rhyrlik

Just be careful of .357 jacketed bullets when loading for 9mm. Bore diameter is .002" greater for .357, and that can raise pressure dramatically. I have a nicely bulged case from a 9mm loaded with a .357 bullet. I won't be trying THAT again! It depends on the barrel. Beretta, Sig, Walther all have .357-.358" bores. S&W, Ruger, Colt have .355" bores.

Here is my tip: Tune a known accurate load to your gun by adjusting the OAL. I took the load listed below and adjusted the OAL from 1.160" to 1.140". The 1.160" and 1.150" strung vertically. The 1.140" OAl was a nice round cluster. RP 147gr FMJPF on top of 3.9grs of N340 at an OAL of 1.140" with a WSP primer.

Some 45 ACP's will not accept bullets larger than .451". I had a Wilson CQB with a tight throat that required me to resize .452" bullets to .451" so they would chamber.

I like 4grs of Bullseye under a 200gr SWC. But you might have to get a weaker recoil spring. Great accuracy, though. Kicks like a 9mm.

Your dancing OAL is not the problem. The 45 ACP is pretty much insensitive to this sort of thing. The load sucks. TG and 200gr SWC works better at lower charge weights, i.e. 4.1 grs.

I like a Hornady 124 FMJ or Win 115gr HB over 4.2grs of N320 with FC or WSP primers 1.160-1.169" OAL. I tried Remington and Sierra bullets, but they were inaccurate. Hornady and Win shoot like a dream in my P210.

OAL affects accuracy by fine tuning the load to your gun. There is no hard set rule. I usually start long and work my way down.

I care. It is pretty easy to make clearances excessive on purpose to make assembly easier. I don't think this is appropriate when you're charging $2-3K for a supposedly hand-built pistol. It is also pretty easy to say that this and that is normal while this and that does not occurr on other pistols. It is unacceptable to say that a near zero clearance gun will be unreliable when Springfield Custom builds and sells them to the FBI SWAT team for tactical deployment.

Much less in battery, about half that, but still too much for my taste. My Springers on the other hand have no play out of battery and a teeny bit while in battery. They are 100% reliable. For example, they have no problem feeding/ejecting H&G 130's on top of 3.5grs of Bullseye, 1.166" OAL. My P210 gas none in or out of battery.

I don't care if laugh, cry, or poop yourself. I have personally measured .050" side-to-side play in the front part of the rails of one of my Baers with the slide out of battery.

Just because the barrel wedges inbetween the slide and the frame don't mean the slide to frame fit is tight. Take the barrel out of the equation. Put the slide on the frame and check the side-to-side and up/down play. You'll see that Baers, Browns, Wilsons, and a host of others are pretty sloppy. They are tighter than a production Colt or Springer, but not anywhere as tight as a properly fitted 1911, i.e. where the slide and the frame are hand fitted from oversize parts. Springfield Custom guns are made that way. They machine the frame rails to fit the slide, then lap the two together. The result is a near zero clearance assembly that is super smooth. And it stays that way.

Then how do you explain the peening? The barrel and bushing of my CQB were loosely fitted, like a production Colt. The breechface was rough and mauled the brass upon chambering to the point it would not fit the shellholder when I went to reload it. It had a raised area of metal right near the ejector. I sent it back and they squared the breechface, but now I had .010"+ of clearance between the rear of the barrel extension and the breechface. If you pulled the slide back just ever so slightly, you could move the barrel back and forth. This tells me they recut the breechface too deep and left the same barrel in place. They told me that amount of clearance was normal and did not affect headspace. The gun did not shoot accurately at all. My Custom Shop Springer has zero clearance between the barrel extension and the breechface. My Baers had near zero clearance there as well. I understand that when it comes to 1911's, everyone has a different idea as to how they should fit together, but seriously, what kind of moron leaves that much play in that area?

I already researched the fanboy sites and noticed all the Browns pictured had peening even with low round counts. I Had a Wilson before, a POS one, and don't want to go there again. I have three Springers, none with any peening whatsoever, and saw this ET at a local store, but don't wanna drop that kind of money on a gun made with soft steel.

So what is your question specifically?

Stop taunting the ballisticians. It's like poking a tiger with a stick. One day the ballistician will leave his lab, hunt you down, and shove a can of HS-6 up your rear.

I have seen 9mm bullets as large as .356" I have seen 9mm barrels as large as .358" Interestingly, shooting a .354" bullet through a .358" produces accuracy similar to shooting a .355" bullet through a .355" barrel. For some reason, bore diameter does not affect accuracy as much as reloading voodoo. I have a Sig P210 with a .357" barrel. It hates 124gr bullets (2" groups at 15 yards). A few weeks ago I tried 4.1grs of N320 under a 124gr Hornady FMJ and 125gr Sierra FMJ. The bullets are slightly different, with the Hornady having a slightly slenderer nose. The Hornady shot under 1" while the Sierra shot 2". This is from a bench rest. This is voodoo. there is no rhyme or reason to it. I even went as far as having a swaging die made to bump-up the bullet diameter to .357" which made no difference in accuracy. For the record, my 147gr loads shoot around half-inch at 15 yards (.355" bullets ina .357" barrel). I would not worry about it.

Would you mind showing off your slide stop notch?

Do you own one? I'd like to hear from people who own Ed Browns.

Hi, I just put money down on an E Brown and then learned some of them peen the slie stop notch. not wanting to go through the hassle of sending the gun back and forth, what steps should I take to make sure the slide stop and the magazine are functioning correctly? Is this a soft slide issue? Or is this a slide stop fit/ operation issue? Thank You in advance. -R

First, your barrel chamber check test was correct. Find an OAL that drops into your chamber without jamming the bullet into the rifling. Then locate data using your bullet, or a similar one (124gr HP) at the OAL you plan on using. If you start at the min and work your way up, your gun won't explode no matter what reasonable OAL you try. 9mm's can take some tremendous pressures and the nice thing about them is the case expands in proportion to pressure. If factory stuff expands to .391" in your chamber, make sure your handloads don't exceed that figure. In my gun, +P+ expands to .394" while standard pressure stuff stays inside of .391". While this is a crude way of guestimating pressure, it is reliable. I ran a test once where I reloaded the same 9mm case to failure while documenting case stretching and case body expansion. I expected the case to shrink and to expand less due to work hardening. After 30 reloads, the case stretched .003" and maintained the same degree of expansion as new. So much for work hardening and brittleness.

I do not measure crimp. I eyeball it. To measure crimp, you first have to have all the cases trimmed to the exact came length. Otherwise the crimp die will apply more crimp to longer cases and less crimp to shorter cases. Measuring the crimp on untrimmed brass would cause nothing but frustration.

No, they have dished firing pin holes, that's why the primer looks the way it does. Look closer at the breechface.

I see. You are right. In that case, why does MG use brass for jackets. Isn't brass harder to form?

I use primers, QL, and case expansion. I know my gun well enough to determine max pressure. I figure since people load 9mm Major which approaches or exceeds 50000 PSI, whatever powder lot variance exists won't blow me up at SAAMI spec pressure levels.

So you'd rather read primers instead?