Yondering

OK Kenstone. I didn't post that to offend you, sorry you took it that way. If you don't even know basic stuff like what causes leading though, I don't think you have any right to act offended when someone assumes you're just getting started with cast bullets and coating. Your theories you've presented about how lead bullets work are not correct, and indicate a lack of experience with this stuff. Never mind on the pictures, looks like there's not much point.

Because most leading is caused by gas cutting, not by bullets skidding in the rifling. Gas cutting is caused by a poor seal of the bullet in the barrel, which is what we get with undersized bullets. Remember we're talking about a range of up to 40,000 psi or more, just for common pistol rounds - it doesn't take much for that seal to fail. The wax lube on a traditional cast bullet is a big part of that seal as well. There are a number of things in your post above that are partially or not quite right, too many to point out one by one. I take that to mean you're just starting to learn about this stuff, which is fine, but don't assume the rest of us are at the same point. I've cast and coated well over 1,000 lb of lead in the last 6 years alone, (6 years ago was when I developed the "shake and bake" powder coating process many of us use now) and was active on castboolits for a long time. I'm not saying that as a "my dick is bigger than yours" kind of thing, but to point out that you're "preaching to the choir" so to speak. I'm here to help but not to argue about the basics of how this stuff works. I do suggest reading lots on castboolits, there is some good info there if you weed through the bs, and there's a lot to be learned about this stuff. I'll try to post some pics of recovered bullets in the next day or two.

This. It's usually fine to seat jacketed bullets deeper. With any sort of lead or plated, if the rounds were crimped very much you'll probably have issues with shaving lead/coating or cracking the plating. This is the same reason why we don't seat and crimp in the same step. If you didn't crimp very much it may be OK.

That's not how that works. The rifling is a lot deeper than that, so the thin layer of coating makes no difference in how well the rifling grips the bullet. It might help you to look at some recovered coated bullets that show good rifling marks. I've had some trouble following Miranda's comments, he seems to be all over the place, but he is right that lubed cast bullet practices apply to coated bullets as well. All we've done with coated bullets is substitute a polymer coating for the wax lube; the coating makes the bullets more tolerant of a wider range of variables, but good practices for shooting cast bullets still applies. Some of you guys seem to think you can treat a coated bullet the same as a jacketed bullet, and that's just not true.

Difference in what? I just said considering the amount oftime that pressure is applied doesn't make this complicated, because time doesn't matter for fatigue of metals. What did you think my post said?

No, don't even do that. H335 is completely the wrong powder for 9mm with any bullet weight. There is no good reason to use it, regardless what type of gun it'll be fired in. Manosgr, I strongly suggest you buy a reloading manual, read the material about reloading, and use their published load data for your ammo. The Speer manual is a good one for learning to reload. Do not just choose a random powder (like H335) and decide you want to use that. It doesn't work that way.

I wouldn't be OK with that, but what you're doing is a way to work around it. It does seem that the better solution would be to work on your rapid fire trigger control so you aren't pulling low in a match vs freehand practice. (I do understand you're not talking about sandbagged/rested shooting.)

I've measured the amount of case taper of different headstamps and recorded that in groups for sorting. Figured I'd post it here, maybe it'll be useful to someone else (apologies for my handwriting). To clarify what this means - FC brass has the shortest internal taper (closest to the case head) and will accept the longest bullets. CBC brass on the opposite end has internal taper extending farthest from the case head and only works well with shorter bullets. The others are grouped for similar taper lengths and can be sorted that way.

If you were able to deform the bullet by hand (or fingernail), it sounds like you were dealing with plated bullets, not jacketed. Plated may appear similar but are actually quite different.

Sounds good, thanks!

The main thing is bullet diameter - making sure it's large enough to seal the bore. Too many commercial vendors sell cast bullets that are bore size or even less, depending on the barrel. That causes problems with any barrel, not just Glock. We want at least .001" larger than the maximum bore dimensions, and a little larger than that is often better. For example you see a lot of lead 9mm bullets sold as .355 or .356" diameter, but a lot of 9mm bores are .356" or even .357" diameter (including some factory Glock barrels), so we can expect to see leading with those when they are too small, regardless who made the barrel. The other big one is alloy hardness - too soft is bad in any barrel. Swaged lead bullets used to be pretty common (for example Hornady and Speer both sold those wax lubed bullets with cross hatching in the driving band area) and those were nearly pure lead and too soft for a lot of pistol loads; those would lead a lot of barrels but also were prone to skidding in the Glock polygonal rifling. Plated bullets are generally soft swaged lead with a thin copper jacket, and you don't usually get much choice in the size so they are often a bit small IMO. Keeping pressure of your loads within reasonable limits for those seems to be the key. Personally I've had just as much bad luck with them in conventional rifling as I have in Glock barrels; they can work well in either one but can also work poorly in both. In my opinion, most of the time when someone has better results with lead after switching to an aftermarket Glock barrel, it was because of a bullet size problem rather than a rifling type problem. The internal finish on Glock barrels is generally really good, and that works well with lead bullets as long as they are big enough and not pushed too hard for the alloy hardness.

