Yondering
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Posts posted by Yondering
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The gas cutting in the other bullet pictured has nothing to do with the discussion here; that pic was taken for a different discussion of why undersized bullets are bad.
I can show many other pictures of soft bullets that slip in the rifling; if you're not recovering and examining bullets maybe you don't realize how badly it happens with your soft bullets. The slip marks are plainly visible and documented in the picture, not sure how else to explain it to you if you can't see that. It's visible on the dark green bullet on the right too.
I said nothing about 1:10 twist or 124 PF. You definitely have rifling slip if your 147gr soft bullets don't stabilize fully in a 1:16 twist; you claim the twist rate is at fault, but it's the soft alloy not holding up to the twist rate. Those of us using harder alloys don't have the same problem. Try it.
Even slower twist rate (1:20 for example) is commonly used in 357 and 38 Special for much heavier bullets, in both rifles and revolvers. You can find many other examples besides the ones I've provided that show a 1:16 twist is more than adequate for 147gr bullets. Your claim about that just doesn't hold water.
And about the Glock barrels - you said you bought an aftermarket barrel because you're a lead bullet shooter. Whether you intended it or not, that's misleading to anyone who believes your implication that you needed an aftermarket barrel to shoot lead. You don't.
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9 hours ago, coryf said:
If someone holds the gun a little lower, shooter is taller or shorter, ect. The line from the eye, through the reference point of the dot to the target might be different from person to person for a slightly different poi.
Others already answered this, but no, that's not how red dot sights work. As CharlieD said, mount your optic (or entire pistol, whatever) in a vise or even just set it on a table and look through the optic - the only movement you'll see between the dot and the target is a small amount from parallax. Other than that, wherever the dot is in the window, that's where the gun is aimed.
Parallax error is a thing, but it's relatively small and does not correspond to different shooter's heights or anything like that. It's generally greater at the edges of the optic window, but with most decent optics the error is smaller than what most shooters can resolve freehand. Parallax error is the same regardless of the shooter as well.
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18 hours ago, GARD72977 said:
I stand by my post.
You are confusing a problem with poor lube carrying ability of swaged bullets with lead hardness. I have cast plenty of bullets from stick on wheel weights. Leading is not a problem and accurracy is no different than harder bullets. Traditional lube works fine and powder coated will take these soft bullets even higher in velocity. The lack of sufficient lube is the problem with swaged.
As far as twist goes 1 in 16 is to slow for best accurracy with most 147gr bullets.
I have a custom set of molds for my Ballisticast. They are very short 147gr bullets. These shoot great in 1 in 16. Most people will have access to the Magma 147gr style that is much longer. This style starts to suffer at 25yds.
My 147 great requires the barrel to be throated to get proper OAL.
I'm not confusing anything. In fact, your claims about soft bullets and about twist rate are directly related, and neither have anything to do with lube.
Look at the bullet on the left in this picture; this is the problem with bullets that are too soft - the soft alloy doesn't resist the rifling twist forces well enough. This is a mild example that still shot reasonably well and didn't lead, but worse examples can strip the rifling entirely (especially in polygonal bores) and lose accuracy or even tumble. Coated or lubed doesn't matter; it's not a lube problem it's an alloy strength problem. Heavy bullets with shorter engagement surfaces suffer from this more than light bullets. That is the problem with softer bullets, whether cast or swaged.
If you use a hard enough alloy (10-12 Bhn is adequate most of the time) 1:16 twist is plenty fast enough for 147 grain bullets and much heavier than that. I use a couple different 1:16 twist rifles to shoot 250gr jacketed and up to 280gr cast bullets at 1,000 fps with better accuracy than you'll ever see from a pistol; the twist rate is not a problem for little 147 gr bullets as long as the bullets actually follow the rifling.
I'd like to know where you got the idea that 1:16 twist is too slow for 147gr bullets; it certainly isn't from any of the twist rate formulas or tables, like Greenhill. I think I can guess though - you're using a lead alloy that is too soft for that bullet, and the bullet isn't following the rifling completely so accuracy suffers. Your Ballisticast mold has more engagement surface, which is partly why it works better with your soft alloy.
