Question about 9mm OAL specs in Lyman 49th edition

[DarkRayz]

Hi guys, I'm just starting to ease into reloading.

I have these 9mm 115 grain Berry "Preferred plated bullets" I picked up at the Dillon store.

I note the Lyman 49th ed manual on pg 340 has a schematic of a round showing a oal (I think) of 1.169 in. This schematic is unlabeled as to bullet gr or type.

I see a table for specs on a 115 gr JHP but not for what I think these Berrys are, which is a TMJ. In the 115 grain bullet table for the JHP OAL is listed as 1.090 ". in the table with a TMJ bullet (but 147 gr bullet) the oal is 1.115"

How do I reconciles these lengths? What table do I use for my 115 Berry bullets what oal? What min and max grain powder?

Thx

DR

[Real Gun]

Some basics about OAL;

• the spec of 1.169 is the maximum
  
• OAL listed in a load recipe is usually the minimum and the one used to rate the pressure and velocity. It is not the REQUIRED OAL. In the case of the Hornady manual, what they call "COL" is the maximum rather than minimum.
  
• The ogive or nose shape of the bullet determines how and at what point it will match with the chamber and rifling, how far in the round will go and still be fully chambered. Without some taper to the ogive, the OAL will need to be shorter, i.e. the insertion depth will need to be greater, barring a shorter bullet overall.
  
• Berrys are PLATED bullets, not jacketed, not FMJ or TMJ. Plated generally do not use the same load as jacketed.

[spacecoast]

You can use either Lead or low to mid-level FMJ (aka TMJ or FMC) data for your Berry's plated bullets. Another recommendation is to keep the speed under 1200 fps (this applies to any caliber).

http://www.berrysmfg.com/faq-q9-c1-H...d_Bullets.aspx

http://www.berrysmfg.com/faq-q10-c1-...e_bullets.aspx

[Waketurb007]

I have reloaded a lot of the same bullet. I have found that 1.14 is a good OAL for me. What type of powder are you using?

[Don P]

How do I reconciles these lengths?

You can place a factory round in your bullet seating die and start from there. It will give you a good reference point to OAL.

[gregjc9]

I also load a lot of Berrys. The best thing to do is to do a field strip your 9mm, and use your barrel as a cartridge guage. Build a dummy round, no powder or primer, just case and bullet. Start at a fairly long OAL (over the SAMMI max), place the dummy round in the barrel. The longer OAL will cause the bullet's ogive to seat on the grooves. You can tell because the bullet will not fall out of the chamber, you will have to pull it out. Keep adjusting the bullet seater a little at a time decreasing the OAL until you get something that seats on the cartridge. You will be able to tell the difference. I wound up with an OAL of 1.156 for my XDm and Springer Loaded 1911.

A search here should turn up more info, I know it's been discussed before.

Here's another option.

[Sevens]

I'd like to point out Real Gun's advice on his second bullet point -- because, IMO, it's the most important part of this entire discussion and needs to be reiterated.

COAL (cartridge overall length) is very important for many reasons, but the MOST important reason is so that you don't make any rounds too short. Too short means more bullet inside the case and less room for the powder charge to burn and build pressure. The less room inside = the higher the pressure.

A maximum COAL is one that allows the loaded cartridges to fit in the magazine, cycle through the pistol properly and also fit in the chamber. All of these things must be within a proper range if you want the ammo to function properly, so all are important. But none of them is as important as keeping the proper amount of space inside the case to keep pressures at a safe level.

I also recommend that every single time you produce a box of ammo and you log your work and make a label for the box, you also write down and record the COAL of those rounds. This will help you to repeat your load when you've made a successful one and it will also help you avoid making the same mistake more than once.

COAL is, in my opinion, just as important as the proper powder charge or the correct powder or the proper bullet weight. I don't know if every reloader gives COAL the respect it deserves.

[DarkRayz]

Thank you all! This is very helpful. I haven't started reloading for real yet but will soon...I'm still collecting gear. I've made a few powerless rounds and will experiment with gregjc's advice. I'm going to enlist the aid of a veteran reloaded when I start for real, to show me the feel of things

DR

[spacecoast]

Agreed on the importance of COAL - the right powder and and a safe charge mean very little if the bullet is seated too deeply. Always measure your first round in a given session, and don't trust that your seating die didn't somehow move on you. I use Berry's plated RN 115, 124 and 147 for 9mm all the time, and seat them all to 2.9cm (1.14 inches). They cycle just fine through my P95 and Hi-Point carbine.