Guys, you do not have to use an aftermarket Glock barrel to shoot lead, that is just an old internet and gun shop myth that refuses to die. Glock barrels generally shoot lead very well if you follow the basic rules for lead bullets. In my experience (which includes hundreds of pounds of lead through Glock barrels) most of the time Glock barrels do better with lead than a lot of aftermarket barrels, especially Lone Wolf and Storm Lake.

I know this is an older post, but - do you still have that worn out aluminum carrier? I've wondered about boring out and pressing a hardened steel sleeve into one of these for longer life, and I have the machine tools to do it. A worn out carrier like yours would be a good one to experiment with if you want to get rid of it.

It's actually not complicated if we're looking at fatigue caused by case pressure - time doesn't contribute to fatigue. Fatigue is based on stress/strain level (resulting from pressure in this case) and number of cycles. We can load a steel part slowly or quickly and generate the same damage, as long as we're talking about fatigue and not elastic deformation or shock. My professional career is in durability testing, mostly of metal parts and systems. When we generate cyclic loading in a part to test it, we can speed up the test by cycling faster at the same levels and still get the same result. If we have a fast powder and a slow powder producing the same peak pressure, for the same number of shots, the fatigue damage is the same from each. However the fast powder load will obviously be slower. If we're looking at a fast powder and a slow powder producing the same velocity, the fast powder will hit higher peak pressure, causing more fatigue damage. The area under the pressure curve affects bullet velocity, but does not affect fatigue on the steel slide (that is caused by pressure, recoil is a different thing). This is assuming that each pressure curve has only one peak, which is not always a correct assumption but works to understand this point.

Figured I might as well post this pic here for discussion as well. The bullets in the pic are all lined up with the case mouth as they are normally seated when loaded, and the weights of each marked above. This demonstrates the difference in case capacity between different bullet designs, and shows that case capacity does not correlate very well to bullet weight even when the designs look somewhat similar. This is why a chrono and working up the correct charge weight for your bullet are so important. BTW all of these get coated except the two commercial bullets - the 147gr Aardvark and the 158gr Bear Creek. The rest are my own designs except the 135gr which is a modified Mihec 125gr mold.

Thanks. I was measuring from the top of the slide, and had forgotten Glock measured theirs from the bottom of the dovetail.

Thanks for the info, and good to know about the regular Hackathorn set not being too wide. I did see the notch width on Ameriglo's site but not the sight height. Could you verify those .165" and .256" numbers? Normal factory Glock plastic G19 sights are about .160" front and .170"-.175" rear (I use .175" on my 43, and would need a .180" if the front is .165"). That .256" rear sounds pretty high, maybe a typo? Thanks

Yes, a lower and flatter tone. It's hard to describe of course, but the sharpness of the tone makes a big difference. What we want is a dull "thwack" or "pffft" sound instead of a sharper snap. With some powders that are bad for suppressed sound (WSF is a good example), the sound level is still a suppressed shot, but can have such a sharp snap that it actually rings my ears a bit. For subsonic 9mm that's not acceptable at all IMO with a good suppressor; my quiet loads sound a lot like a kid's pellet gun.

If you're loading for suppressor use, you're probably interested in finding a quiet load, which is another variable on top of the usual stuff about accuracy and soft recoil. Also, the "soft recoil" bit pretty much goes out the window when we're using a suppressor with a booster on it; the small differences in recoil between one powder and another are mostly overpowered by the booster. With that in mind, I don't like any of the above mentioned powders for suppressor use; they all produce a sharper sound. The quietest suppressor powders I've found are not the usual suspects for competition shooting. My personal favorite is Green Dot, closely followed by American Select and Universal. Any of those three will do what you need for a 124gr suppressed load, and will be quieter than something like Titegroup. Keep in mind too that your pistol and suppressor may or may not cycle with a subsonic 124gr load. A tighter barrel lockup has more trouble cycling. I've got one G19 barrel that will cycle 125gr coated subsonics, but another barrel in the same gun that is more accurate but will not cycle them, it needs at least a 135gr bullet to cycle and stay subsonic.

