{"id":7145,"date":"2020-01-04T07:07:20","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T15:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=7145"},"modified":"2020-01-04T07:34:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-04T15:34:20","slug":"reloading-9mm-ammo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/01\/04\/reloading-9mm-ammo\/","title":{"rendered":"Reloading 9mm ammo…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The 147-grain 9mm Speer bullet next to a 124-grain cast roundnose bullet. Cool, huh?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Well, ol’ Gresh sure stirred up a hornet’s nest with that flat track blog yesterday.\u00a0 We nearly ran out of bandwidth!<\/p>\n

On to a more metric subject:\u00a0 9mm ammo.<\/p>\n

I started the PRK 10-day cooling off period (you know, the People’s Republik of Kalifornia) for my new SIG P226 a couple of days ago.\u00a0 Let me tell you, if anybody thinks they are going to outlaw guns in California, they need to think again.\u00a0 I had to wait an hour and a half at our local Turner’s Sporting Goods store just to start the process.\u00a0 There were five guys working the gun counter and customers were lined up five deep. \u00a0 There were a ton of folks buying and picking up guns.\u00a0 Trying to outlaw guns in America is a nonstarter, even here in looney leftwing California.<\/p>\n

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This man had some of the best comments ever. “They know so much that just isn’t so” ranks high on my list.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Okay, enough of the rant about my friends who know so much that just isn’t so, to borrow a phrase from one of the greats, and on to the subject of this blog:\u00a0 Getting ready for the 9mm accuracy load development program<\/a> I spoke about a few days ago. \u00a0 Like I said earlier, my standard 9mm accuracy load for years has been 5.0 grains of Unique behind a 125-grain cast bullet, but as part of my New Year’s resolutions I am moving in two directions simultaneously:\u00a0 I’m expanding my horizons in the 9mm world and I’m reducing my waistline.\u00a0 The waistline story can wait for another day; today’s topic is the loads I’m crafting for inclusion in the 9mm Comparo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m going to evaluate three or four different 9mm handguns and several different loads, and I’ve started reloading the ammo for that.\u00a0 The first four loads I’ve already crafted are with two different bullets I haven’t tried before:\u00a0 The 147-grain Speer truncated metal jacket bullet, and the 115-grain Armscor FMJ bullet.\u00a0 The 147-grain Speer bullets are really cool looking.\u00a0 If they shoot half as good as they look I’ll be driving tacks with my new SIG!<\/p>\n

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A box of Speer 147-grain TMJ bullets. These are long bullets compared to what I normally shoot. They do look good.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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One of the 147-grain Speers ready for seating in a charged 9mm case.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another angle. Some of you folks get it. Stuff like this is beautiful. I mean, look at it: Polished brass, Unique propellant, and full metal jacket, heavy-for-caliber bullets. Life is good, folks.\u00a0 These loads are at 3.9 grains and 4.4 grains.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Seating the bullets is always cool, too.\u00a0 It’s where it all comes together.<\/p>\n

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On the way up, Rockchucker style…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\u2026and on the way down. A new cartridge is born!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The finished rounds look great.\u00a0 Now the question is:\u00a0 Are they accurate? \u00a0 We’ll see. This is the first time I’ve tried a bullet this heavy in a 9mm.<\/p>\n

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You can’t think about the time you spend reloading ammo compared to the cost of factory 9mm ammo.\u00a0 It would be too depressing. We do it for the sheer enjoyment of making something. We’re recyclers. Maybe that’s why RCBS reloading gear is green. Al Gore and Ms. Thunberg have nothing on us!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I seated the Speer bullets to the recommended depth for an overall cartridge length of 1.120 inches.\u00a0 I’m trying a couple of different propellant charges.\u00a0 I can experiment with seating depth to find the best accuracy later if this combo shows promise.<\/p>\n

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I know. It’s an obsession. But it’s fun.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But wait:\u00a0 There’s more!\u00a0 I also picked up another bullet I had not tried yet, the Armscor 115 FMJ (full metal jacket) roundnose bullets.\u00a0 They are cool, too, and they were only $10 for a bag of 100 pills.<\/p>\n

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Armscor is the same company that makes Rock Island Armory guns, like my Compact 1911.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve shot brass-jacketed FMJ bullets before, but that was in my .45 when I bought bulk Remington ammo just to get the brass cases (you know, so I could shoot them up and reload them later).\u00a0 These are good looking bullets, too.<\/p>\n

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Brass jacketed Armscor 9mm bullets. We’ll see how these do.\u00a0 I like the look..<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The charges listed in my loading manuals for a 115-grain jacketed bullet with Unique propellant seemed to hover around a max of 5.5 grains with a minimum of 4.8 grains, so I prepped two loads, one at 5.4 grains and one at 5.0 grains.<\/p>\n

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5.4 grains of Unique in primed 9mm cases. You can’t load too much more; this charge nearly takes up the entire case volume. With the bullets seated, this will become what we call a compressed load.\u00a0 Unique is what is known as a flake powder…the individual grains are tiny flakes of propellant.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Here’s a cool shot of the finished Armscor load.\u00a0 I like the way these look.\u00a0 It’s like being the Lone Ranger, but with gold instead of silver bullets.\u00a0 Hi Yo SIG, away!\u00a0 (Cue in the William Tell Overture.)<\/p>\n

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Ready for accuracy testing. This, too, is nice looking ammunition.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you are not a reloader yet, you might want to think about getting into it.\u00a0 To me, reloading is as much fun as shooting.\u00a0 And if you want to learn how to do it, take a look at our series on reloading .45 ACP ammo on the Tales of the Gun<\/a> page!<\/p>\n

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Hey, join the squad!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, ol’ Gresh sure stirred up a hornet’s nest with that flat track blog yesterday.\u00a0 We nearly ran out of bandwidth! On to a more metric subject:\u00a0 9mm ammo. I started the PRK 10-day cooling off period (you know, the People’s Republik of Kalifornia) for my new SIG P226 a couple of days ago.\u00a0 Let … Continue reading “Reloading 9mm ammo…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[1016,168],"class_list":["post-7145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guns","tag-9mm-ammunition","tag-reloading"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7145"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7165,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145\/revisions\/7165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}