Due to illness My son went without me to the range today. This is the range report of our first reload.

First Test

Precision Delta (PD) 124 9r FMJ 4.7gr Unique, CCI-500 primer, Misc cases. COAL 1.090

7 yards from rest 4" groupings. All over the place. It was sad.

Golden West (GW) 124 9r FMJ-RN 4.7gr Unique, CCI-500 primer, Misc cases. COAL 1.090

7 yards from rest. 1.5" groups. 2 sets of 5 each. surprising difference for just the bullets being changed. My Son reported that both loads felt a little snappy but the PD loads were more snappy than the GW loads
No FTF, FTL, FTE from either group.

Second test.

Precision Delta (PD) 124 9r FMJ 4.5gr Unique, CCI-500 primer, Misc cases. COAL 1.150

First four shots were much better than the .090 loads nice group at about 2 inches. 5th shot was a squib. At that point he had the range master help him remove the bullet and stopped the test. He mainly stopped because the barrel was very dirty.
No FTF, FTL. 1 FTE due to squib.
Golden West (GW) 124 9r FMJ-RN 4.5gr Unique, CCI-500 primer, Misc cases. COAL 1.150 Not Tested this trip

Interesting that the PD were pretty wild with the GW being accurate. I didnt think the same type bullet could make that much difference with everything the same.

Sounds like the PD were much better with the change in load (Smaller) and COAL (Greater) The 1.150 GW will have to wait for a later day.

The two recipes came from different sources. One was Hornady 124 9r FMJ-RN 4.7gr Unique, CCI-500 primer, Misc cases. COAL 1.150

One was Seirra
124 9r FMJ-RN 4.7gr Unique, CCI-500 primer, Misc cases. COAL 1.090

that's why we reload. you can tailor a load to each firearm. good luck in your future adventure's. might try some wsp. works great in my 9 mm's.

Try some Titegroup and you won't go back to unique. Unique is much too dirty for me in a autoloader. Don't get me wrong, it is a great powder for some applications.
I load 148 Gr. Berrys wadcutters for my wifes 637 with unique and they work great.

__________________
Ken

Glad things worked well. Have a few comments, if you don't mind:
1) Who is the maker of the Golden West bullets? Could be PD or MG.
2) Unless you are shooting at a range of 25 yds or more and shoot more than just two 5-shot groups, you really don't know much about the real level of accuracy. Also, some barrels need to be dirty before performing their best. During a day of shooting groups, go back and forth with any given load combination and keep track of shoots fired prior to the group. At the least, you should fire 3-5 "fouling" shots to get the barrel ready to perform its best.
3) 6.0gn of Unique is generally a very accurate load (though 5.0gn has been accurate with a 124gn HP-XTP in a Para Carry). You are shooting a very light load of a relatively slow burning powder, so burning will be "dirty." However, that dirtiness has NEVER affected function in any of my guns. For a better powder at the burn rate, I find Power Pistol and Silhouette are generally more accurate. 3.2-4.0gn TiteGroup and 2.6-2.9gn Clays (significantly faster burning powders) have been accurate in few of my 9x19s--however, no fast powder produces as consistently small groups as Silhouette.
4) Stopping shooting because the barrel is dirty means you might as well stop after the first shot.
I generally shoot 2-5000 rounds before cleaning my barrels--and almost all I shoot are lead bullets. Dirty barrels are often very accurate barrels, at least for handguns.
5) Your initial COL seems very short. 1.125" is about as short as I go.

Please do yourself a favor and use W231 in those 9mm loads instead of Unique. If you think W231 won't give you the velocity some shooters want try Longshot or HS-6.

I now use nothing other than W231 and Longshot in my 9mm ammo. (as much as it pains me to admit another powder shoots better than HS-6! LOL)

__________________
Freedom is never free!!
SWCA #3437

Thanks for the comments and info.

I do not at this time know who makes Golden west bullets. They do look different than PD. As for stopping because of a dirty barrel. The real reason was probably that the squib bothered him enough to call it a day. First loads ever made so I can understand it getting to him. The rounds fired at the 1.090 COAL were a total of almost 50. I just cited two of the groups.