Use a more normal (harder) alloy, and you'll be able to shoot whatever weight bullet you want from Glock barrels or any other aftermarket barrel you choose. Your use of very soft alloys is the cause of the other things you're saying don't work.
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2 hours ago, iflyskyhigh said:
What if .356 bullets work for them and don’t lead or smoke?
Then a FCD may be OK, depending on the die and brass, IF the bullets aren't seated down into the case taper which is very likely with 147gr. But, a .356" bullet will smoke in most 9mm barrels with most loads in my experience. Coated or not. Most barrels I've used seem to benefit from a little larger size, but a FCD is counter productive for that.
Exceptions are with a load that makes enough pressure (and soft enough bullet alloy) for the bullet to swell up and obturate the bore, but for minor loads and commercial coated/cast bullets IMO that's the exception rather than the rule.
I have and do occasionally use a FCD when a particular situation is right for it; there are certainly situations where it works fine and makes the process easier.
However, when using mixed 9mm brass and heavy bullets seated deeply it's almost always detrimental. Relying on the FCD to fix a case bulge caused by the bullet base is purely a band-aid fix for a bad load combination where the bullet size, seating depth, and case don't work together. Maybe that band-aid fix is adequate for ringing steel, but it's likely to result in reduced accuracy and lead smoke at minimum.
In the worst cases I've had the FCD squeeze the bullet bases enough to push the bullet partly back out of the case. The bullets come out with a mild boat tail and almost no neck tension; that's obviously something to avoid and crimping more is not the answer.
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19 hours ago, OptimiStick said:
It’s not swaging my bullets
If it's not sizing your bullets down, then it's not doing anything and a normal crimp die would work just as well. It either sizes your loaded ammo down, or it doesn't. Of course if you're using cast bullets that are too small in the first place (like most guys using .355" and even .356" 9mm coated bullets) and are OK with those results, of course you won't notice any difference. Seems like a lot of guys doing this think lead smoke is normal and don't realize the dangers or the cause of it.
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9 hours ago, coryf said:
My friends and I have noticed there is a larger difference in poi with a difference in height of the shooter. Normally windage is the same but if the shooter is taller/shorter we see a poi shift higher/lower. We were thinking the slight angle difference to the target with the dot over the bore axis caused a poi shift. It definitely seems that zero is zero but for sure everyone pulls the trigger, sees a little differently. I have borrowed one particular friends guns (both CO and open) and its spot on for me. Other buddies have used my guns and its off for them. Weird for sure.
I think this is a good example where correlation does not equal causation. You may have observed that the taller shooters in your circle shoot to a higher POI, but that does not mean those two things are related.
If this "slight angle difference to the target" was an issue, standing on a box or platform would cause the same result of higher POI, same with shooting at a lower target. I think most of us can agree that doesn't happen at any normal ranges or people's height variations. (We're not talking about shooting at steep angles up or down hill.)
Also this idea that people "see differently", as has been mentioned by a couple different people, is a myth as it relates to optics and iron sights. If you mount the optic or slide in a vise with the dot zeroed on a target, everyone looking through it will see the dot (or scope crosshairs) centered in the same spot, other than parallax error. Try this out if you don't believe it. The exception is people with astigmatism who see the dot as a blur, but even then one portion of that blur is still on zero.
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Guys, I reported back in August that an extra power extractor spring fixed this issue. The thread got revived by someone trying to bump their post count, but I haven't had any further extraction issues with my pistol.
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On 11/5/2019 at 4:16 PM, firerain said:
that feels like I may pull it too hard easily in high speed.
Looks like somebody's trying to get access to the classifieds...
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6 hours ago, NuJudge said:
I have two 9mm barrels that have tight chambers but loose groove diameters, and if I load a bullet that fits the groove diameter, the cartridge won’t chamber. If I use a Lead bullet small enough for the cartridge to chamber, I get lots of Leading.
