njl

.. Doesn't Hodgdon produce Winchester powders? I wrote Hodgdon about this a couple of years ago. Their response: I've done some 9mm WST loads, particularly for moly coated lead, where Universal is just way too smoky. I haven't blown up any guns, but I'm not looking for anything more than just minor PF. For jacketed, Universal does just fine for me and is a much more accepted powder for the caliber.

Something else you can do, but it's slow...is if you have a chamfer/debur tool, you can use the pointy end in the primer pocket to cut the edge off it. It works...but probably not highly recommended nor practical if you have a bunch of brass.

Wolff makes a 2 piece / 2 spring non-captured guide rod for the baby Glocks and sells a variety of spring weights.

Swaging can still help by rounding the lip of the primer pocket. I bought my Super Swage for 5.56mm brass, but have ended up using it on Aguila .30 carbine, which was not crimped, but was very hard to seat primers in.

Win used to be my favorite 9mm brass, and I have a ton of it saved from when I used to buy the Winchester 100 packs before I got into reloading. I've heard their newer brass is not as desireable, and FC is the new "premium" once fired brass. A super swage 600 will fix them, and come in handy if you ever get into any .mil caliber rifle reloading.

That's basically the same load I've shot thousands of. It's softer shooting than factory 115gr ammo, but if you move to a 147gr bullet and reduce the charge to about 3.4gr, it gets unbelievably soft shooting.

You've got to decide how fast a machine you're willing to pay for, how complicated a setup you want to deal with, and whether you ever might want to load rifle calibers (or any not available for the SDB). If you're never going to do anything but 9/40/45, the SDB is a good option. Might want to do rifle in the future, you need at least the RL550B. Want the flexibility of the 550, but more speed, get a 650 and case feeder. Made of money, want ammo fast, get 2 650s or 1050s or a mix. Leave one setup for LP, one setup for SP.

Send AIM a note - they had used G21 mags before and may have a couple laying around. Tried that. I haven't heard back. My box of mags arrived today. Interesting mix of 9mm3 and 9mm4 followers. The 9mm4 ones are clearly at least lightly used. The mags with the 9mm3 followers, if I was told they were new-old-stock, I'd believe it. All are LE/Restricted mags, I assume made during the 94-04 AWB. They stopped marking them with that after the sunset, no?

Yes...if you remove a case from the press after just sizing it, and it doesn't gauge, then it wasn't sized properly. If it doesn't pass the gauge at that point, there's no point in continuing with it, because it can only get worse when you add a bullet to it.

1.123-1.125 is not much variance. If you measure every round, you'll probably see you actually have more variance than that.

Another 10 G17 mags on the way. You're killing me...but thanks for the heads-up. Can't pass up that sort of pricing...especially this close to Obama's possible re-election. I'd love to find pricing like that on G21 or 10-round G30 mags...used would be fine.

I'm curious which 147gr bullets gave you tumbling problems? I've had that with X-Treme, only from my G34. They shoot fine from my G17...in fact very accurately...but from the 34, they practically alternate between right on, and way off + tumbling. I haven't figured out why...but it appears PD's 147s behave in both guns, so no more plated bullets for me.

Either PD's 147gr FMJ-TC or MG's 124gr JHP will work well. The PD if you want to minimize recoil. What sort of pin setup/rules does your club use though? If you have to clear pins from the front of a deep table, 9mm is quite a handicap. The serious shooters will be shooting .45acp or .44's. If you just have to knock them over / knock them off the back or off a shallow table, then 9mm isn't too big a setback.

Did you chronograph those? I've loaded Precision Delta 185gr JHP with 4.7-4.8gr WST and it makes a nice soft load in the low 8xx fps range from my G21SF. I kind of wonder how much lower you can go and still cycle.

My old method for lubing brass was to put a little lanolin on my fingers and the brass would get lubed during the trip from the brass bin to the shell plate. I've experimented with One Shot and and Dillon lube (spraying a bit into a ziplock bag, and then massaging it around the brass), but can't remember which method I used on that batch. I didn't think either of those spray lubes was supposed to contaminate powder.

