IDescribe

I mean powder drop variation, from a dirty drop or static or something. I would run another ladder, and hand-weigh every charge, and make sure they are spot on. That will be how to determine if it's powder charge variation. IF you know every charge is spot on, but you still get those swings,. then you know it's not the powder drop

Yeah, just looking at the numbers for the 5.0gr string, I'd guess this is a powder charge issue. Those 923 and 934 feet/sec cartridges are still decelerating like the others, so it's not like it's nust getting a bad read. It would ha e to get an identicalky bad read 5 times in a row, which seems unlikely. Those 923 and 934 cartridges are probably correct. And you're not going to get a velocity swing that big from anything other than powder if it's an accurate reading, which I suspect it is.

Define "won't go into battery" Is the bullet feeding then just no closing quite all the way? Or is the cartridge getting hung up before making it into the Chamber?

Any chance of your recording your actual strings here shot by shot, so we can see what is actually producing these crazy high standard deviations.

Them? All of them? ?

Most of them are good, but they're not all the same. They tend to have slightly different diameters. Blue bullets are a little undersized for lead at .355. BBI are a little bit oversized, closer to .357. ACME has been the best I've measured in terms of most consistent diameter bullet to bullet, and typically a tad over .356. They also cure the Hi-tek thoroughly. I've liked SNS, nicely consistent per batch, but I will say I've gotten some batches that average .356 and some that average closer to .3555. And that's with a micrometer. Possibly different or new sizers? I don't know. I've not used Bayou since Miculek sold it, but they were not surprisingly properly cured and consistent bullet. Bayou's 124gr TCG was a favorite of mine before it was discontinued. No idea about Bayou under new ownership. I have recently purchased Gallant. While I haven't used them yet, I have listened to their owner describe their process, and I am hopeful. The others I haven't used, but I suspect most are good. My favorites have been ACME, which has been great in everything, BBI, which has been especially good in my CZ pistols, and while Blue Bullets are not great at all in my CZ pistols, Blue Bullets are lasers in my VP9. AND I am very hopeful about Gallant. At the end of the day, though, ACME is an easy bet.

ACME

Occasionally 4. 5-6 is common and what I consider good. 7 is acceptable. 8-9 is a little higher than what I like, but if they print well on target, I don't care much. And some loads, particularly toward the bottom of the load window, will tick a couple spots higher than that. SD to me is a measurement of how tight my own gear and process is. It's just something for me to know that I'm doing my part in terms of consistency and maybe pat myself on the back here and there. But at the end of the day, how tight the groups print on paper is all that matters. And it's also worth noting that SD and ES are heavily affected by how you set up the chrono when it's a chrono using optical sensors. So sometimes bad SD and ES have little to do with the cartridges. In the case of the non-optical ones like you're using, I have no insight on setup and improving precision. But I did see your SD number earlier and meant to comment. That's crazy high in my book. If that's accurate, you might want to start weighing individual powder drops and make sure you're not getting wild variation in drops. Also, powder settles as the drop moves, so after you put powder in the hopper, you should cycle it a bunch before loading. I do it it at least 20 to 30 times after getting the charge weight dialed in, just to make sure it's not drifting. Static can cause variation in powder drops, as well. Dirty drops do, as well. AND if you are leaving powder in the hopper after you're done loading, stop. Dump it back in its container. It will cling together and "bridge" over the dispensing reservoir its supposed to fall into with each cycle of the drop, and can cause wild variations drop to drop. Always empty the drop when you are done loading. Don't ask me how I know. ?

