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Another bullet seating question...

965 views 19 replies 13 participants last post by  DaniBoy 
#1 ·
So many threads say that when developing a load, use the longest COAL that will fit your magazine and cycle and feed in your gun.

Just supposing that a very short bullet may only be seated in the case by .125". That's only an eight of an inch. It seems like not much pressure would be required to dislodge it from the shell. Conversely, I see many folks making 9mm rounds using COALs of 1.050. That is waaay shorter than the max that the gun and mag will reliably cycle. So many variations in length that it seems the reloader just picks one out of a hat and then works up a powder charge that works for it. To me it would seem that you should seat to that point just before the ogive.
 
#3 ·
Ok so I'm in deep thought now. I dug through my fired brass until I found one that I could start a bullet into by hand. I got it just barely started. Then I dropped this into the breech of my Glock barrel. Of course it stopped when the ogive contacted the lands. I placed my thumb on the head stamp and pressed it home. I then removed this dummy round and crimped it. So now I have a round that is touching the lands when fully seated in the chamber. I measured this to be 1.186. So what's the rule as to how far to back off from that point? .030? That means my optimal OAL for rounds made with that bullet that will be fired in that gun would be 1.156?
 
#6 ·
I'm pretty confident that a 9mm round loaded to that length won't work well in a Glock magazine. I'd back off until it does - then find what feeds well. I tried loading a 124 gr FMJ to 1.169" and it fed ok but it felt like the rounds were fighting their way out of the magazine. Dropped down to 1.150" and it feeds the way it should. No fuss, no muss, no worries.

You have plenty of room to work with so don't get caught up in absolutes.
 
#5 ·
I just made it up as an example. Since I posted that, I have been looking at pictures of 9mm bullets in my Lyman manual. I have also been looking at the OALs and am finding that many of them, JHP included are listed at 1.0xx. Studying them, I see the bullets vary in how long their bases are. So I'm thinking that the published OAL is only there to save the reloader time if he is using the exact same bullet as a given published load. In my case, there are no published loads for the bullet I'm using. So I guess I will just seat them as deep as I can and still have my crimp on the sides of the bullet. That puts me at 1.090, which is very close to the published load of a similar bullet. So apparently the OAL of a load is to be so that the sides of the bullet are fully in the case, say, .025 - .030 shy of the ogive. That way the crimp is still on the sides. Then use my desired primer (I have a brick of CCI 550s, so might as well use them up) and then work up to a reliable and accurate powder charge. Am I correct?
 
#8 ·
I would urge you not to over think the OAL issue with handgun. While I admit that I probably go a bit overboard with not worrying about it, I simply seat the bullet until its ogive (regardless of style) begins about an eighth of an inch or so above the top of the case. Since I never load anything to max, and closer to moderate, that method hasn't let me down in - well, ever.
 
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#15 ·
Their is a lot to be said for loading as long as is resonable. I would never load less then 1.100 unless I had to. Stick enough bullet in the case to hold it in place. That's about it. Besides that load as long as resonable. Something about 1/2 the diameter of the bullet minimum is what I heard.
 
#17 ·
Their is a lot to be said for loading as long as is resonable. I would never load less then 1.100 unless I had to. Stick enough bullet in the case to hold it in place. That's about it. Besides that load as long as resonable. Something about 1/2 the diameter of the bullet minimum is what I heard.
That works for rifles but rarely for handguns, especially with lighter bullets. I advocate to load to the longest OAL that fits your barrel & magazine all the way down. Not much can go wrong then. 1/8" into the case mouth is a reasonable min for most bullets.
 
#19 ·
I shoot for 1.130 in 9mm using Xtreme 115 RN bullets but get some variation because of small differences in bullet shape so I'm in the 1.126-1.134 range. I shoot from a Springfield XD9, Walther PPS M2, Glock 22 w/Lone Wolf conversion barrel and a Sig P229 40 w/9mm top end and have no problems with any of them.
 
#20 ·
Why are you making reloading so hard? You are over thinking everything!!!! I thought that you wrote somewhere that you had been reloading 38/357 for a while. This really isn't that much different!
All I ever loaded when I was doing .38 was wad cutters that I had cast. They pretty much got seated just shy of being flush with the case mouth, I was shooting 2.8 Bullseye for indoor 50' range use. I must have shot 1000's of those. It wasn't a load I worked up. A couple of guys at the range who shoot competition pistol said that's what they had worked up. They were shooing same caliber and same bullet type, so I set my Dillon to drop 2.8 and started cranking out the rounds without ever giving it a second thought. I kept making and shooting those for years. Then we started a family and all my stuff went into storage for over 20 years. Just within the past couple months have I gotten it out and dusted it off and converted to 9mm. Of course I cleaned and lubed per Dillon's video they did. Back then there weren't any Internet forums, so I didn't really have a clue, except what others said. 2.8 Bullseye in a .38 is not by any means a heavy load, so they knew it was safe to tell me to do it. I guess when I started browsing these forums I got confused because of all the technical things.
 
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