Sounds like Lone Wolf barrels. They are bad about excessively tight chambers. There's no good reason to make a barrel that way, but it's what they do.
If you want to continue using those barrels with lead, either use a reamer (rent your own or contact someone like MemphisMechanic) or lap the chamber with a fired case. I've had to do that with several, mostly when friends want to go cheap and buy a Lone Wolf instead of a more expensive barrel.
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On 11/8/2019 at 12:03 PM, GARD72977 said:
I use KKM barrels becasue I am a lead bullet shooter. I have seen a lot of different twist rates quoted by people using KKM barrels. Best I can tell mine is 1 in 16.
First off there is no lead to soft for pistol velocities in the 125 PF.
This twist is not going to shoot 147gr bullets with the best accurracy.
It preforms best in the 130 and lighter bullets. Lead is less forgiving than jacketed with twist rate.
I use a throating reamer and shoot .357 diameter bullets.
Just some of my reasons for using a KKM barrel. If I were shooting Jacketed I would not spend the money.
There's a lot of misleading info in that post. I hate to see someone misled by stuff like this.
- you do NOT need to buy an aftermarket barrel to shoot lead in a Glock. Choose bullets that fit the bore, and avoid soft swaged bullets, and the Glock barrels are just as good as any aftermarket barrel and better than most.
- There is definitely such thing as "too soft" with lead bullets for 125 PF, both in Glock and aftermarket barrels. 10-12 BHN is fine but softer than that gives up accuracy in 9mm even in very light loads. Commercial swaged lead bullets are typically 5-6 Bhn, being made from nearly pure lead, avoid that stuff. Most commercial cast bullets are in the 18+ Bhn range for reference, while a lot of us bullet casters go with 10-12 or so.
- 1:16 twist is plenty for 147gr bullets, and MUCH heavier than that. I even use it with 180gr bullets in 9mm subsonic loads. If anything it's actually a bit fast for the lighter 9mm bullet weights.
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I just do all of the steps in one pass on my 550. Never seen a need to do separate operations on a different press unless I'm trimming and de-crimping.
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1 hour ago, zzt said:
Good move. You'll have smoother chamber walls that way.
If you say so. I've reamed a bunch of chambers for bottleneck cartridges, including what the OP is doing with 357 Sig, and have done it both ways. For his job, it won't make a lick of difference. It won't hurt, but I wouldn't have bothered.
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1 hour ago, Truckin_Thumper said:
I am just as confused as the beginning of the thread....LOL
But it looks like Sport Pistol is in the leadWell you asked a question to which there are about 50 different right answers. The fact that so many different choices work well should tell you something.
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2 hours ago, Nevadazielmeister said:
Completely incorrect. Each person's eyes and their perspective to the sight to target is different.
It's not about different eyes and perspective; the optic is still mechanically zeroed to the same spot. If you have irons cowitnessed it's easy to confirm this.
It's about different people shooting handguns to different POI because of grip, trigger control, stance, etc. The same thing happens with iron sights as well. It's the shooter's control of the gun that causes different POI, not a change in percieved POA.
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So no chamber reaming experience then.
Here's the thing with reaming a chamber for a bottneck cartridge - as it gets close to final size, you go in small steps and clean and measure between steps. That final step is just removing a thousandth or two. When it's done right the finish turns out great, regardless whether a roughing or finish reamer was used to get there.
I get it, I have years of machining experience too. However, that machining experience doesn't necessarily translate to gunsmithing experience; often it helps and sometimes it overlaps, but lots of times it doesn't.
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23 hours ago, zzt said:
You get a much nicer finish if you finish ream only the last thou or two.
Are you basing that on experience reaming chambers, or just straight holes with chucking reamers?
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19 hours ago, Joe4d said:
not 308, but 243 and 3006, tumble, put brass in a loading block lube inside and out, then load like anything else. Was using 4350, but dillon powder measure wasnt perfect. went to small grain powders and weihed each charge, but zero improvement at 100 yards over just running 4350, or 4831SC in the dillon,, I think OAL and bullet makes more difference.
