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olstyn

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Looks for Match

Looks for Match (2/11)

  1. This was basically going to be my recommendation, with the caveat that N320 is also excellent if you're willing to spend N320 money. I've personally been very happy with blue bullets (specifically the 125 gr truncated cone), but I imagine the vast majority of coated bullets are pretty similar, and they're all going to be way cheaper than plated or jacketed...presuming they're available, which is the real problem at this point. In my experience, there's not much difference between primer brands outside of tuned guns with lightened springs which need Federal for reliable ignition - the biggest thing I've seen is that Winchester don't work quite as well as CCI through my vibratory primer tube filler tool.
  2. As 4n2t0 said, factory loads and handloads are not comparable unless they're using the same bullets. Your commercial SD ammo very likely has bullets of significantly different shape than HAPs. Loaded round OAL differences between different bullet types are largely about where in the bullet's shape it reaches full bore diameter. HAPs, along with the very similarly shaped XTPs and Montana Gold hollow points, are full bore diameter for a significant portion of their length, and then transition abruptly. That results in the bullet engaging the rifling at a shorter OAL than something like a Berry's plated round nose, which has a very long, gradual taper. I own a gun which will take Berry's round nose out to 1.15", and maybe even longer (I've never tried longer), but in that same gun, I have to load MG JHP and Horady XTP bullets to 1.075", and I even found one bullet profile that wouldn't pass the plunk test past 1.035".
  3. That sounds unnecessarily hot to me. 125 gr truncated cone Blue Bullets at 1.100" over 4.0 grains of N320 makes 131 PF for me out of a Walther P99 (4 inch barrel). Unless SIG barrels are "slow," the longer barrel in the X5 legion would probably result in more like 3.8 or 3.9 grains getting the job done.
  4. YMMV, but I'd say it's not *really* necessary to sort brass most of the time. Sarge's point about the press running more smoothly and consistently with single headstamp brass is valid, but it's not quite enough on its own for me. I shoot mixed brass for the majority of the year, but I like that extra little bit of consistency that single headstamp loads provide for the one semi-major match I shoot every year, so while I'm loading the rest of the year, I set aside all of the cases I find of one headstamp to be used for that match the following year. Doesn't really matter which headstamp I choose as long as I get 5-600 rounds worth to make sure I have plenty for the "big" match. The first year I did it, I used CBC brass because I knew I wanted to get rid of it at a lost brass match. Last year and the year before, it was Federal because I decided I wanted to use "good" brass for that match.
  5. ^ This. Buy a Dillon 650/750 or a Hornady LnL and call it a day. Either will serve you well and be a LOT faster than a single stage even for small batches of ammo. I learned the basics on my father in law's RCBS single stage, but loading enough 9mm for a few matches on it was super tedious. Moving to a progressive when I bought my own press only upped the complexity of what I was doing by a small amount, but it sped the process up massively and was far more pleasant as a result.
  6. Feel free to send them to me instead - they load just fine once the crimp is cut out.
  7. Have you chronoed these loads through your gun, or are you going by what the boxes say? If the latter, then it's pretty unlikely that those figures are accurate for your gun.
  8. Unless your powder measure likes it better than mine did, Unique will likely meter at +/- 0.2 and possibly even +/- 0.3 grains due to the fact that it's a fairly large flake powder. It doesn't mean it's unusable, and if somebody gave me 10 pounds of it, I'd definitely use it, but other powders are nicer to work with. I always found that it produced larger standard deviation values, so I had to load a bit hotter with it in order to be confident at the chrono at matches. The last load I remember using with Unique was 4.7 grains of Unique behind a 124 gr Montana Gold JHP at 1.08" OAL. That made ~130 PF even out of my 3.5" barrel Walther P99c, so your CZ with its longer barrel will probably get there with less. (Unique is a slower powder than the ones you've been using so far, so it takes more powder to get the same velocity, but it's also a bit more forgiving at the high end. It's nearly impossible to double charge due to its "fluffy" nature - it really fills up a case, so a double charge would spill all over your shell plate.) The VV 3N37 is not going to be useful for 9mm minor, but if you ever get into 9mm major for Open, you might have a use for it there. If you don't see yourself doing that ever, then you can safely look at trading it for something more useful to you.
  9. Indeed. When/if I get a PCC (have had the wantsies for one for a while, but haven't found the budget yet), my first thought is to use the barely touched pound of CFE Pistol I have with it. I tried it and N320 out at the same time, liked the way N320's recoil impulse felt in pistols better, and went all-in on N320 at the time, so the CFE-P, which has only been used to load about 40 rounds of 9mm, has been sitting there on the bench ever since.
  10. A friend recently told me that he was very dissatisfied with N320 in his PCC. Apparently it proved to be very dirty for him when used in a PCC. I don't have a PCC, so no personal experience there, although my baseline guess is that PCCs with 16" barrels would be better served by slower-burning powders. I often wonder what 100-grain bullets at 1300 FPS would feel like out of a PCC, presuming such a thing is possible/safe.
  11. I don't have any pics of the cases, but I swear I've seen similar flattening to the OP's picture with some factory loads shot through ordinary guns. The one that comes to mind is Hornady Critical Duty 135 gr. (Not even the +P, just the standard pressure stuff.) I'd be reluctant to push the OP's load much higher, but as somebody else in the thread said, the OP is already making Major with a significant cushion, so unless he dislikes what his dot is doing, there's no reason to go farther, and maybe even some reason to back off a little.
  12. Likelihood of getting caught above the limit is pretty low, yes, but a 10K limit also isn't too horrible of a hardship. At least they didn't make it 1K or 2K. :P I think the theory on primers vs loaded rounds is that primers are considered to be explosives, but ammunition is not. Weird, yes. You're absolutely right on ordering. Presuming it's within the budget, the formula would be something like order quantity = round down to nearest thousand (10K - (quantity on hand - quantity to be loaded prior to order arrival)), i.e. if you have 2.5K on hand and you're going to load 500 rounds this weekend, order 8K.
  13. Just wanted the person who was asking for advice to know that it's important to be aware of that stuff. I have several thousand primers and a decent amount of powder myself, but I'm careful to stay under the legal limit for my state.
  14. Some states and cities impose restrictions on how many primers you can store in a residence, so be aware of that before placing an order of that size. Unless things have changed since I last checked, if I placed an order for that many primers at once, I'd be in violation of state law here in MN.
  15. I found that the Acme bullet profile didn't work for my gun (had to load REALLY short, which I wasn't comfortable with), so I tried blues instead, they worked for me and are cheap, so I haven't seen a reason to switch again. I guess Acme has changed their bullet profile since, so maybe I'll try them again eventually, but I've currently got a solid supply of blues on hand, so it'll be a while before I even think about it.
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