Thanks again for the info. Its good to get as much as possible.

That may be a bit further down the road for you, but that is good information for the future, and if you can, eventually extend that to fifty-yards. The "test long/shoot short" theory is the only sure way to guarantee that your loads will be adequate if you have to push them a little beyond your normal shooting habits.

As for your surprise about different bullets making a huge difference, yes - very much so. 9mm pistols seem particularly guilty of this. I have seen them react to everything used to make cartridges - even "similar" primers, which you would think might have very little material effect on accuracy. Seating depth is also a big deal with 9mms. I will vary seating depth a little bit to see if I can improve accuracy, but you have to be very careful about big adjustments. With a 115-124gr FMJ-RN, I would be very hesitant to go more than 0.010-0.015" below the manufacturer's recommended COL, and even then, with due caution.

Thank you. At this point Im going to work on going out from 1.090. Thanks for confirming the bullet issue. I need to find out who makes Golden west bullets so I can keep getting them if something happens to GW.

With those numbers I would doubt my data. 4" groups at 7yds seems too far out. I haven't done any extensive tests with 9mm but those numbers sound way out of whack.

It does sound "exceptional." Maybe another shooter should give it a whirl, just to confirm?

Just last week I shot a very high-quality 1911 in 9mm. It was new to the owner and he was puzzled by the poor shooting. It was grouping into 5-inches at 50-feet! I shot the gun and it did the same thing for me. (Edit) This gun would not even stay on the paper at 25-yards, which was really a surprise. And there was no evidence of keyholing anything like that.

This past weekend we checked the measurements of the gun at the usual contact areas (barrel/bushing, bushing/slide, hood/slide, and foot/frame) and found no evidence of gross misfitting. Lacking any reason to suspect a bad barrel, or improper headspace, it seems like another case of a 9mm pistol "behaving badly" with one particular ammunition.

In all likelihood, another type of 9mm ammunition will cause this gun to settle right down and probably shoot groups around 1-inch at that distance. That is what the gun should be doing, anyway. Tonight we will give it another whirl with several different types of ammunition and should know a lot more afterwards. What we know right now is that this gun appears to have a pronounced dislike for WWB. We shall see!

Finally got to shoot the rest of that first batch today. My local gun range had an open house and the range was pretty slow.

Precision Delta (PD) 124 gr FMJ 4.5gr Unique, CCI-500 primer, Misc cases. COAL 1.150

1.25" groupings at 10 yds. (Yes I know I need to shoot farther but the rifle range was full). Nice feel

No FTF, FTL. FTE.


Golden West (GW) 124 gr FMJ-RN 4.5gr Unique, CCI-500 primer, Misc cases. COAL 1.150
2 1.25" groupings and 1 1" grouping at 10 yds. real nice feel. One of the 1.25" groupings was done Standing with 2 hand grip.
No FTF, FTL. FTE.

Next is 124 gr 4.9 gr unique COAL 1.135

Sounds more like it.

Like many others I have found that 4.0 grains of Bullseye works equally well with 115 gr. and 125 gr. bullets. It is a good practice load, and most of my nine's, it works with lead and FMJ bullets. Still, I keep trying to my other recipes that work.

with the 125 gr what C.O.A.L. are you using? Im finding that anything between 1.090 and 1.150 fits and cycles the gun with 4.5 gr Unique. But it would be nice to find the best COAL.

mlapaglia

In my opinion there is no single COAL. What I do first is consult one of reloading manuals. I usually start with Lyman's 49th Edition because it contains loads for jacketed and cast bullets. If the bullet I am using is listed I set the bullet to that COAL and then check it in the barrel of the gun that I plan to shoot it in. Even if the bullet is not listed I use a similar weight bullet as a guide, taking into account that a flat point bullet will likely have a shorter COAL that a round nose bullet. For example, in my test Dan Wesson Guardian I am shooting Missouri Bullet's 125 gr. LSWC. I found that I had to set the COAL to 1.050" or under to get it to feed reliably. Since 4.0 gr. of Bullseye is less than a maximum load in this manual and others I am not worried about having too much pressure from what appears to be a very short COAL.