[Sevens]

I've made a few powerless rounds

This is a good idea, but be careful when making these -- either re-prime them with old, dead, used primers or don't prime them at all. If you build rounds with no powder but you accidentally put a live primer in there, you have built for yourself a real potential problem. Many primers have enough power all on their own to propel a bullet out of the case where it will subsequently lodge in the barrel. You will often not even hear the pop, especially if you are on a firing line with other shooters present. What happens on the next shot is that one loaded round tries to push out the lodge bullet and things go to hell in a handbasket quicker than you will ever figure out what happened.

This problem is exacerbated by all the "training" and "tactical" tap, rack & clear procedure where a non-firing pistol is "fixed" in a lightning fast manner rather than carefully stopped and inspected.

Don't build any loads that might stick a bullet in your bore.

Always measure your first round in a given session, and don't trust that your seating die didn't somehow move on you.

This is more excellent advice. If/when you get in to loading cast lead bullets, you may find your bullet seating die gets mucked up with bullet lube and/or lead shavings that collect on the seater -- the result is that your bullets get pushed further in to the case then they did when you set the die however long ago. The more you load without cleaning the die and checking your COAL, the shorter your loads will get (and the higher your pressure will rise along the way.)

[Real Gun]

Originally Posted by Sevens

This is a good idea, but be careful when making these

A friend asked me to make him a set of 20 dummy rounds that he could use as magazine weight when practicing dry. This was 9mm. I load 124 gr, and he shoots 115 gr. What I made had no powder and no primer, so the weight was almost perfect simulation of his actual ammo weight.

Out of concern for these getting mixed or lost, I used red nail polish on the heads. It was just S& B brass that I was not going to load (prime) anyway, so I charged him $2 total.

[medalguy]

I also use the Berry's bullets and use a COAL of 1.130 inches in my Beretta M9FS, Works fine.

[DarkRayz]

Thx for all the help. I arranged a hands on tutoring session with a hand loading veteran. Made about 30 rounds on the dill on 550 and shot them today. They all worked! Must admit first trigger pull probably looked funny to any spectators....I probably looked like Bill Murray from Ghostbusters upon shooting his portable linear accelerator the first time...half-turned away, grimacing, expecting some unwelcome reaction from the weapon....but they all struck paper appropriately.

DR

[Sevens]

Must admit first trigger pull probably looked funny to any spectators....I probably looked like Bill Murray from Ghostbusters upon shooting his portable linear accelerator the first time...half-turned away, grimacing, expecting some unwelcome reaction from the weapon....but they all struck paper appropriately

.
Probably no regular that hangs around this forum hasn't done exactly the same thing.

For me, it was 1988, S&W 686, 6-inch barrel, Speer swaged 158gr LSWC pushed by Green Dot, with CCI SP primers in Federal brass.

[Unclenick]

The guys have covered it, so I'll add the trivia:

It used to be the word overall had two forms and two kinds of meaning. One form was the single compound word overall that goes back to Chaucer's day, meaning everywhere, all around, or over a period of time. Overall, things will work out, even if they are a mess now.

The second form was a hyphenated word, over-all. This mean the total length of something, such as the length of a boat from stem to stern or the complete length of a loaded cartridge. The train was half a mile long, over-all.

In abbreviation, the word Overall was given the single initial O. Over-All gets the double initial, OA.

Somewhere between Webster's New International Dictionary, 2nd Edition, 1948 printing, unabridged, and Webster's New International Dictionary, 3rd Edition, 1971 printing, unabridged, the hyphenated usage was dropped, and the single compound word overall had come to be used for both sets of meanings.

So, the NRA among others, started using the term Cartridge OAL, or Cartridge Over-All Length, well before the change in usage occurred. This became abbreviated COAL by some, while others dropped the C as being assumed, and just used OAL. Those adopting the more modern usage and spelling ow use COL, dropping the A as the hyphen is gone in modern form. Occasionally you will see someone refer to the OL, but not often. In any event, all seven forms I've seen in print mean the exact same thing:

Cartridge Over-All Length
Cartridge Overall Length
Cartridge OAL
COAL
COL
OAL
OL

I don't recall ever seeing Cartridge OL but I suppose someone somewhere may have used it.