Okay... This is a 9mm gun with 9mm cases. You want 9mm dies. Seating lead bullets into cases will not swage the bullets. That isn't your problem, but other swaging likely is: FCD is a taper crimp for the crimp itself. But it is more than that. It "sizes" all the way down the case. It WILL swage down bullets, lead and plated. With a tougher jacketed bullet sized .355, it's not an issue. With lead and plated bullets, it's often a problem, and the softer the bullet, and the more you try to crimp, the worse it gets. There is a property of metal called "spring back" that is exactly what it sounds like. You've seen it thousands of times - you bend metal, and it wants to spring back to its original shape. You bend it far enough, and it won't spring back all the way, but will spring back some or most of the way, with how much varying from metal to metal and thickness to thickness. Lead, for example, is soft and has effectively no spring back at all, it keeps whatever shape you form it to. But the metal of your case springs back. So my suspicion is that when you are using your FCD and sizing all the way down the case that you are compressing/swaging the bullet down, and while the bullet doesn't spring back out at all, the case springs back just a little, not enough to see separation between inner case and bullet, but the spring back is happening, and it reduces neck tension. It is inarguable that this is happening. This is physics. It's happening. Whether or not it's the root problem might be argued, but make no mistake - - it's happening. This isn't an issue with autoloaders because bullets don't creep forward with autoloaders, but they do with revolvers. I strongly suspect you're reducing neck tension with the FCD. The fact that you're tumbling is also an indicator that you're getting the all too common FCD swaging. It causes tumbling. That happens to people regularly. Get a regular taper crimp die. The Lee FCD has a narrow field of use, and I'd recommend you leave it on the shelf for most loading. Even with a regular taper crimping, overcrimping can reduce neck tension as the case wall below the mouth wabts to bow outward as the case mouth is turned inward. This is why we always always say that with taper crimp, just remove the bell to flush. I would advise you set your crimp die (a regular one, not the FCD) to leave the case mouth .378 or .379 and be done with it. Taper crimp does NOT increase neck tension. The fact that the inner diameter of the case is smaller than the bullet before seating is what creates neck tension. Period. Even if the FCD turns out not to be the only contributing ssue, it's an issue you want to correct. Make it your first step. I suspect your issues will go away. Good luck. And let us know. ?

Ask, and you shall receive. ? In the data below, that last number is the change in velocity from one OAL to the next. You will note that the first reduction in OAL shows a loss of velocity. That's because 1.14 is long enough to seat firmly into the rifling, which increases pressure. Of course, dropping from 1.14 to 1.12 also increases pressure, so it's safe to say in this case, seating into the rifling was worth almost the same as a .02 change in OAL. It was almost a wash. I'd also note that a change of 15-20 feet/sec is about what I get with that bullet and powder for a tenth of a grain of powder, so for this test, a change of OAL of .02 was worth about the same as a tenth of a grain of powder. Results below: Bullet: Montana Gold 124gr JHP Powder: Vihtavuori N320 Primers: Federal SPP Brass: Starline -- used Charge Weight: 3.6gr OAL 1.14 - - 925 feet/sec OAL 1.12 - - 922 feet/sec | -3 OAL 1.10 - - 941 feet/sec | +19 OAL 1.08 - - 962 feet/sec | +19 OAL 1.06 - - 979 feet/sec | +17 OAL 1.04 - - 994 feet/sec | +15

IF only that were always the case in forums. ?

And be aware that at some point, you may have to say "Okay, this works in my friend's pistol, but not mine."

You said same specs, then cited only your bullet. Is he using the same bullet at the same OAL? Do you also use a Czechmate?

