9mm Over .38 Super?

[tazshooter]

I know there are many out in the sport shooting 9mm major. However, I am having a hard time making major in 38 super with 115gr bullets. I guess to make major using a 9mm case you have to load something above a 124gr bullet and just dunk your cases in the powder until you fill them. Then again I have never loaded 9mm Major.

From experience I am loading 38 super using 121gr Montana Gold with Vihta 3n38 at 10.3gr of powder and I am getting velocities in the range of 1,369, 1,373, 1,388, etc. Major velocities to reach a power factor of 165 with that bullet weight is 1,364. At 1,388 I am getting to a 167PF. That's borderline if you factor in any change in weather or altitude.

Happy shooting.

[Newbie]

I shoot Open, and I use supercomp brass. I also know that even though the open gun is around 2500 - 3k, but the reason I am not practicing at all right now is I simply can't afford the brass.

Do you really need the practice Jake???

Dave

[eric nielsen]

One thing to consider when thinking over the cost of brass is where you practice, where you shoot matches, and how difficult is it for you to get your brass back.

Looking at the videos you can see Jake is lucky enough to practice outdoors with multiple shooting positions, even shooting on the move. If you practice like this & there is nothing but you, gravel, and some searching, you might go home with 90% of your practice brass.

If it's you, shooting partners, other club members, and grass-mud-snow, it may be a real bear to get even 1/2 your brass back home with you, and it could be mixed with other ppl's brass which maybe you wanna shoot or maybe not. You may be a good candidate for a 2nd barrel/comp in 9x19 and as the champ EG says, who cares about jams in practice.

Most matches I go to have grass-mud-other-shooters. But at least I can stay late & brass-pick while other ppl look at the scores, chrono, play with their AR15s... and often I get home with more brass than I shot. My striped Super brass goes in a box, when it's full I'll tumble it clean & call it Match Brass. Anything without a stripe goes in another box, when it's full I'll clean the cases, separate out SuperComp [for friends] and size the stuff. Any case that feels weird getting sized I take out, if it's bulged at the bottom or cracked: trash. All the good unmarked, other-shooters brass becomes Practice Brass.

For practice I've only got an indoor range, at least they let me go wild on that one lane, multiple mini-targets on my cardboard & so on. Most times I'll go home with every single piece of brass I shot, or lose no more than 3 or 4 uprange. Even when I shot 9Major I would pick up my [nickel] 9x19 brass & load it again.

I haven't had to buy new Super brass in a while, part of that's from college classes & less shooting, but you may have it so lucky for brass costs. My 2c worth there is just bear in mind you might get a reliable 9Major STI, but the same gun in Super/Supercomp would be MORE reliable. One jams every x-thousand rounds, the other jams every xx-thousand rounds. My opinion...

[ipscbob]

My 2c worth there is just bear in mind you might get a reliable 9Major STI, but the same gun in Super/Supercomp would be MORE reliable. One jams every x-thousand rounds, the other jams every xx-thousand rounds. My opinion...

Couldn't agree more. Reliability is all about how much margin is built into the system. Supercomp has more than super which has more than 9mm in my opinion. My observations of others that have 9 major open guns and rimmed supers bear this out. I am loading supercomp for 2 and we shoot 3-4 matches a month with 3-4 sectional/area matches with practice only occasionally. We go through 3K-4K starline supercomp cases a year. The brass is one of the smaller costs of shooting for me so the reliability vs. cost trade off of switching to 9mm is not even a consideration for me.

[spd522]

My 2c worth there is just bear in mind you might get a reliable 9Major STI, but the same gun in Super/Supercomp would be MORE reliable. One jams every x-thousand rounds, the other jams every xx-thousand rounds. My opinion...

Couldn't agree more. Reliability is all about how much margin is built into the system. Supercomp has more than super which has more than 9mm in my opinion. My observations of others that have 9 major open guns and rimmed supers bear this out. I am loading supercomp for 2 and we shoot 3-4 matches a month with 3-4 sectional/area matches with practice only occasionally. We go through 3K-4K starline supercomp cases a year. The brass is one of the smaller costs of shooting for me so the reliability vs. cost trade off of switching to 9mm is not even a consideration for me.

I agree reliability has to be 1st.. That said, my Para Open gun has shot 38 Super, 38 SC, and 9mm with appropriate barrels installed.

My best reliability came with 38 SC with 100% reliability- but to be fair, only about 500 rounds of it were ever shot through it.

The only time I have had any 9mm Major problems was at the last Double Tap Match where the nasty red dusty clay got into my mags and gun. My observation was that I wasn't the only one being bit by the dust gremlins. The fix was clean any mags that hit the ground between stages and not to use Slide-Glide in that environment. Once I started doing that, no 9mm problems at all for the rest of the match.

When I shot 38 Super (what the gun was originally built for) I would have occasional issues with the bullets stacking crooked in the mag because of the rim. It was also finicky about load length and needed to be longer than others shooting 38 Super guns.

So for me, the 9mm has been a simple solution. I get my once fired brass free. My gun isn't picky about OAL as I can shoot factory 9mm or load out to 1.200 and it still runs 100%. And I don't have any problems making major with the two powders I can always find- Longshot and HS6.

Edited August 11, 2006 by spd522

[Harmon]

i ran 600 rounds of major 9mm ammo through my gun tonight. doing this in about an hour and a half in the super-sized texas heat got the gun mighty warm.

I still did not have a single malfunction.

if a gunsmith can make a 38 super work in an open gun, he can make a 9mm work.

Harmon

[Chriss Grube]

Gee, seems to be lots of opinions from the "experts" that have never shot 9 major. Since I have seen glocks jam I guess my keyboard expert opinion is they must not be reliable either!

[Adam B]

This arguement is tiring. There will always be people that are againist anything new and different than the norm. This is true with everything in life, not just guns and/or the caliber. I am surprised how the smiths are divided over it, Brazo's dosent like 9mm major and Bedell likes it.

Being that I have owned 4 open 9mm guns I can attest that 9mm major works and works well. The biggest issue is finding a load that works in YOUR gun and sticking with it and not to use mixed headstamp brass. I have had the most success with same headstamp brass and a load that I perfected with quite a bit of testing.

[geezer-lock]

I have been doing this a long, long time and I am willing to bet that the leading cause of malfunctions across all divisions and calibers is poorly crafted ammo. Even factory ammo can be built incorrectly. I recently saw a factory .45 that caused a death jam because it had a seriously oversize bullet stuffed in the case.

If one has a process in place for inspection, sorting, inspection, testing, inspection, measuring and inspection most problems can be avoided. Anything less and you are going to get in trouble, likely sooner than later. Murphy has a special affinity for the lazy.

Don’t ask me how I know this.

David C