Yondering

That stuff is cold blue. Cold blue does almost nothing for rust prevention; it's just cosmetic. The rust prevention comes from the oil on the surface.

If the point is just to switch between different case lengths like 38/357 and 40/10mm, there is an easy solution - spacer washers that go under the die locknuts. RCBS used to sell them, not sure if they still do; they are just a washer of the same thickness as the difference in case length. You do have to use locking die nuts rather than the Dillon nuts. These days I prefer to just have another tool head and die set, but the spacers are a viable way to go if you're willing to unscrew each die to set it up. You'll need 3 spacers, one each for the powder funnel, seat die, and crimp die.

RGA - is your trim die a Dillon or something else? I've been looking into press mounted trimmers lately but haven't bought anything yet.

Interesting thought. I've been considering this as well. If you raise the ram to flare a case and drop powder, and then lock the screw down, you should be able to remove the powder measure, adjust the flare, and put it back on and be correct as long as the funnel didn't slip. I'll have to try this. I've also thought about making an adapter for this purpose that would attach to the powder die in place of the powder measure, just for flare adjustment. It'd look like some sort of cap sitting over the powder die. It hasn't seemed worth the trouble to machine one just for myself, but if I made a bunch of them, would any of you guys be interested?

I have done the same thing in my tumbler, but it's not remotely the same effect as applying case lube before loading. I lube cases in a large ziploc bag as mentioned above, for both rifle and pistol. I re-use the same bag over and over so it's always got some lube in it, and when I add a bit I spray it on the side of the bag rather than directly on the cases. No issues with excess lube inside the cases that way. I do prefer to have an aerosol mist floating around in the bag, since a tiny amount of lube in the case necks from that helps prevent expander ball sticking. It does not affect performance of the loaded ammo at all.

What m700 said, and also you should be able to home in on a powder charge in a lot less than 50-100 drops. You don't have to measure every adjustment 10+ times, only do that when you think you've got it. It helps a lot to mark the adjustment bolt on one flat if you're not using some sort of marked cap, and learn how the adjustments work with your powder. For example - on mine I have one flat marked to indicate 3.4gr of Clays (when that flat is at the top). One full revolution lower puts it at 2.8gr, and one higher puts it at 4.0gr. Knowing that, it's pretty easy to dial in whatever charge weight I want (by counting flats or number of turns) in that range, and then verify with the scale. Adjusting from 3.4 gr to 2.5gr for example is simply 1.5 turns, or one turn plus 3 more flats, and then verifying the thrown charges on the scale. If it's way off from where I thought, that's obvious from the first throw, don't need 10 of them. If I want to go back to that 3.4gr charge, I can do that by going the correct number of turns back and stopping the mark. Don't even need to weight more than one or maybe two charges to know if it's right, because the mark tells me it's either correct or a full turn (or two) off. One clarification - I discard the first throw after any powder measure adjustment in the Dillon. Sometimes it's right on but sometimes it's not. I start weighing with the second throw.

The weird part is the 24rd 9mm mag isn't quite the same size as the 21rd .40 either. It would have made more sense to me if it was. I do like the 24rd mag for a spare carry mag though; it's long enough to be easy to access but not cumbersome like a 33.

"Should be" vs "is not". It clearly isn't working right, and those don't have a great reputation for this anyway. A lot of guys seem to get frustrated with them even for rifle use. The Dillon measure is pretty accurate for most pistol powders, and since it's throwing a fixed volume, it's easy to see why it can be more accurate than a CM which is trying to work up to the right charge every time. If the CM is out of calibration for that powder, forget it. Also, it is "more accurate" to use the powder measure and settings you'll actually load with, rather than a different dispenser that may throw differently. The whole process in the OP sounds like a lot of extra work and no benefit compared to the way most of us do it, IMO. Using the Dillon powder dispenser should not be "a real PITA"; I think it'd be more helpful to figure that part out.