I'd say according to Hodgdon's data, anything where a 115gr projectile needed to be driven up near or just over 1200 feet/sec, or a 124/125gr bullet up near or over 1100 feet/sec. And since the CFE powders main marketing point was an additive that reduces copper fouling, I'd say it was intended to use with jacketed bullets, though there's nothing that would make it bad, per se, with non-jacketed, just that it was developed with jacketed in mind. Look at those steps I listed earlier. It's not that Hodgdon has a specific application in mind. It's that Hodgdon saw a space in the market for a powder with copper-fouling preventative properties that would drive bullets in that velocity range. Maybe it's low flash, as well -- I don't know. Maybe it's a fine fine self defense powder. But it's a less than optimal 9mm minor powder. Yes? Depending on what day you get me, I might talk about slow vs fast, or slow vs medium vs fast. Give the right conversation, and I might describe WSF as a faster medium, BE-86 as a medium, and Power Pistol as a slower medium. Talking about powders as being faster or slower than another powder is useful to talk about powders for a particular application, but I'm not sure the label is that important in and of itself. If I call BE-86 a medium burn rate powder, and someone else calls Powder Pistol a medium burn rate powder, and someone else calls WSF and CFE Pistol medium burn rate powders, that doesn't mean they'll substitute for each other. It just means they're not especially fast or slow burning. You still need to look at velocities ranges in the load data. Err... Yes? Recoil is a consideration for 9mm minor. The slower the powder, the more powder it takes to reach a particular velocity, the more powder it takes, the stronger the recoil impulse. It's not the end-all, be-all of loading for 9mm minor, but it's a consideration. There is also the consideration of the pressure seal on ignition, and getting one fast enough that you're not blowing powder out between the case walls and chamber walls back into your pistol. Most (not all, by any stretch) people use powders for 9mm minor that reach the desired velocity in the top half of a powder's load window, which earns both of these desirable traits. I'm NOT a proponent of chasing the fastest powders possible for 9mm minor (many people are), but getting a reasonably fast powder to get efficient burns at small charge weights is desirable. I use Bullseye. If you want to try a faster powder for 9mm minor, but you still want to use up that 9 pounds of CFE you bought, load 9mm loads near CFE Pistol's max loads, and use them for self defense practice. It's not a bad thing to get time behind a harder recoiling load. It's still 9mm, so it's not going to be too rough, but some time behind stout 9mm loads isn't a bad thing.

Keep in mind that if these cartridges were already loaded from the same batch that you would still be subject to the possibility that they were loaded differently than you think. Maybe your charge weight was wrong. Maybe you labeled them wrong.. When I talked about seeing if you could duplicate data. I was talking about building new cartridges from scratch.

You should use the technique someone described in an earlier post to determine maximum OAL with that 125gr Precision bullet in your PPQ's chamber. You should determine max OAL for every bullet you ever buy in every pistol you own in that caliber, and keep records. It may well be that 1.125 or 1.132 is the perfect OAL in that pistol with that bullet, and I'm not even recommending you change it at this point, but you should still know the max OAL for that bullet in that chamber. It's a data point worth having. As to application: plenty of people use USPSA, IDPA, IPSC, Steel Challenge, etc. to practice for defense. But YOU need to decide whether or not you're going to try to duplicate defense loads for your sport loads. Personally, I'd recommend against it. The skills and confidence you develop in the shooting sports will carry over to self defense as well as they can, regardless of how closely matched the ammo is. I'd recommend you go ahead and develop loads for the sports, which is to say, one of the faster powders I mentioned in the earlier post, and 124/125gr bullet, which you already have. Use the bullets you have until they're gone so long as they are satisfying your personal accuracy requirements. When they are gone, replace them with the same, or try another brand, whichever you like.

Too much thought and talk already gone into this. Get the Shuemann barrel, or the Bar-sto, or the KKM. Can't fault you wanting a top-notch barrel -- they're sexy -- but you're not going to see a bit of difference for the twist rate for what you're shooting. 16, 24, 32... whatever. Get the name you feel is sexiest. If there were a definitive answer to your question, all the manufacturers would using the same twist rates. Think about it. A rifle bullet that is over-stabilized is going to resist the turn of the nose toward the ever-changing bullet path, but you want the nose to constantly change to follow the bullet path to minimize surface area directly affected by forward air resistance and the pressure wave ahead of a super-sonic projectile. For an overstabilized bullet that is NOT doing that, it effectively reduces its ballistic coefficient. In that case, gyro-stabilization is keeping the nose "up" or at least not letting it follow as fast as is optimal. Not really sure what the big whoop is with 9mm at pistol distances. Unless you're trying to shoot 115gr cast lead fast enough to make 9mm major in a 1:10 twist barrel, which might tear the bullet apart, then even 1:10 isn't going to over-stabilize the bullet in a way that's going to cause a problem. Get the barrel from the manufacturer you've always fancied most. You're not going to be disappointed.

