1 Round for Competition and Supressor use?

[SCRich]

I am new to 9mm reloading but have loaded 10's of K's in .38 Super, 45ACP, 38/357 and 7mm TCU. Been about 8 years since I have reloaded but I have everything set up again and I am looking to make something up that would work in some informal Steel Challenge, IPDA and GSSF matches to be shot out of my G34 AND so that I can shoot it out of a G22 with a LWD 9mmm Threaded conversion barrel and a Semi-Auto MP5 using a Trident 9 supressor.

I don't have TOO much problem reloading for a couple of uses but I'd like to keep the powder to something in inventory and bullet the same to keep my inventory low, I already reload several rifle and other pistol rounds.

Thinking of a 147 or a 125gr FMJ RN and I currently "stock" 231, 748, No 5, WST, Titegroup, Ramshot TAC so I'd like to keep the powder to something I can use on something else easly. I actually have some IMR also but I forget which ones right now..mostly use that for the 7mm TCU.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. A minor load for competition and something that would operate the MP5 supressed along wth the Glock and a 92F supressed both supressed and in competition would be nice this way I could just buy in bulk and just go to town reloading 1 round till' I drop!

[G-ManBart]

The most readily available 147gr bullet that might meet all those needs is the Montana Gold 147gr CMJ...won't gunk up the can, and works great for things like USPSA, IDPA, etc. A lighter bullet might be a bit better for SC, but it would still work. R,

[gm iprod]

The two best powders for 147gr in 9mm and use in suppressors are Vihtavouri n320 and Titegroup.

Titegroup will produce a sooty carbon residue, but it is easy to remove with Hoppes #9 or wasgh the suppressor in a parts cleaner using Kerosine based solvents. Make sure you oil the hell out of it afterwards. My suppressors are aluminium and can not dbe disassembled, that stops incorrect reassembly by operators.

N320 will produce a scaley almost glazed residue, this is slightly harder to remove but is in much smaller quantities. So your call. The more powder you use the mopre residue you will get. Slow burners should be avoided like the plague.

3.2gr of either powder is usually about minor PF in handguns and about 1030fps in anything with a barrel around 14".

[SCRich]

Well shopping is completed I picked up a pound of VV320, WOW they are proud of their powders $29! But I'll try it. The local hardware store carries ZERO bullets by the pallet so I picked up 500 of the 124gr but backed off to 250 of Berry's 147gr, not sure if 147gr would be that great overall for plinking, match, supressed AND MP5 use. I'll try it...

Just a few little things...yea right NEVER walked out spending $325!! Got a new set of dies, I had been given a set of RCBS dies years ago but never reloaded 9 so I opened it yesterday to place them in a 550 toolhead and found that the seating die was missing SO...a blue box with carbide dies made it's way back with me. Boy carbide dies went up over the years, I remember them at $45 not $69!!

Tomorow will be a fun day spent reloading, nice thing now which I never had the ability to do before is load 2-5 rounds, walk a few feet and out the door, shoot then walk back in tweak and repeat! Ah...no more loading 15-20 rounds going to the range and having them fail so bad I have to pull them apart before I go back and tweak the loads.

[boomfab]

I use 147 gr Hornady XTPs for my suppressed Glock 34 and HK MP5K-N. You need 147's to allow cycling while remaining subsonic. There's a LOT of powders out there that you could use. Solo 1000 is my favorite but you can definitely achieve good results with most 9mm compatible powders.

[Garrett]

I usually run 147s from Zero or Berrys, or 150 gr. ".38 Super" RN Berrys. I find the Zero JHPs work better than the FMJs in a 147. They are slightly rebated on the base, and some brass gets thicker farther up the case than others.

I've played with a bunch of powders, but find N320 or 231 work best. Titegroup works well also, but I haven't played with it as much. I use these for suppressed shooting in subguns, carbines, and pistols, and they all work very well.

[jaredr]

my $.02 - i would be very careful running berry's (or any plated bullet) through your suppressor. loaded subsonic, you reduce your chances of having them tumble or destabilize but an overly aggressive crimp can screw then up badly. Fired out of an unsuppressed weapon, worst case scenario is a frustrating day shooting innacurate ammunition that keyholes or otherwise comes upart under load. baffle-strikes would make that much more expensive and aggravating.

[freakshow10mm]

my $.02 - i would be very careful running berry's (or any plated bullet) through your suppressor. loaded subsonic, you reduce your chances of having them tumble or destabilize

Do you have solid evidence of this or just unsupported speculation?

I've loaded several hundred thousand subsonic plated bullets over the years and have never had stabilization or tumbling issues. I would like to hear of your experiences.