One other cause of lead smoke I neglected to mention in my first post above - if you're shooting a coated bullet (plain base, not gas checked) with popple holes or other barrel porting and Major loads, you are almost guaranteed to have gas cutting and lead smoke as the base of the bullet passes the ports. This is clearly visible on recovered bullets, with eroded lead areas that perfectly match the barrel ports. If you are doing this, you are breathing lead smoke, and it is bad for you. Please be aware of this, guys. If you're using popple holes, stick to jacketed bullets for your own health and other shooters and ROs around you.

Neither of those statements are correct, and I can state that as fact, not theory. I cast and coat my own, and re-melt thousands of coated bullets every year. I've observed a couple things related to your comments: - Lead melts before the coating burns. The bullet melts and runs out, leaving the coating laying on top like a wrinkled plastic bag, still brightly colored until it gets hot enough to burn. - The coating barely smokes at all when it burns to ash. An entire bullet's coating smokes far less than a single shot with a poorly sized coated bullet. It's not the coating making the smoke. If your coated bullet loads smoke, it's either powder smoke (from low pressure loads) or lead smoke. It's not the coating itself. The statement that all coated bullets smoke more than JHP is incorrect as well. Good high pressure coated bullet loads that properly seal the bore do not make any visible smoke. I shoot a lot of these, mostly with Silhouette (the old WAP before Autocomp) and they are very clean. Look at my picture above, and the other related pictures I've posted on this forum. None of them show any signs of the coating "burning", but a lot of them show gas cutting that caused lead smoke. Also, lead smoke does not necessarily result in leading; it's very common to have lead smoke but no leading. Regardless whether we're shooting coated or lubed cast bullets, they need to be at least .001" larger than the bore. Most reloaders don't bother to slug their bores, and the commercial manufacturers aren't doing us any favors selling .355" coated bullets; those are too small for almost every barrel out there. Que the guys saying "it works for me"... Yeah they go bang but you're inhaling lead smoke when you shoot.

I don't see anything arbitrary about that. You're asking about Carry Optics right? Who uses a frame mounted red dot on a carry gun? This is the kind of rule that IMO makes sense because it helps keep competitors from losing sight of the point of that class of gun.

Seems like you've answered your own question - the CM is not accurate, just use the Dillon powder measure. It shouldn't be difficult to use; I'm not sure what your trouble is with it?

Nothing wrong with a dial caliper, but there are two ways that a digital is superior: - resistant to drop damage. Dial calipers don't handle drops well, even the expensive versions - ability to zero for relative measurements. Dial calipers are more difficult for this, mainly if the measurement is more than one revolution of the dial.

I bet that most of you guys getting smoke with Blue or other coated bullets are using .355" or .356" bullets - i.e. not large enough to seal the barrel throat. If you recover some of your bullets, they probably look something like the left bullet below, or the middle one if it's really bad. That smoke is most likely lead, caused by gas cutting because your bullets are too small; avoid inhaling it. Changing components and adjusting loading practices so that your pulled bullets measure at least .357" should eliminate the smoke in most 9mm barrels, although some need .358" or larger. If any of you are using a Lee FCD for crimping, that's part of the problem.

I must have gotten a good one with my Canik TP9SFx. All it needed was a 6lb Glock striker spring and reduced power safety plunger spring for the trigger, and a lighter recoil spring for cycling light loads. The trigger is now crisp, light, and very short reset. I don't care about the pretravel since it doesn't affect actual shooting.

Yes almost always will damage coated or other lead bullets, in my experience. Also, many lead pistol bullet profiles are difficult or impossible to pull with a collet puller. Collet pullers have their place but are not a universal best solution.

What were the restrictions on the prone position? Did you have to be laying head towards the target, or could you lay with feet towards the target and resting the gun hand on one or both legs? For my own use (not competition with rules, just what works best for me) I lay with feet towards the target. Off hand either supporting/raising my head, or up on that elbow. Right leg (when shooting right handed) is bent at the knee and laying partly over the left, with the gun hand rested in the outside crook of the knee. The shooting arm ends up pretty much straight, and driving the shooting fist into the back of my right calf right at the knee. That's sorta hard to describe, but very stable for distance shots and works well for me. Just don't do that with a revolver unless you use a leather pad between gun and knee.