Exactly. It's for the new USPSA Extreme Division, where you get C-Zone credit for misses.

No, not reasonable. I once ran a test to measure the effects of OAL change on velocity. I used N320 and a Montana Gold 124gr JHP, and loaded the same charge weight at 6 different OALs, each OAL changing by .02, from 1.04 to 1.14. Velocity changes from one step of the ladder to the next ranged from 15 feet/sec to 19 feet/sec. Oddly enough, that's about what I get with that powder adding a tenth of a grain of powder at the same OAL, so for that combo of bullet and powder, an OAL change of .02 was comparable to a change of .1gr of powder. GIven that the faster the burn rate of the powder, the greater a change you will see in velocity when you change any of the variables that affect velocity -- given that, I would expect OAL change to produce smaller changes in velocity with CFE Pistol than with N320. So I would expect less than 17 feet/sec in CFE Pistol for a change of .02 in OAL with a 125gr bullet. For an OAL change of .007, roughly one third of that, I'd expect a velocity change somwhere below 6 feet/sec, which is to say -- negligible. Appears to be the case with some of this. You're talking about a change comparable to a change of five or six tenths of a grain of powder. Changes between standard and magnum primers produce changes a fraction that size in 9mm Luger. It's impossible to imagine a switch between standard primers doing anything close to that. If that were the case, different primer brands would require entirely different sets of load data. A swing of 85 feet/sec is HUGE. Common powders that fall into a nice burn rate rangefor 9mm minor: Winchester 231, HP-38, VV N320, Titegroup, Alliant Sport Pistol As far as using CFE Pistol for .45 -- .45 is a low pressure cartridge suited to the fastest of the pistol powders for most applications -- Nitro100, VV N310, Bullseye, Clays, Ramshot Comp... with powders like W231, HP-38, and TItegroup still being well suited, but on the slower side of well-suited. CFE Pistol is super slow burning for .45 for most applications. I can't stress enough how much you need to factor application into powder choice. What application am I developing a load for? What is the best caliber for that application? What bullet type is best? Jacketed? Coated lead? What bullet weight at what velocity is best for that application? What other characteristics are of utmost importance? Low flash? Low recoil? Utmost long range precision? And then finally, what powder is best suited to get that type of bullet of that weight to the ideal velocity while meeting the other desirable characteristics? CFE Pistol might be a fine powder choice for .45 if I wanted to drive a 200gr bullet 1100 feet/sec, but I'm not sure why I would want to drive a 200gr .45 bullet 1100 feet/sec. ?

A few things: 1 -- Try to stick to one measurement when reporting chrono data. You should probably stick with velocity. In your first post, you state your 4.6gr load was ~128PFwith a velocity of 1060 and wanted to go up to get higher off the power factor floor, which is a good idea at 128PF, EXCEPT that a velocity of 1060 with a 125gr bullet is actually 132.5 PF, not 128. Sticking with velocity where you're just transposing that reading from the chrono is probably safest. 2 -- You're not getting an 85 feet/sec difference from changing primers with CFE pistol and small pistol primers in 9mm Luger. Something else is different that you're not seeing, possibly as simple as poor record keeping. 3 -- CFE Pistol is slow for 9mm minor. Choose a powder more appropriate to your application. Look for a powder that gets you to the velocity you want in the upper half of the charge window, that not right at max. When you operate slower powders like CFE at light loads, you get inefficient, inconsistent, dirty burns. 4 -- A difference of .007 in OAL is likely to produce an average velocity change that's smaller that your SD, making it more or less negligible. 5 -- Load data is a field report, not a recipe. Unless you're loading the exact same manufacture and model of bullet in the load data, there's no point in trying to match the OAL. Your working OAL should be determined by you for every bullet you use in every pistol you use. In your shoes, I would assume I'd messed up somewhere and had an inaccurate data point or two. Assuming I still had some CCI primers laying around, I would try to replicate my original data and see if I can find an error, and if I didn't find an error, I'd try to reproduce my Fiocchi data and look for the error there. I just can't imagine a change in primers resulting in that sort of change in velocity. If you have no more CCI primers, I'd recommend either buying yet another brand to see what they do, or forgetting about it and working up a new load with what you have, forgetting the old one. AND I'd go ahead get a different powder. CFE Pistol is used for 9mm major. Powders that are good for 9mm major are too slow for 9mm minor. Use a powder more appropriate to the application at hand.

