njl

You didn't say who's 200gr bullet...but I suspect 5gr is a reasonable starting point and that you'll have to work up a bit from there.

The zerks are a very recent design improvement? My RL550B purchased in 2008 just has pin holes in the cast parts for the oil points.

With light recoil springs and a taste for minimal recoil, I don't think he even wants minor PF much less major PF.

.223 shell plate. Buttons for .223/9mm are the same, so whichever you like for those. 9mm powder funnel. And you'll likely want a dedicated tool head for your .380 die set. Depending on what powder you use, an XS powder bar may be helpful.

Huge difference in case volume. PV=nRT, or P=nRT/V. So, pressure is inversely proportional to volume. Double the case volume, and the same amount of gas is under half the pressure. It's a lot more complicated than that in cartridges since the volume starts expanding while the powder is converting to gas, but that's the simple answer as to why you need a lot more powder in .38spl to drive the same bullet as a .380acp.

That 125gr FP looks like a bullet used for both .38spl and 9mm (just use a different sizing die) and has a crimp groove I'd seat to if I were using them for .38spl. For 9mm, I'd suggest seating them deeper to protect the bearing surface above the crimp groove. Also, I don't see that it's been mentioned yet, so I'll suggest you disassemble one of your loaded rounds and make sure you're not damaging the coating during seating by overdoing the crimp. With coated bullets, in 9mm, I crimp to .379-.380. It's too easy to break through the coating with an overly tight crimp.

If money is tight, just get a beam scale. You'll need one anyway to sanity check the (faster but less reliable) digital.

I'm using Promo ("same as red dot") in .380 without any problems (using Xtreme plated and Bayou coated). Which profile bullet are you using? SNS makes a few different 125s. When I first started loading Precision coated bullets for my .45 Glocks, I found that if any of the bearing surface was above the case mouth, the Glocks would cut through it in the process of chambering (or maybe unchambering) a round. So, I load them short enough to avoid that.

BTW...we finally had some really nice weather, so I took my steel plate rack to the range this past weekend and did a bunch of Glock the Plates practice. I don't know why, but my normal load of 4.8gr WST with 200gr Precision RNFP was smoking like crazy. I mean bad enough that after shooting 4-5 plates with splits of about 0.6s, I was having a hard time seeing the last plate or two. I've never noticed that much smoke from this combination. 4 shots in about 2s, and I had a smoke screen in front of me. I think I'm going to load some Precision and some Hi-Tek coated .45 bullets with plain old Clays and see how that compares to WST.

Best advice yet. You can even load .45 minor with 185gr or 200gr bullets, and be more effective against the pins with quite a bit less felt recoil than your 9mm hotrod load. I don't recommend 230gr .45 minor for pins due to issues with minimum safe velocity.

Thing is, if you're looking for softer recoil, you're not going to go with a heavier recoil spring, as that'll require more powder to cycle the slide, and more powder = more recoil.

You must mean 0.2gr. 2gr would be most of your charge for a .380 with any of the faster powders. Are you using a large flake powder?

that seems excessive. Agreed. 4.5gr WST is good enough for 124gr jacketed bullets. Coated lead should be able to make PF with less powder.

CCI is what I've mostly used. I'm happy with them. From the testing I've done though, they're on the weak side. If you have to switch at some point to Federal or Wolf/Tula, you can be confident that your FPS will be stable or more likely increase a bit.

The only thing that makes loading .380 any harder than 9mm is the tiny powder charges. Depending on the powder, you might have trouble getting the small bar to drop consistent charges. I ended up buying an extra-small bar, and it seems to have helped.

I am tooled to load .223 and 9mm. Is the powder funnel the same? so would all I need are dies? and a tool head? (I like a tool head for each caliber) Yep. Dies and a toolhead, and maybe a case gauge. Use the .223 cal conversion parts and 9mm funnel.

The short answer is maybe. There can be slight differences in different brands of primer, but its only likely to matter if you're loading right on the edge of power factor or slide cycling. Loading .45 minor, a 20fps shift might take a load from "just cycling the slide" to "not quite cycling the slide".

How do you chrony your hand loads? Captain Obvious: I usually chrony my hand loads with a chronograph. But seriously, I've been using a Shooting Chrony Beta Master since I started reloading. I think I put it about 2 yds downrange from the shooting bench. I don't actually measure, and just kind of eyeball a good location for it. I can read the display from that distance, because the display is a remote wired display which I place on the shooting bench right in front of me. I never "got" those chronographs where the readout and controls were all downrange. I don't have the ballistic printer option. I hand record the data (min/max/avg/ES/SD) in a loose leaf notebook. After 6 years of reloading, I'm starting to see that this is really not a great way to manage the data. Sure, it's great having a hard copy...but searching for particular load data/results can be a pain. I need to put the data into a spreadsheet or database of some kind. I use a rather nice tripod I bought for photography. I'd really like to find a cheaper one that's sturdy enough that I wouldn't be as upset about if "something happened" to it.

I've had similar issues. If you search here and maybe on youtube, you should find a thread/video where someone explains and shows off his "redesigned" primer slide bearing. It's longer, has a channel in it for the primer slide return spring post, and supports the slide better when it's back picking up a primer. I eventually had a friend much handier than I make me a copy. I've been using it for probably a couple thousand rounds, and not had any trouble. Since it doesn't have the slick coating Dillon puts on theirs, I do put a tiny amount of powdered graphite on it. Here...I found it for you. http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=181925&hl=%2Bbearing#entry2007333

How hot a load was it though?

My initial reason for trying the various coated options is that the club where I shoot had a rule that only lead could be shot at steel...and I like shooting steel. They've just revised the rules, and now lead and plated bullets are allowed on steel, but still not jacketed. For semi-autos, I've loaded PD, MG, Zero, BBI, X-treme, Precision, Bayou, and Black and Blue. Now that I can shoot plated at steel, the only reason to consider coated bullets is cost. At regular prices, figuring in shipping, coated is anywhere from half a cent to a few cents cheaper per bullet depending on caliber. I just loaded 100 each of X-Treme 200gr HP and Bayou 200gr RNFP. I plan to do some side by side comparisons to help decide how to proceed.

I wonder if it's just raising the pressure and if more powder would do the same.

What would possess you to crimp that heavily?

.462" crimp? Really. That's definitely going to leave a mark in a plated bullet. Did you perhaps mean 0.472"?

You can make .45 major with less recoil than factory ammo, but you can make .45 minor that feels closer to soft 9mm than .45.