Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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My standard 9mm load uses Berry's 124 gr. plated flat nose bullets @ .356" - My standard .38 Special load uses an Xtreme 125 gr. target hollow points at .357"

A buddy of mine really liked my .38 Special load and bought a thousand of the Xtreme Target Hollow Points and then decided he didn't like loading them or they didn't perform for him....he uses a different powder and a progressive press so he just isn't getting the benefit. Anyway, we has given me 800 of these and I already have a few hundred left in my bin *but* I'm out of .356 9mm bullets and between jobs. So, dropping near a $100 for another 1000 9mm 124 gr. Flat noses is dicey for me for a few more weeks until the new job starts.

I have always wanted to load some .357" 125 gr. bullets in 9mm and work up the load. Has anyone ever tried this?

Thanks in advance for any tips you might offer. And thanks in advance for the "OMG, what the fuck are you thinking!!" as well.... :laugh: :clap:

VooDoo
Tyrants disarm the people they intend to oppress.

I am sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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The fascinating thing is that the barrels in my Beretta Px4 and in my S&W 6906 9mm autos both slug at .3585 which should yield better accuracy with .357 bullets than with .356.

Actually ran into some other re loaders that have been doing this for decades. I ran into several guys here locally (today actually, at the LGS) who are casting 125 grain bullets and sizing the same bullet to use in 9mm, .380, .38, and .357 mag. Working up the load seems to be the bug-a-boo as there is no reloading book data to get a recipe from.

VooDoo
Tyrants disarm the people they intend to oppress.

I am sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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Gonna be a tight fit, and copper is harder than lead. Might want to load up some dummies to see if they'll even chamber to start. I'd definitely be very careful with powder selection- my go to powder for 9mm, titegroup, I'd probably not use in favor of something a little slower and less prone to pressure spikes.

I'd be interested to hear Marlene's take- at face value I think you could work up a load on the low end- paying really close attention to something not making it through the barrel. Have a brass rod on hand just in case.

Might be easier though to find out if there's somebody local you could trade with?
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Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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Just as a general safety thing.. you don't make up loads that you don't have data for.. or anyway to get the data.. you don't even know if bullets designed to be .357 JHP's will expand at 9mm velocities, or reliably feed in a semi auto.

I strongly support the concept of selling them and using the money to buy bullets you have load data for...

800 chances of something going wrong with no proof or assurance they will perform as a self defense round

Do they have cannelures? indicating they are made to take roll crimp.. can't use a roll crimp on a 9mm because it headspaces on the mouth.. while 357 needs a roll crimp because it headspaces on the rim.. but going even deeper into the internals, what is the lowest velocity they will expand at? Do you have a clue?

Sell them and get bullets that are supposed to perform in 9mm .. A 125 grain .357 load is a much faster load than a 124 grain 9mm JHP.. In all likelihood the design of the bullet has factored that difference into it's design. .357 normally doesn't have feed ramps ..9mm do

if any kind of performance is your goal.. you need to get the right bullets.

Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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Thanks for the replies and opinions.

It has been suggested to me that this thread is dangerous and this was not my intent. I'd hate to hear that a reloading newbie had read this thread and attempted this and got injured - I forgot that this is "The Internet" and most of the folks possibly reading this for information do not have 40+ years of reloading experience coupled with copious notes and recipes (successful data) accumulated from the actual testing of several guys who have cumulatively reloaded/hand loaded hundreds of thousands of rounds.

I'm asking the mods to close or delete this thread. Apologies to the reloading community.

VooDoo
Tyrants disarm the people they intend to oppress.

I am sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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I'd like to play Mad Scientist here and say, "Try it. What have you got to lose?"
Pressure concerns aside, it's likely the round just won't chamber. Another LGC reloader has experimented with this very idea using .357 (.358?) cast lead boolits in 9mm rounds for his Beretta M6 and it worked fine for his gun yet the same rounds just wouldn't chamber fully in my CZ-75B.