I first started looking into this when I got into loading heavy subsonic bullets for suppressor use, and was surprised at the differences between headstamps. Other calibers vary a little bit, but the 9mm seems unique in the large differences between one brand and another. I designed my own 178gr, 168gr, and 165gr subsonic 9mm bullets, and because of their length, older FC brass is the only headstamp I can use without causing the brass to bulge and the bullet bases to be sized down. Running those bullets in something like Win brass through a Lee FCD just caused the bullets to be pushed back out of the case and become loose. Of course those findings got me curious so I had to measure everything else too. As a result, I do separate out CBC and Aguila for everything except 115gr or lighter bullets. I can get away with using it for 125gr but the bullet bases get damaged, which leads to lead smoke (coated cast bullets) and I try to avoid that.

If it's rusting where he ground the magwell, there's no finish to be gentle with. Either way, 0000 steel wool is fine to use on bluing and most other gun finishes, including barrel bores to remove lead.

I'm not saying you necessarily need to sort by headstamp, but for some longer bullets it is necessary to either sort or accept deformed bullet bases. With shorter bullets or loading long it doesn't matter much. What I am saying is that .300" number is a theoretical spec that does not match the reality of mixed headstamp brass. If a guy is going to load long bullets or seat deeply, it helps to be aware of how the brass dimensions work with that. I've done a fair amount of measuring this; easy to check my numbers yourself with a pair of calipers. The ONLY brass headstamp I've found that consistently has .300" or more straight section is older FC; everything else has less space. Here's what I've seen for some of the more common headstamps: FC: .320"-.340" PMC, *FC*, Blazer: .260"-.280" Win, R-P, some S&B: .200"-.250" (Win and R-P are inconsistent) CBC, Aguila: .130"-.160" Obviously, seating a long 147gr bullet into something like CBC or even a lot of Win brass either causes a bulge or deforms the base of the bullet, depending how the ammo is processed and how soft the bullet is.

This is where case selection by headstamp can make a big difference, because that internal taper varies a lot between different brands. Older FC brass for example has more than double the space before the internal taper compared to CBC and a couple others. That .300" number is an approximation that actually varies so much it's not really a useful guideline IMO.

I'm not sure about the holes overlapping, but the slide cutout doesn't match at all. That cutout needs to be a precise fit to the optic; that's what holds it in place. The screws just hold it down, but the edges of the cutout do all the work in constraining the optic front/rear and side/side. The Vortex uses pins to locate it. The RMR can use pins, but they are wide enough that you can't really drill and pin a Glock slide for an RMR if that surface is already miled flat; the pin holes would break though the edges of the slide. If you aren't using pins to locate the optic on a flat surface (as in MOS system, etc) then this is the kind of fit you need:

The first couple shots from a clean barrel often have a different POI than succeeding rounds. That's normal. The solution is to make sure any serious shots happen in a fouled barrel. Same goes for a cold bore shot, expect the POI to be a little different than subsequent shots from a warm barrel. Those things don't indicate a problem with the gun, that's just part of learning your rifle and where it hits. Also, excessive cleaning is not necessary or helpful. If you're one of those guys who cleans the barrel every time you use the gun, you'll need to plan on working around a few fouling shots every time you shoot it again.

If this is true then you really should re-visit your loading process to figure out what's wrong, for safety's sake. Sounds like either your expander is too big, die isn't sizing small enough, or your bullets are undersized (that last one is unlikely). I've encountered this before, and it was an oversized expander at fault. Crimp is a really poor substitute for good case neck tension. If your rounds have good neck tension, you should not be able to push the bullets in deeper by hand. (The exception would be a benchrest cartridge set up for very light neck tension; a different thing than 9mm semi-auto ammo.)

The difference is you can use 620 in a press fit. I've had 680 cure halfway through pressing a part on because it's designed for slip fits and kicks off fast in a press fit. With that said, I'd still never use 620 on a rear sight either; they don't need to be locked in place that hard. It works fine to help hold in a Glock front sight, but I keep it out of any dovetails.