Do you think I loaded these too hot ?
I think the primer may be a little flat.
These were supposed to be hot loads for the club bowling pin shoot.
I think my powder is getting old and doesn't have the oomph anymore.
This was supposed to be a max 38 +P load

Don't look particularly flat to me,did they extract easily?

looks like it extracted at about 800 FPS or better ... I'd call that easy

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it just needs more voltage

I wouldn't go any higher than that. Or maybe back off a tad.

What am I seeing here? Did you push the cases in the hole just to show how deep they went??

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Something here ain't right.

Still a sliver of room between the primer edge and the brass but.....
That is looking like a +P load with the flat surface........
I can't make out the firing pin strike area.

Maybe a 100% load for a J frame.........

Did you load and fire a primed brass case?
That looks like rifling on the side of the brass.

We should call him Hollywood. In the movies, the whole cartridge becomes the projectile

Mike

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NRA Certified Pistol Inst.

This is what they looked like after being pulled from the bowling pin.
They chronographed at about 625 fps
I was using 6.3 of AA#5 but it is pretty old powder, maybe 20years.
I think my powder must be going bad or something.
I pulled a couple and checked the charge, it was correct.

Yea, that's too slow for pin shooting. You are really risking a nasty bounce back.
You also aren't going to get the best accuracy if there is a primer pocket still in that swaged brass. How do you remove that? Is it just a lead plug instead of a primer?
Or is it just plinking ammo?
I've thought about getting the press and dies for that, but I can't see many advantages to casting.

It's only too hot if it vaporizes the bowling pin.

I'm confused as to what I'm seeing here. It looks to me like the shell is still on the lead bullet ?

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1st smiles,lies.Last,gunfire.

Think the talk of a flat primer coupled with the exposed circle on the back of the spent bullet is confusing folks!

It got me! I guess they started out as semi-jacketed something or others. I've never seen a bullet with a groove like that at the base.

625 fps is way too slow. A +P 38 should be up above 850 fps, closer to 900 with a 158 gr. bullet.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

What were these shot out of?

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

I shot these in a S&W model 14

These are 9mm cases annealed, sized and trimmed to make into 357 jackets with a 100gr 32 cast bullet swaged in as the core.
They come out about 150gr.
The primer pocket is drilled out to allow the lead to flow into the primer pocket and lock the core into the jacket.

Has anyone else seen powder loose it's zip after being store a long time ?
It makes no sense to me why these were going so slow.

One, are these bullets made out of brass cartridge cases with a lead core? If so, what caliber are they? I have not seen this before.

Two, my first thought when I saw the thread title was one of those revolver photos with the blown cylinder and top strap was going to show up .

Ah, question answered...

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Alan
SWCA LM 2023, SWHF 220

If you really want to test your powder, try a store-bought bullet and a reloading manual recipe. See if it chronos close to the book.

That homemade bullet is quite clever, (kudos!), but it seems like a lot of hard brass to push through a rifled barrel. Quite a lot of effort for a non-magnum caliber.

Well it didn't tumble. Don

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USN Retired/VN VET
M&P X5

20 years is not old. Your powder should be like new, unless it was stored improperly.

I seen these bullets on another post. Don

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USN Retired/VN VET
M&P X5

You may have seen similar bullets before, but you did not see these bullets in another post.
It is a somewhat common thing to make jackets from fired cases.

Thanks for a good laugh.

Ya had me for a few posts. I kept looking for the firing pin dent.

Nice bullets, but a lot of work to shoot pins. I used a LEE tumble lube 6 cavity mold for my 45 when we shot pins. 100 rounds was nothing in an evening.

David

It's more common to make .223 caliber jacketed bullets using a throw away anyway .22 LR case. That makes some economic sense with a "free" case for a jacket and inexpensive lead wire or a cast core, to swage into the finished bullet.

Using a 9mm case that has to be annealed and then swaged is a lot more expense and effort than it's worth when you can just cast and shoot a lead bullet.

I thought the whole point of reusing brass cases was so that you can create high velocity magnum loads using easily obtainable components. For 38 special +P you can just use regular cast bullets.
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Unless the whole point of the original post was just to show off the cool picture of the bullet stuck in the bowling pin...

I thought it would make for a fun post, I had to do a double take the first time I saw a .40 case used for a .44 jacket.
I thought there was a cool factor in using a fired case for a jacket.
I plan to crank these up to 357 velocity and shoot them in my 686 after proof of concept is complete.
I also really have no explanation as to why the velocity was so low given the powder charge should have been pretty hot.
My WST loads with the same bullet worked as expected.
When time is factored in there is no reason to make these other than it's an interesting project.