I've been wanting to make a light weight hbwc bullet for the 9mm/38spl for awhile now, had it on the nothing better to do winter bucket list. Recently acquired a mold that someone modified (did a bad job) so I figured it would be a good choice to modify it some more.

The bullet 3 thin main drive bands (.359) and a .3565 skirt. It will be sized to .358 for both the 9mm & the 38spl. Bullets as cast on the left & sized to .358 on the right.



I mainly wanted these bullets for target work in the 9mm (practice for the 50m free pistol). But it should also make an excellent light close range target bullet for the 38spl. Along with the testing them for sd/turning them around to make a huge hp.

I left the skirt/base of the bullet small (.3565) because it will swage down to that when there seated deeply in the 9mm cases anyway (did tests with a standard 148gr hbwc). And .3565 will seal a 38spl case & have neck tention on the bullet with no problem. A standard expander ball in a 38spl/357mag reloading die set made to expand the cases to .356 so they can have .001/neck tension on the .357 jacketed bullets.

Planned on seating them flush in the 38spl's & on the 2nd drive band for the 9mm's. Should prove interesting, if for some reason they don't work out. Then it's on to plan b & making a set of swaging dies to make a 115gr/120gr lead hbwc.

forrest r

Very interesting..................

Hope that front end will feed in the 9mm for you.
Am wondering what oal will feed if things work out.

1.10" ?

Even if they don't feed...........a picture of how they group would be neat.

Good luck with that.

Very nice idea.

You didn't mention the hardness of the lead you are using. You tested with stock 148 HBWCs which are almost always swaged dead soft lead. So they obturate and seal readily. Will your cast lead be soft enough to obturate and seal? Hope so. Let us know how testing works out.

__________________
USAF, 69-92
Vietnam, 72-73

No feeding issues, they'll be used in revolvers & contender single shots.

I cast my hb bullets with 8bhn alloy. A 8bhn hp will fully expand @ 800fps and a 8bhn hb bullet's base will fully expand and seal the bbl's @ around 800fps. The 8bhn alloy will also allow me to drive them faster than their soft swaged lead counterparts allowing me a wider range of velocities to be able to find the sweet spot of the bullet/bbl combo. The different hb bullets I cast right now.



left: .357 115gr hbwc (9mm/38spl)
2nd left: .358 148gr hbwc (38spl/357)
3rd left: .431 220gr hbwc (44spl/mag)
4th left: .431 220gr hb swc (44spl/mag)
far right: .452 175gr hb swc (45acp)

The twist in the 9mm bbl that I'm using is 1 in 14. I use 1 in 12 custom bbls in a couple of 38/357's. The faster twist/long bullet is an extremely accurate/stable platform. A 1 in 10 twist would be the cat's meow with this light weight long bodied bullet.

Hollow base bullets are actually one of the lost technologies in the modern casting/bullet world. Back in the day (20's/30's) they viewed/used hb bullets for target accuracy along with taking weight out of a bullet. Making the bullet lighter allowed the user/shooter to use the same die setup (seating/crimping) and the ability to use a faster flatter shooting bullet than there solid based counterpart. You used to be able to order a bullet mold in the caliber/bullet design you wanted along with having the choice of have a standard bullet, a hollow point bullet or a hollow base bullet.

Oh;
a single shot and a revolver................ok.
I thought for a minute you were taking the Bull by the horns and going to put them through a "Pistol"....... and silently, wishing you ALL the LUCK in the world.

Carry on...............

The only thing to watch for is NOT to exceed 800fps. The front of the bullet will separate from the skirt and you can leave the skirt in the barrel.
Thus, you will be using VERY small charge of powder that should be carefully weighed and inspected.

Thank you that is very good advice for factory hbwc bullets made from pure lead. I'm using different alloys with the different hb bullets, mostly 8bhn (post #4). 8bhn can be run up to around 950fps in most firearms without leading.

I'll be using/feeding those bullets in this:



A contender with a 9mm bbl setup to practice the 50m freepistol course.

There's a pretty good pile of different bullets laying around that I've either gotten a new mold, altered/pinned a mold & made dies for new nose profiles on swaged bullets.

Next on the list, hollow pointing a lyman 358477 mold.

forrest r

With all the bullets you cast..........

Do you find molds or do you "Modify" bullet molds that have not worked out for you in the past?

Must be nice to have the equipment to "Shave down" a Die or Mold to fit your needs.

Some of us were lucky enough to have "Wood Class" and can get a small idea of what you are doing. Got to love it when a "Project" turns out.

Most of the time I buy/use factory hp & hb molds. The hollow base molds are extremely hard to find.

I will however make different pins to try in the molds testing different shape/size/depth hp's. Allot of the molds have cramer style pins in them & either come with different hp designs or I'll make my own.

Most of the time I use/make my own swaging dies/nose forming dies. And on occassion I will modify a mold. Here's a mold I'm hollow pointing right now. It a lyman 358477:



I've had excellent results accuracy wise from this bullet in the past. Got an older mold that was a little beat up on the outside a couple weeks back. So I cast some bullets with it to make sure the mold was ok & it cast beautiful .3595 round bullets out of 8bhn range lead. So I'm setting it up to cast hp's. Plan on making a long hp pin for it that will make a deep hp & end up with a hp bullet in the 135gr range. Most 9mm/38 lead hp bullets weigh around 10 to 12gr lighter than their solid nosed counterparts. Most lyman are around 10gr different & I'm trying to get this bullet 15gr lighter using a standard size lyman hp pin (.125") in diameter.

Should prove interesting.

forrest r

Forrest r:
Most swaged lead bullets that I have bought use 92/6/2 lead (when they;ll tell me what the use) and run about 10-12BHN and they DO separate at speeds in excess of 800 fps.
You may be right about your special bullets, as the skirt may not be as deep or large as standard 148gn L-HBWCs, but count the holes in the target and watch for a stuck skirt in the barrel.

Interesting, that 92/6/2 alloy is a 12bhn alloy designed to do 1200+fps.

commercial hbwc's are designed for target speeds (700fps) and every commercial hbwc that I've ever owned/shot had a skirt that could easily be bent/smashed by simply pinching it between my finger & thumb.

The 8bhn bullets I cast on the other hand don't bend so easily.

I've seen commercial bullet makers go as high a 16bhn with their swaged bullets. But those are rn/wc/swc designs and are powder coated.

Been swaging my own bullets for 3+ decades now and I have yet to swage a hbwc bullet with an alloy harder then 8bhn/9bhn max. Two things happen when a harder alloy is used for swaging hbwc's.

1. It makes it harder to swage a consistent even bullet that's accurate.
2. Never use antimony with swaging hbwc's, it makes the alloy too brittle.

Here's some 32cal (.312) swaged 93gr hbwc's I swaged using a cast rn bullet for a core. The advantage of using a bullet for a core is that it already has lube grooves. The core can be pre-lubed then swaged into a hbwc.



I'd like to know who you're buying you 12bhn hbwc bullets from that use antimony in them.

Ooooooooh.....................
a 135gr Hollow Base !!

That is one I would like to see on paper.

Hope your weather warms up and you can get out soon.
Two days of 70mph winds and rain here.............

Oh, then you are saying that they lied to me and that the alloy one company specified on their web site is a lie, too?
Of course, I can't squish the skirts on my Remingtons or Speers or Hornadys, but I'm not that strong any more.