On cast lead, I find a problem I have to face is that the boolits get sized down beyond its original .356 when pressed into the brass case and crimped. I am having leading issues. Thinking of your jacketed buckets, it'd be interesting to see what actually happens to the bulllets when pressed into a case and the pulled to re-measure.
"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent." -Gandhi

Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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I probably wasn't clear in my original post - the bullets to be used are plated. Basically, I shoot 124 gr. plated .356" bullets that are flat noses in 9mm and plated .357" bullets that are "target hollow points" in .38 and .357 mag.

The target hollow points are not intended as SD ammunition. They are hollow pointed 125 gr. and longer in OAL (the bullet) and so stabilize better as they are longer and engage the rifling better. The plating is *very* thin and tears or will deform if forced so all rounds I load using plated bullets are taper crimped....roll crimping *will* cut thru the plating and there is no cannelure. In auto ammunition and plated bullets (and cast lead) the mouth of the case is flared *just* enough to start the bullets and they are taper crimped *just* enough to remove the bell/flare. I get maximum neck tension this way - a tighter crimp does not give better neck tension (you get less) because it crushes/resizes the bullet and the brass springs back leaving an undersized bullet with poor accuracy that sets back easily due to poor neck tension.

Yes, I taper crimp revolver ammunition. I still roll crimp jacketed ammunition in revolvers and even cast lead (I have some yummy 110 gr. lead wadcutters) that have cannelures.

The 125 gr. .357 bullets I was contemplating loading for 9mm plunk test in both my 9mm pistols. They don't do well in my brothers 9mm CZ RAMI due to the fact that the chamber/lead before the rifling is short so the OAL of the completed round, especially with bullets with truncated cone or flatpoint/hollowpoint geometry engages the rifling or binds up before the pistol goes into battery.

Reducing the OAL of the completed round and subsequently reducing the powder charge to lower the pressure caused by shortening the round makes the ammunition chamber in the CZ...it's not the extra .001" in bullet diameter that binds in the CZ my Brother loaned me. It's the OAL with a flat point/hollow point bullet geometry coupled with a short lead before the rifling that makes the issue. Bullet geometry is critical in calculating OAL...flat/hollow point geometries and round noses with a more round/less pointed geometry always have to be loaded to a shorter OAL.

This may or may not be the issue with your CZ and the rounds you mentioned. In my Opinion. YMMV.

This whole thread/issue is a done deal now as I have accomplished what I wanted and no pistols or people have been injured in the process. :lol:
I appreciate the advice and opinions. Kids don't try this at home and if you must PM me to get the details.

VooDoo
Last edited by VodoundaVinci on Sat Oct 14, 2017 7:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Tyrants disarm the people they intend to oppress.

I am sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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Sorry...post edited to correct the bullet diameter for 9mm. They are, properly, .356"

Marlene, yes, my greatest concern was that the .357 hollow points are roughly .050 longer than the 124 gr. flat noses. So they are taking up a lot more space in the case thus forcing pressure higher. Reducing the load a full 25% worked like a charm. The initial tests yielded a slight reduction in recoil impulse from my standard 9mm load with 124 gr. plated flat noses and was really accurate.

Ejected and recovered cases showed some black residue (low pressure - not sealing the chamber due to low expansion of the case resulting in some blow back) and recovered bullets showed a very nice engagement of the rifling. No signs of pressure. Subsequent loads I bumped the powder charge up in .1 gr. increments until I got the kind of recoil impulse and clean ejected cases. This afternoon we choreographed 10 rounds averaging 1100 fps out of the S&W 6906 with a 3.5" barrel. Still no signs of pressure - no flattened primers or any indication that shit is about to blow up.

Accuracy is awesome. They perform every bit as good as a 124 gr. .356" bullet designed for use in 9mm handguns. Since these are target hollow points and not designed for expansion we did not check for that and are not concerned with it.

I'd stress once again - kids do *not* try this at home.

VooDoo
Tyrants disarm the people they intend to oppress.

I am sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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Sounds good.

