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njl

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Everything posted by njl

  1. Some say they're harder to seat than CCI. I haven't found that to be the case with SPP. I do have that issue with their LPP. My only complaint with the SPP is that the bottom of the cup seems to be less rounded than CCI, so they're a little harder to pick up in Dillon primer tubes and more easily flipped. But they've worked fine in my Glock's and K-frames. And the price is usually hard to beat.
  2. Their SP are my new favorite after years of using mostly CCI.
  3. Good glasses are very important. My bowling pin match incident was a wake-up call in multiple ways. I need glasses for correction, and until then, I'd just shoot in my daily wear glasses. After that, I got my first pair of Rudy's. I have two now. I don't shoot in my regular glasses anymore. It also started my investigation of lighter/faster .45 bullets to keep the velocity up at generally accepted safer levels for pin shooting while still keeping the recoil sub-factory. i.e. 185gr or 200gr at >800 fps. When shooting steel with others, if I have to take of my glasses to wipe sweat off my face, or for any other reason, I turn 180* away from the plates.
  4. This seems like a follow-up to your other recent post about how to best hang steel targets? I'm very curious exactly what the circumstances were at your club where a member was cut by a ricochet (jacket fragment?...or do you know?). i.e. Distance, type of steel being shot (AR500, mild/A36, unknown), method steel was hung or positioned, angle, distance, etc. I've put thousands of rounds into a variety of steel targets. Thousands of people shoot GSSF matches every year where falling steel plates are shot at 11yds. Good steel targets should be AR500 and should be angled slightly downward. I used to a shoot a weekly head to head steel plate match using racks that were "bubba welded" together from rebar and whatever scrap steel was available. To say they were badly cratered would be an understatement. Ricochets were just part of the match, and you either dealt with it, or learned to strategically stand mostly behind someone dumber with your hands behind your back...or if you were really serious about not getting hit, you'd watch from "the shop" separated from the range by a bullet-resistant glass window. At that match, they encouraged use of non-jacketed lead...but that's not really an option for someone who doesn't reload. I now have my own hanging plate rack, using 3/8" AR500 plates, and have shot them with everything from 115gr Federal aluminum 9mm to factory .45acp FMJ...though mostly with 147gr FP coated bullets and 200gr .45 coated bullets, because the club where I primarily shoot has a rule against shooting jacketed bullets at steel. My AR500 plates are still perfectly smooth, other than the borders between painted surface / paint knocked off surface. Even with this setup though (AR500, hanging by chain, angled downward), I occasionally get a bit of lead splash back, but nothing yet that's even left a mark much less broke skin. I think as long as you keep the velocity up at reasonable levels, you'll find that lead bullets will basically pancake against steel. i.e. Some fragments of the bullet do likely spread out in all directions roughly 90* off the bullet's course, but below the steel, you'll find a collection of lead discs. I should bring some home next time and weigh them to see what portion is typically lost. Anyway...if people were regularly injured by shooting "proper steel targets" at safe distances, I doubt GSSF would still include Glock-the-Plates in all their matches. I think my gun club's prohibition of jacketed bullets on steel is overly conservative, and a result of "if we allowed it, someone would bring mild steel targets, shoot them, and someone will get hurt and sue the club." We're not allowed to shoot any sort of steel on the rifle range. There used to be a gong 100yds out...but it was scrap mild steel, looked like Swiss cheese, and go figure, it was throwing ricochets unpredictably. Where I used to shoot, we had a proper hanging AR500 rifle gong, and shot the crap out of it at 100yds with 5.56 and 7.62, and never had a problem with it. Dillon, "under 450fps"??? Was that from a firearm or a sling shot? I wouldn't recommend anyone shoot any kind of hard target with bullets moving that slow. I've posted previously about the 230gr JHP that I shot at a bowling pin and had come back and badly cut the bridge of my nose, That one was likely right around 700fps.
  5. It looks like there are files for making Dillon toolheads and powder dies. Are 3D printed parts really tough enough to hold up in those applications?
  6. Their heads also pop off eventually. I used those on my hanging plates initially. I ended up replacing them all with hex head grade 8 bolts.
  7. Jacketed bullets are harder to screw up (can't scrape through the coating seating them, and overcrimping won't tear the jacket). And Titegroup being so dense is too easy to double charge and blow up a gun.
  8. 3.1-3.3gr will likely do it, but if you're a beginner reloader, I don't recommend either titegroup or coated bullets. Get a less dense powder like Universal or Red Dot / Promo and load a few thousand fmj or jhp bullets before messing with coated lead.
  9. njl

    Stepped brass

    Except for the fact that the other stepped brasses have shown that the cases have a tendency to separate at the step, it would be interesting to develop light loads with Universal. I bet the powder necessary to make minor with a 124gr bullet would be reduced a good bit.
  10. njl