Metals have a property called "spring back" that is exactly what it sounds like. When you flex metal, it will spring back to some degree, possibly all the way, possibly some of the way, dependent on how far it was flexed and the particular properties of the metal. When you erase the bell from the case mouth with a taper crimp die, you're not regaining neck tension right there at the mouth. You might get it flush and get it to touch, but the Itty bit of spring back will negate the tension right there at the mouth. There's nothing you can do about that. To create neck tension there, you would have to crimp past flush to account for the tiny bit of spring back, and that would damage a coated lead or plated bullet. Neck tension right up there at the mouth is lost with the flare. And it's not regained with crimp. And it's not a concern. You still have the other 99% of the bullet below the case mouth getting firmly and lovingly hugged by the case. Another way to understand that is simply that the neck tension comes from seating a bullet in the case that is larger than the inner diameter of the case, stretching the case. Since taper crimp only takes it back to flush, which can't create or increase neck tension. I use a Redding expander die, which is a copy of the Lyman M-die. It has a plug that expands into the case, like your NOE die, but it has a flare at the top that allows me to control how much flare there is. But again, I don't know how much flare there is by measurement - - I never measure it. I just tinker until it's right. I would also suggest that with you, you should measure before and after a bullet is seated. If it flares to .358 before the bullet is seated, it will be bigger than .358 after the bullet is seated because the bullet will expand the entire case. So if it's greater than .358 after the bullet is seated, then .357 may in fact be over-crimped. You might be better taking it down to only .358 or .359, depending on the flare diameter after seating. If it Is .358 after bullet seating, then I suppose .357 is the way to go.

In will add that in my own testing of WSF, with minor PF loads, I have found it to start behaving consistly at lower PF numbers with coated lead bullets than with jacketed, and the heavier the bullet, and the larger the diameter, the sooner it starts behaving. In my testing, it looked like minor PF with heavier coated lead might be acceptable, but still not ideal. Regarding SD, I'm accustomed to getting SD numbers in the 5-6 range, and of course a 7 and 8 here and there, and occasionally a 4, and ES typically under 20 with the powders I use for 9 minor. That said, how precisely the groups print on paper is vastly more important than ES and SD, and in that regard, WSF does quite nicely. Regarding your SD and ES numbers above, I have found shiny copper plated bullets to produce higher ES and SD than lead or coated lead when using a chrono with light sensors, so your numbers are quite good to my eye for plated.

Look above at the bold text in your quote. There IS pressure, or more accurately: case neck tension. The resized 9mm case with no bullet present does not have a case mouth diameter of .358. It's smaller than that prior to bullet seating. That might be what's left after bullet seating, depending on bullet diameter, I suppose. But more importantly, the inner diameter of a resized case is smaller than .355. If it weren't, you'd be able to slide a .355 bullet right in, but you can't. I don't know off the top of my head what the inner diameter of a properly sized, healthy 9mm case is, but I know it takes quite a bit of force under the reloading press to push that bullet in and stretch the neck outward. And it's that residual neck tension left over by stretching the neck open that holds the bullet in place, which is why people are constantly telling others that taper crimp dies are just to remove the bell/flare. The case mouth should be flared enough to accept whatever bullet you are using, based on bullet diameter and bullet type, with the intent of not harming the bullet. I've seated plenty of .355 JHP without flaring the case mouth at all, where the slight bevel on the bottom is enough to get the bullet in without damaging the case mouth, but a .356 plated bullet needs some, and a .356 coated lead bullet needs a little more, and a .357 coated lead bullet needs a little more than that. I have never measured flare. I adjust it to the bullet I'm loading at the moment. And if I scrape some coating on a few bullets before I dial it in, those bullets are for practice. But for crimp, you can set that at .376 or .377 as you like for .355 bullets, and adjust up a thousandth for every thousandth up in bullet diameter, OR you can set crimp for .379 and forget about it. Crimp does nothing to hold the bullet in place, and .379 will work fine with every bullet you load. If you want to adjust crimp later on to try to tune for accuracy, knock yourself out, but it's not necessary to get accurate loads. A crimp of . 379 will work for everything, and .378 will work fine for everything except the really oversized bullets.