As an aside, flattened primers, etc are NOT useful indicators at pistol pressures. If you see them you are WAY past safety. Primers flatten over 60kpsi (with a very few circumstances flattening at lower pressures). Dick Casull noted that he never saw cases sticking in chambers when developing loads that would keep me up at night. Those classic indicators are for BOLT GUN loads.

An exception can be primer cratering, when working with a gun that has a good gap in the breech face around the pin. I have loaded known safe loads with soft cup primers in a gun with such a gap, and then used that cratering as a max pressure sign when working up loads with powders I had no data for. I have also got a face full of hot gas blowing a primer while developing this approach.

What I mean to say is that I am reckless and irresponsible with my own safety, but I stop WAY before primers flatten in anything but a bolt gun.
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Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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Eggleston sells 9mm bullets in your choice of .356 or .357. The extra thousandth of an inch will effect pressure but its going to be within the variance you would get from gun to gun. I.E. if you were at max with .356 you'll go over at .357, but .357 doesn't necessarily mean its dangerous by itself.
I concur that I would be more concerned with geometry of the bullet than with the size, but since its 125 grain overall length should be manageable, if it were 158 grain I would say no.
I would start with the hornady xtp load data from hornadys manual. They seem conservative in their recommendations and I have noticed that the XTP bullets have to be seated deeper than most due to the nose geometry. It seems that this would give you a good starting point to work from.
Just my opinions

Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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Yay! :w00t:

That's the spirit of what my initial intention was....judicious experimentation and some degree of innovation and a whole lot of testing within the bounds of safety and performance is a necessary part of the hand loading trip I think.

One of the reasons I have settled and standardized on the calibers I have (.38, .357 mag, 9mm, and .380) is that in the event of "system failure" or a SHTF scenario I can provide ammunition for the guns that I shoot/own using the components on hand.

They all share a similar bullet diameter and all the guns have, relatively speaking, similar bore diameters and technically they should, if we jiggle the handle and use our brains, be able to share bullets in a pinch. I have always wondered if I simply ran out of my preferred 124 gr. .356" 9mm bullets I could work up a load using 125 gr. .357 bullets and keep 9mm ammunition on the table. I have 100 gr. .356" bullets intended for .380 acp and also load 110 gr. bullets at .357" for use in my Wife's .38 caliber Ruger LCRx. In a pinch can bullets stockpiled for .38 Special be used to get some .380 on the table when I'm long out of .356 100 gr. bullets?

Yes they can. Optimal maybe not but judicious testing of this concept using existing load information, both from reloading manuals, personal notes gathered from my FIL and accumulated from personal experience plus recipes from my BIL, my brothers and several friends (one of whom was a ballistics expert and developed ammunition for the Army) is helping develop a safe way to do this.

So if I ever need to do it to to keep ammo on the table in a component crisis I already have data that has been tested. It helps that all the data I have accumulated uses the same powder. Transferring or interpolating all this data between calibers would be very difficult or impossible were a variety of powders/propellants used.

I would suggest that folks who are learning reloading/hand loading stick with published data and bullet geometries that are verified safe until they understand the risks involved and get experience with the tools and testing. Only after a firm and solid foundation based in understanding and safety is achieved should people start advanced experimentation. Safety is the most important thing.

I always wanted to try it and I have a month off between jobs. So I'm putting it to good use and have learned a lot as well as spent a lot of time on the range the last 2 weeks. Almost feel like a human again. :yahoo: :laugh:

VooDoo
Tyrants disarm the people they intend to oppress.

I am sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Re: Anyone ever load .125 gr. .357 bullets in 9mm?

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With some caution and creativity (and a smidge of recklessness) you can vastly open up your options. That's a big part of the fun of casting and realoading, really.

I'm the 'other forum member' Bisbee mentioned. I cast soft .359 bullets that I use for 38/357 and for 9mm. For the latter, I size them to .3575 and use those in my Beretta M9 and UZI. In those guns, they chamber reliably and shoot well with no leading. Yet, as he mentioned, those same rounds would not chamber in his CZ, and that was reason enough to stop.
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