Any chance you could measure the height of the front and rear sights on that Ameriglo set? Also is the front .125" or .140" wide? I don't really trust the amazon reviewer's comments very much but will have to check Ameriglo's website later. I had to go with a taller rear sight than stock on my 43 (just cut down a plastic G23 sight for now) and it seems most of the aftermarket options only offer one height for the 43.

In my experience practicing with a weaker load at least part of the time can be beneficial and not at all detrimental to competing at minor power factor later. Using a milder load IMO is sort of like a step closer to dry fire - it allows more focus on the details, and for me, I end up putting more rounds down range. I haven't found that to take away from my ability with hotter loads at all; it's been the opposite and made me better with the increased practice.

If you're seating down into the case taper with mixed brass, the correct answer is to sort out the brass to avoid seating into the taper, or change bullet length or OAL. I don't like trying to push an expander down into the internal taper. If you rely on an expander to straighten out internal case taper, you're pushing that taper to the outside. We can get away with that with more generous chambers like OEM Glock barrels for example, but it's a problem in tight chambers. When using an appropriately hard bullet (I mentioned 12 BHN above which is about ideal for 9mm minor loads in my experience), normal case sizing should not require a special expander to avoid swaging the bullet base significantly, as long as you stay out of the internal taper of the case. If you're using an undersized sizing die that may change since neck tension is increased, but I have not found any need to use those either. When using mixed brass and medium/soft bullets, I do expect some rounds to squeeze the bullet down about .001"; this is part of the reason for using bullets more than .001" over bore size, and why .358" is a good idea in general unless the chamber is too tight. I've only been casting bullets for about 20 years, but I experiment with them a lot and this is some of what I've learned over the years. You are spot on with the comment that pulling and inspecting bullets tells you what's really going on; this is pretty important when shooting lead IMO.

No, I think you're confusing two different problems. Flaring the case mouth is to prevent scraping lead or coating from lead bullets. Too much flare doesn't harm the bullet in any way, but is bad for the brass, and when taken to extremes it can cause interference with the seating die. Seating and crimping in the same step is bad with lead bullets because it shaves lead and coating; the bullet is still moving into the case while the case mouth is crimped into the bullet, causing it to scrape lead. That debris scraped off can cause all sorts of issues, including chamber fit (failing the plunk test). Swaging down the bullet is a different thing entirely; that's caused by either too much case neck tension for the hardness of the bullet (not enough neck expansion and soft alloy), or seating a long bullet down into the internal taper of the case. Both should be avoided. For what we're doing with 9mm loads, you should be using bullets hard enough to not be swaged down by normal brass and sizing processes; about 12 BHN is hard enough for this. If you're seating into the case taper with a long bullet, you'll need to either hand sort your brass (use FC headstamp for example, with less taper), choose a shorter bullet, or seat to a longer OAL to avoid the taper. On the comments about larger .357"-.358" bullets causing more pressure - if we were talking about jacketed bullets which are much harder, then pressure can increase a noticeable amount, but is not necessarily dangerous. Cast lead bullets though are considerably softer and are easily sized down by the chamber throat; while there is a theoretical increase in pressure, in reality it's not significant and mostly just translates to more consistent ignition and velocity. Even if pressure did increase by the 20% you mention (it doesn't really), unless you're already using +P or Major loads, why would it matter? Any time you're working with hot loads you should work up again when you change components, and if you're talking about Minor loads in any modern pistol then pressures are so low anyway that a small increase makes very little difference. If you want to test this for yourself, measure velocity of identical loads with .356" and .358" bullets. Pressure correlates well to velocity, so if the loads are otherwise identical and pressure is higher with the .358", it'll have higher velocity. What you'll find in most cases is any difference is so small as to be insignificant.

I like to flare 9mm or other 35 cal stuff to .385"-.390", .385" being the minimum. That amount will vary based on case length, so I make sure the shortest cases are at about .385". Like BJB said, I use the same flare for everything; you can get away with less for jacketed bullets but there's not much advantage in re-adjusting if you're already set for cast/coated. As long as you're not shaving lead though, that's the main thing. The downside to flaring too much is that you work the brass more and eventually will crack the case mouth if you reuse the brass a lot. BJB's comments about crimp are right on target as well.

That coke bottle waist is good, you shouldn't have any setback issues then. Sounds like you're on the right track. I'm 99% sure at this point that larger bullets will solve your leading issue.