What you've noticed is accurate, and it's one of the things that makes WSF less than ideal for 9mm minor. And it's been missed by a lot of people commenting in this thread. When powder ignites, it blows out the case walls against the chamber walls and creates a pressure seal. Without that seal, expanding gasses would blow burning and unburnt powder out between the case and chamber walls and back into the gun instead of driving the bullet down the barrel as intended. And in fact if a powder charge is too light for its burn rate and bullet at the OAL employed, you get a late pressure seal, in which case a little powder and gas does exactly that: it escapes around the case walls and gets wasted. When that happens, how much gas and powder gets lost is highly variable, and thus ES and SD numbers get high. That's why light loads with WSF have high ES and are dirty - - a late pressure seal and consequent lost gas and powder. WSF is just a tad too slow a powder for 9mm minor, unless you want to run a PF in the mid-high 130s or higher, where it starts to clean up nicely, though recoil will be a bit elevated relative the faster powders more typical of 9mm minor loads. Always, always, always - - when you're loading, people should set design goals based on application. 1. What is the application? 2. What are the desirable characteristics for this application? 3. What is the best caliber choice to best meet the need for these charactersistics? 4. What is the best bullet choice at what velocity? 5. What powder best gets that bullet to that velocity while meeting other design goals? When people say they like powder XYZ for 9mm, they're missing the point of reloading. 9mm isn't an application, so they skipped the first two steps. A loader should not be choosing the same powder for 9mm minor as they would for an SD load. Design goals are too different. Even with something like SD vs NRA 50-yard Bullseye, where a 115gr XTP at 1200 feet/sec is an excellent choice in both cases, you wouldn't necessarily choose the same powder, as Power Pistol might be THE best powder for 50 yard accuracy with 9mm, but as the bright flash and loud report of Power Pistol is not something you want in your bedroom in the middle of the night to blind and deafen you, it fails to meet the needs for a Self Defense powder. Compare SD to minor PF action pistol shooting, and conflicts are all the greater. To address the original question of the thread. WSF recoils less than Power Pistol with the same bullet at the same velocity in the same pistol because there is less gas mass. Period. That gas mass is part of the recoil impulse. And WSF recoils more than faster burn rate powders when all else equal because it employs higher gas mass. Period. I've loaded the same bullet to the same velocity with different powders of significantly different burn rates and tested them head to head in the same pistol, specifically looking to compare recoil. The powder that takes more powder to reach the same velocity has stronger recoil. Most of your recoil impulse is a function of mass and velocity. A 124gr bullet at 1070 will have a very similar feeling recoil impulse, regardless of powder choice, but the one that uses more powder to get there will have a slightly stronger version of that impulse. If someone thinks WSF is softer than something like N320, they simply haven't done a true apples to apples test. Regarding some other odd claims made in the thread, people can absolutely prefer the recoil impulse they get from a slower powder, requiring more powder to reach the same velocity, but it's not softer. It's simply not. And a meticulous test of the matter, apples to apples, all else equal, will demonstrate that to anyone without significant nerve damage or psychosis.

No, max load of Silhouette gets it to only 1040 and Longshot 1120. You would not want to use a faster powder. Silh is slow, and it only gets it to 1040. You don't want it slower than that. If I wanted to load these for SD, I would likely load Silh at or a tenth or two over max. The Barnes commercial +P loads with these are minor PF gamer soft at a little under 1100 feet/sec.