feeds from the magazine. It could be that I'm 0.001" away from not fitting the chamber or 0.040" or more away. A while back when I was still relatively new to coated bullets, I had issues with my Springfield .45 1911 cutting the coating on hi-tek coated bullets right at the beginning of the bearing surface if too much bearing surface was exposed...so I've generally tried to minimize that. The 1.123" OAL I'm trying now was based on ignoring the concern mentioned immediately above and trying to duplicate the internal case volume produced by loading a Bayou 147gr bullet to 1.145". If the H&S bullets are 0.020" shorter, then a 0.020" shorter cartridge with an H&S bullet seated should have the same internal volume as a cartridge loaded to 1.143" with a Bayou bullet...and all things being equal, similar max pressure...but all things are not equal, since this is a totally different bullet shape, NLG vs LG, etc.

I'm kind of surprised nobody pointed this out, but I just realized I mis-remembered the OAL when I posted the above. I'd loaded the first H&S 147s (which are actually 149s on my scale) to 1.105". I loaded some more last night, and after comparing them to Bayou and finding they're about 0.020" shorter, I decided to load up a batch at 1.12x". Most were about 1.123". I haven't had a chance to shoot them yet.