    Stepped brass

    Check it with a magnet. I found some (same headstamp) that looked nickel plated, but is steel.
  11. Right, but I'm loading them even weaker than your load. I just checked my log book. From the G17, my load with this bullet did right about 1100fps. From the G43, I lose 100fps and am only at right about 1000fps. So, I'm curious if they'd open up much at 1000fps, or if I need to bump up the load a bit if I want to keep using these as a defensive load.
  12. One thing I will add for the benefit of anyone who might be considering them. The TJC 124gr JHP are listed on their web site as .356. Using two calipers (one digital, one analog) and my digital micrometer, I've not found one larger than .3555. .3552-.3555 seems to be the typical range.
  13. That may have been me here. I've been loading the TJC 124gr in 9mm subsonic and their 95gr in .380 just a tiny bit slower. I'd love to shoot them into jugs of water to see how/if they open up, but I don't have convenient access to a range that allows that kind of stuff.
  14. I think it works all caps and all lower, but not mixed case. With that code, Acme seems to have the best price I've found on 147gr 9mm. I haven't tried them yet, but I probably will.
  15. I generally shoot with clear. You want all the light you can get, so your pupils close down, maximizing depth of field. Early on, I bought some other lenses either out of stupidity, or because they were part of package deals. I have racing red and multilaser orange, and haven't found a use for them. When wearing my Rudy's as sun glasses, I like the photochromic polarized lenses...but I don't shoot with those.
  16. Can't believe someone didn't jump in here and set you straight...is everyone a pistol shooter? For rifle brass, you need to do the following (in this order[1]): Clean the brass Lube the brass Resize the brass (many will decap in this step) Trim the brass Clean again (to remove the lube) Prime Charge Seat Crimp [1] Some will decap first, then wet tumble so the primer pockets get clean and so they don't have to worry about water in the primers/pockets. If you're going to decap first, use a universal decapper die. If you have military brass (crimped primer pockets), you'll need to swage or ream the primer pocket. My own procedure is to dry tumble the brass, lube, resize (dedicated tool head with just a sizing die in position 1, rest of the positions empty), swage, trim, dry tumble again, (swap to a tool head that has a universal decapper in pos 1 to make sure there's no media stuck in the flash hole, powder die in 2, seater in 3, crimp in 4) clear flash hole, prime, charge, seat, crimp. I setup a little production line for the prep steps, so that I size one, swage it, move it to the powered trimmer, while it's trimming, size and swage another, etc. For general plinking/short range competition loading, you really don't need to clean the primer pockets. If you're not wet tumbling with pins, I wouldn't bother.
  17. Looks like this was a mistake and has been fixed. It was in stock and the deal was as mentioned, but the description said it was rain pants. Same link now says out of stock and nothing about pickup discount.
  18. Those would be for M1 Carbine and AR loads.
  19. 2gr? Have you chronographed them...or raced them to the target?
  20. I have an embarrassing # of primers on-hand, but I really like S&B SPP, so I couldn't resist adding 5k. Couldn't order just 5k primers, and they didn't have any powder I wanted, so I'm trying 5k of their SRP too.
  21. So, your round is doing such a feed-ramp nose dive that the bottom of the feed ramp is actually cutting into the flat face of the bullet? I've put thousands of 147gr FP Bayou through mostly Glocks, though mostly larger and smaller models. I have recently added a G19 back to my collection though, so I just had a look at it, 2 mags (one a 15-round FML post-ban, one an old 10-round during the ban mag with a 2183-1 follower). In either case, the angle at which the round leaves the magazine is dictated by the feed lips. In either case, the round starts out so much higher than the bottom of the feed ramp, what yours is doing seems inconceivable. Are your mags factory, the notch that engages the mag release not badly worn, and the mag releases factory? To do what yours is doing, it seems like the magazine would have to be quite a bit lower in the grip than what I was just looking at...or something is causing your barrels to not tilt properly. Are the barrels, slides, and locking blocks factory?
  22. I think there's only one published source for 9mm WST data (copied above in that loadbooks data). You might also have a look at what I dug up several years ago at: https://www.glocktalk.com/threads/wst-9mm-and-moly-coated-lead-135g-data.1321163/
  23. None of the major manufacturers load waxed lead, so that's one big difference.
  24. Depends on the reloads. The people doing it cheapest are casting their own bullets, and most of them are shooting wax lubed bullets. The wax can produce quite a bit of smoke.
  25. Possibly helpful to this thread, I have a thread over on Glocktalk where I'm trying to come up with the definitive list of all commercial sources for coated bullets. https://www.glocktalk.com/threads/coated-bullet-sources.1660507/
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