[jaredr]

I've had Ranier plated bullets lose their plating and destabilize in between 25 and 50 yards when loaded to 1150 fps with Alliant Power Pistol. Specifically, 25 yard test groups from a glock 26 were an acceptable ~3" group, 50 practice on a gong went (with this particular lot of ranier 115gr tcj's) from consistently hitting a 10" plate to missing the broad side of a barn. finally put up cardoard backers every 5 yds from 25 to 50, discovered that the bullet was shedding it's plating around 30-40 yards (indicated by small jacket pieces marking the cardboard or in some cases left in the cardboard) and once this happened the bullet went MIA. groups at 50 yards were around 2' from this lot. for the hell of it, i loaded a bunch down to around 900fps (not very useful as I was not running them suppressed, but rather just wanted to see if plating failure was a function of rotational velocity). At 900 fps the problem went away. From this, my assessment was that the plating failure was likely the result of a QC issue with this lot, as other lots had stronger/more resilient plating that did not fail at the rotational velocity of my standard (1050fps) 9mm load.

I don't think we're disagreeing regarding performance of plated bullets at slower (subsonic) speeds - my comment above says that loading plated bullets reduces chance of plating failure (just as loading them faster increases it).

WRT to tumbling, I tried berry's after I finished up my supply of Raniers and found the Berry's to be very crimp sensitive. Specifically, I loaded test lots of berry's 115gr after some small runs using jacketed WW projectiles and found that projectiles were tumbling (keyholing) at 7 yards. I ran a couple of more sets incrementally backing off the crimp and found that the keyholing stopped when I was applying very little crimp. whether this was typical behavior for Berry's 9mm bullets or just another lot-specific QC issue I did not know. for me, that bullet's apparent crimp sensitivity wasn't worth the aggravation, and I went back to using Raniers for a while as they were (at that time) still less expensive than jacketed projectiles.

neither experience indicates that plated bullets are unusable, but each of them gave me reason to believe that plated bullets or either more finicky than jacketed (i.e. have a narrower range of loading tolerances under which they will perform) or they are just more prone to QC issues (i.e. WW may screw up jacket concentricity on a given batch but they'll still shoot "okay enough" to avoid hitting the target sideways). Both of my poor experiences with plated bullets were back in 2002-2003, at which time there was (I recall) a big enough cost savings using plated bullets to make them the more attractive choice. at this point, ranier bullets are almost they same retail price as WW or remington (and they're actually more expensive than jacketed projectiles if you're buying wholesale quantities) so I'm not sure I understand what benefits they offer.

[SCRich]

Well I finally got everything lined up and when I got ready to load on Sunday night I find that my primer tray went missing after 5 years and 2 moves, go figure! Anyway I got a primer tray today and had a few little problems with the primer feed on my 550 but finally got it fixed (after having to pick up 98 primers from all over!). By this time it was 10:30 so I cranked out 5 and finished. I'll give them a try when I get home tomorow and see but settled on a start of 124gr RN Zero's with 3.5gr of VV320 and a OAL of 1.146. I may have to tighten up on my seating to 1.142 or so but we will see. Once I get this 124 dialed in I'll work on my 147gr bullets that I also have.

[SCRich]

Well 3.5 grains does not cut it. I drove by the house today and ran inside and grabbed the ammo and can and took a few shots. Yes I am lucky to live in the country and have my own range. The above loads would not cycle the slide with a factory recoil spring, one of the captive ones.

I am going to move up to 3.8 or 3.9 grains tonight and give another try. My next step would be to move to the old guide rod which I have and start changing the recoil springs, I am currently stock. I do have a calibration kit but wanted to stay as stock as possible. Ammo fired and seemed accurate on a gong but brass varied from stovepipe to not even exiting the chamber. VERY quiet though, about as quiet as non-subsonic .22LR in a supressed bolt gun.

[dauntedfuture]

You can do it in 9mm with some 147 whatevernonlead bullets. Look for a low heat powder in a small dose to keep the gas down and the can cool. You will get better results with your can. I believe single base powders will run cooler. I would look at SOLO 1000. I tried some autocomp and its quite gassy and with 147s at the same velocity the solo loads sounded better.

[Garrett]

I tried some autocomp and its quite gassy and with 147s at the same velocity the solo loads sounded better.

Autocomp was developed for use in comped guns, where more gas volume is wanted to help run the comp. This is the opposite of what you want for a suppressor, where less gas volume means more gas for the can to try to slow and cool.

For this reason, faster powders tend to work better in suppressed guns.