I load 308, 223, 6.5 Creed etc and other bottleneck rifle cartridges on my 550. For the stick powders you describe, with the exception of very short sticks like Benchmark, I use an RCBS Uniflow instead of the Dillon powder dispenser. The Dillon measure just doesn't do well with most stick powders.
I made a simple adapter to mount my RCBS dispenser on the Dillon powder die, and actuate the dispenser by hand. It works pretty well, but I prefer to avoid longer stick powders anyway.
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Things have to go really wrong before you get leading with coated bullets; the lack of leading doesn't mean everything is perfect. Do you get any lead smoke? I'd guess you do with .356" bullets, and larger diameter helps to prevent that.
Like Bench said, slug your bore and throat and find out for yourself what that barrel needs.
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OK good, in that case it's a pretty easy job to run a finish reamer in there. Do make sure to use go/no-go gauges though (don't just use a piece of brass). I rent mine from 4D Reamer Rentals; generally they have an option to rent the gauges along with the reamer although I haven't checked on 357 Sig.
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On 11/1/2019 at 7:46 PM, superdude said:
Recoil won't be the same if you use the same powder charge. The lighter bullet will have less recoil.
What affects recoil: bullet weight, velocity, powder charge weight.
The lighter bullets will end up going the same speed as the heavier bullets, or more likely they will be slower, and either of these will reduce recoil.
Example:
powder charge 5 grains, velocity 1000 fps, 2.5 lb gun;
115 grain bullet = 1.90 ft lbs recoil
147 grain bullet = 3.03 ft lbs recoil
This.
The lighter bullet will have less recoil, and it is definitely noticeable between 115gr and 147gr bullets.
POI will be different as well, in most guns. YMMV of course.
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Seems to me there are a couple things to consider before the finishing/roughing reamer question matters.
- Is this 357 Sig going in a 40 S&W slide or a 9mm slide? If it's a 9mm slide, it won't work; the breech face has to accomodate the 40 S&W size case head.
- Is that TS barrel nitrided? If it is, a regular HSS reamer is no good; you'll need to locate a carbide reamer.
If you've sorted out both of those things - a finish reamer is fine. You won't see any benefit from a roughing reamer in this case, other than to save wear on the finish reamer; for a one-off job it doesn't matter much.
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16 hours ago, nikdanja said:
4 odd steel wool and oil. Lightly scrub the area and make sure it’s oiled. Then birch wood Casey makes a bluing pen. If you want to go that route, just dab some of that on and call it a day.
Never oil before applying cold blue. That doesn't work so well!
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4 hours ago, Tophernj said:
I'm mostly a rifle shooter. I'm just getting back in to handguns. I have a solid understanding on what it takes to load "hot" loads.
With respect, if your understanding was that solid you'd already know the answer here. 9mm Major out of your G19 is way above +P pressure, and this is NOT the same as loading "hot loads" for rifles. IMO it's a bad idea for people new to this stuff to go straight to Major loads.
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19 hours ago, benos said:
On that... In the time it takes the right hand to let go of the handle reach for a new case, the left hand has already indexed the shellplate and set the next bullet on the case - so the time "loss" (for indexing the shellplate) is zero.
That's my experience as well. Indexing the shellplate becomes automatic and doesn't take any extra time or thought.
KKM barrel quality over stock
in Glock
Posted · Edited by Yondering
It sure does when we're comparing subsonic loads. A twist rate that handles 280gr bullets at 1000 fps accurately can handle 147gr at whatever speed you want. Or if you're talking about the 1:20 357 & 38 Special - if it works for a 158gr lead SWC at 700 fps, it works for a 147gr.
You are not the only one here with many years of casting bullets. I replied because you gave bad information that is misleading to anyone who might believe you. Use hard enough bullets, and everything else you said or implied was a problem just works fine - the twist rate, Glock barrels, etc.
It sounds to me that your determination to use really soft alloys has led you to flawed conclusions about other things, hence this discussion.