[Adamantium]

Bullseye is an easy powder to work with. It will safely load down to where your gun will no long cycle but works just fine at max load. Me throwing out a specific grain would just be naming a random number, I've seen max loads range from 4.3 to 5.0 for 9mm 115 FMJ.

When I was a newer reloader I also tended to shy away from max load. The honest truth is max load is only as "hot" as any practice ammo you buy off the shelf at wal-mart. I've never seen a published max load that exceeded the 9mm's 35k PSI even though +P does exactly that and is safe to shoot in essentially all modern 9mm guns. For example in Alliants 2004 manual they list 5.0 grains of bullseye as having 31k psi, well below 35k which would be perfectly safe as well. I think every reloader should stick to doing what they are comfortable with but there is nothing inherently dangerous with maximum load.

On the topic of cast bullets, they are not a one size fits all type thing like jacketed. If you want to save some money over buying FMJ bullets you could look at plated bullets like Berrys. They will use the same load data as jacketed and the 9mm can't push them fast enough to expose their imperfections. With cast it is largely a matter of what is your bore diameter at the grooves. In a perfect world every 9mm barrel would measure .355 but thats not always the case. When you shoot a .356 bullet in say a .357 barrel the accuracy can be non-existent with some bullets even key holing, trust me I've tried it.

If you have a micro meter or even a good digital caliper you could slug your bore, a quick google search will explain that process. But I'm of the opinion that if you aren't shoot huge amounts of bullets there isn't enough cost savings compared to plated bullets. Give those a try, powdervalley.com sells them for around $70 per thousand.