This question's been bugging me for the better part of this year. Early in the year (or it may have been late last year), I loaded a batch of 230gr Zero JHP with small primer .45acp brass and CCI SP. The load was 3.85gr Clays. I did a batch of 200 of these, and had my only squibs so far...3 of them, all at a local match. I ended up pulling all the remaining rounds from that batch, and they all had exactly the expected charge. One of the squibs, I can't remember if it was the first or second, I definitely had unburned powder falling out of the brass/chamber as I extracted the squib case. 3.85gr Clays doesn't exactly fill a .45acp case. Is it possible the primer flash jumped over the powder and simply failed to ignite it? Not knowing what went wrong with that batch, I've been reluctant to load any more SP .45acp, or even reuse the bin of SP primed .45acp brass from pulling down this batch. I'm curious if anyone has shot a load similar to this with SP and clays and had any trouble or not? I might reload these components using WST...probably at least 4.6gr.

uhh should have had a .9 after the 4....... You should go back and edit that post so someone doesn't find it in a search and not read your follow-up correction. I read it and was like "4gr WST made 800fps? Something must be very wrong with his scale or chronograph."

Isn't titegroup one of the really fast powders?...which should result in minimal felt recoil? What velocity are you getting with TG and 124gr? I've loaded 124gr jacketed bullets with Universal and WST. Either one works fine, and (at around 1050-1100fps from a G17) is much less snappy than factory 115gr ammo. But as mentioned, if you want the ultimate in soft, try some 147gr jacketed bullets with 3.4 (+- 0.1gr) Universal or around 3.8gr WST. The only problem with these is, you may have trouble making minor. Chrono them if/before it matters.

You're loading at the long end of the spectrum, so you could certainly shorten it a couple of hundredths of an inch and see what the resulting pressure increase does for your velocity.

A new tumbler is probably cheaper than repairing your dryer. I'm guessing the cement mixer people are doing it wet probably with stainless steel pins or other wet suitable media.

I'm surprised noone else has said this yet, but 10lbs is an awful lot of powder to order at once for someone who doesn't know what powder they want. I like Universal for 9mm jacketed, WST for anything moly, and Clays and WST for .45acp jacketed. It might make sense for you to try some 1lb "samples" of a few powders to see what you like before ordering in bulk.

Go to a GSSF match, and tell them the round count...and if they don't immediately suggest it, ask if they'll replace all the springs in your gun and mags. They should be willing, and it should be free.

I doubt it. If that's all it was, I'd have expected the Flitz to polish them away...and they wouldn't be present in the bag as loose flakes. Just did some more googling...if it's lead, a propane torch should melt it. If it's moly, I don't think the propane burns hot enough to melt it...so I guess I'll be doing some pyro experimentation this weekend.

That's what I'm afraid of...and if so, I wonder how safe they are to use. I don't want to lead up the barrels of my carbines or screw up their gas systems. I kind of wonder if these are factory seconds (you don't see IMI carbine bullets for sale all that often) and Wideners just didn't say. If I were to hit one with my Bernzomatic propane torch, if it's lead, how long should it take to see the spots melt away and run down the sides of the jackets? It just occurred to me, I should be asking about this on the CMP forum...where more people are likely to have experience with carbine bullets/reloading.

Anyone ever seen bullets like these? These are IMI .30 carbine 110gr JSP just received from Wideners. I've emailed Wideners about this, but no reply so far. I've tried polishing by hand with a cleaning patch and some flitz...whatever these spots are, they didn't budge. Scraping at them with a blade, I can remove the spots (along with some jacket, without getting all the way through to lead). The bags of bullets also seem to be full of whatever this is...it's both on the bullets and present in the bags as loose flakes of whatever it is. I've got thousands of Remington 110gr JSP, and they don't look anything like these...they look as you'd expect, nice clean jacket material, exposed lead tips.