Wherever you run into any of these forms, measure from the case head to the bullet tip.



Note that for pressure, as mentioned, seating depth is often what matters.
For calculation of that number:

Seating depth = case length + bullet length - COL

rearranged to prescribe a COL given a known desired seating depth:

COL= case length + bullet length - seating depth

[Sevens]

That fine picture (while it doesn't show it) does remind me of an annoying little part of COAL measuring on some loaded rounds: those with soft point tips, usually in SP rifle bullets.

Those stinkin' little tips always vary a bit across the board. Your seating die doesn't touch the tips, it seats the bullet somewhere on the ogive. It really is seating them consistently and giving you consistent internal space and bullet position, but measuring COAL with your caliper will be frustrating because of the varying shape/length of the exposed lead bullet tip.

Matter of fact... as I like at that picture and then I read the far right margin -- I'm thinking that you drew that picture, Unclenick?!

[Unclenick]

Yep, The wonders of modern CAD software makes these things pretty easy to cook up, anymore.

[wncchester]

"Lyman 49th ed manual on pg 340 has a schematic of a round showing a oal (I think) of 1.169 in. This schematic is unlabeled as to bullet gr or type."

That's partly because while OAL is 'important', book OAL is not. For pistol ammo find a seating depth that feeds and chambers reliably in YOUR gun. With that OAL, develop a load by starting low and working up to book max OR until you have reason to suspect an over pressure condition, just as all loading manuals direct us to do.

Far too many people get hung up on finding someone to tell them the exact OAL and powder type and charge level for every bullet ever made. That would be litterally impossible to accomplish even if someone bothered to try; first question would have to be, "For what specific make, model and exact serial number firearm?" because there are far more variables in that than constants.

That's okay though. Fact is, this stuff ain't rocket surgery, it's just not all that precise and each of us has to find out some things for ourselves about our own weapons.

[Real Gun]

Fact is, this stuff ain't rocket surgery

Fascinating metaphor

Seriously, I think we quickly learn not to work too close to the spec limit, but for day to day shooting I would say the gun better take "ordinary" ammo, or it will get set aside. Catering to boutique guns is a PITA. I will not even use my barrel. A gauge is what I want. I will literally change guns to suit the gauge (and spec) rather than let the tail wag the dog, so to speak. Customizing ammo to the last gnat's eyelash is not as routine as some can make it sound.

[wncchester]

RealGun: "Customizing ammo to the last gnat's eyelash is not as routine as some can make it sound... I will not even use my barrel. A gauge is what I want."

Okay. All that is somewhat true of course but it really isn't very difficult either; this stuff really ain't rocket surgery. I know of no one who shoots gages so the rest of us want our ammo to work in our own guns, there's no "boutique" quality to it. ??

The real difference between "reloading" and "handloading" is the significant difference between the levels of skill and methods for the two terms. One works by rote, the other by understanding. My suggestions were meant to help Mr. DarkRayz gain some understanding of why different books suggest different OALs and put his mind at ease.

Other than your personal preferences, I'm unsure of what you were trying to tell him.

[Real Gun]

I expect that many use commercial ammo as a model for what OAL works. I have done it and read many accounts of the same. You copy something proven to work and go from there. You fix something that you don't know is broken when you have the time and interest and have a need for better performance.

I doubt that all that many people know exactly what OAL is optimal for a given bullet in their gun. Handgun reloading is just not the same culture as rifle reloading. Precision is nice and a fine advancement in ones skill in reloading, but a high degree is not a requirement for pistols. What people shoot seems to have more to do with price and time investment than anything else. Once there is confidence in a load and dies are all adjusted, there is a real reluctance to tweak anything further, fixing something one doesn't know is broken.

[wncchester]

"Precision is nice and a fine advancement in ones skill in reloading, but a high degree is not a requirement for pistols."

You kinda make my point; it ain't rocket surgery. Just make it work and all will be well. Or not?