I am new to reloading havn't cooked my first round yet trying to read and ask as many questions as I can before I pull the lever . Any suggestions on bullets are welcome probably will use win 231 (it's what my local gun store carries) I want to have loads for plinking with low felt recoil so my wife can enjoy as much as I do s&w m&p 9mm any help is greatly appreciated thanks in advance

Depending on what you want to spend, you can use hardcasts (a lead alloy), plated bullets (kind of a thin jacket) or jacketed bullets. (cheapest to most expensive)

Me personally, I am loading these:
9mm 124 grain FMJ Bulk Reloading Bullets
by the case, they are the cheapest jacketed bullets I can find.

Next time I order bulk bullets, I might go with a coated hardcast bullet to save more money.

The best advice is to buy a few different types and try them out. You'll quickly find what you like and what you won't use again. Buy 100 to try out before you order a case and find out you don't like that bullet lol.

one more thing- If you're gonna make self-defense practice rounds, I advise getting the same weight as your carry ammo and loading them as hot. More of a recoil trainer. If you're just loading plinkers, forget that. Go with coated hardcasts. 231 would be perfect for that.

__________________
an actual conservative

You have a lot more to play with in the medium 124-125gr bullets vs the shorter 115grs or less.
The147gr is for those with a little more reloading under their belts.

It just depends on what you can get.

A chrony helps in getting the fps of your loads but is not needed
if you start with the starting loads and work up.

Finding loads that work the action is step one. Then it is all up hill from there.

Safe loading.

most (SD hollowpoints excluded) 124s are 9mm bullets. They tend to have longer round noses. They are usually of a longer OAL, ensure good feeding and protrude into the rifling a little bit (do not read on the lands).

the 125s are .357 sig bullets and nearly all of them are of a truncated cone/flat point design. These need to be seated deeper in the case to function in a 9mm. If not, the long bearing surface will contact the lands and may not allow the pistol to go into battery or raise chamber pressure. Second, due to the taper and thickness of the 9mm brass, seating 125s may bulge/buckle some cases. If using any bullet that needs to be seated deep, it is advisable to seat and crimp in two steps. An option is the Lee factory crimp die, which also resizes the round, eliminating slight bulging.

Just be careful. Be sure to check that everything chambers before you load a bunch and take them to the range.

Do the drop test:
1. Remove barrel from pistol(s)
2. Drop round in chamber, ensure round dropped in freely
3. Spin round with fingers, ensure round spins freely
4. Flip barrel over, ensure round drops out freely

If there is an issue with steps 2-4, then you need to make an adjustment to your dies.

__________________
an actual conservative

With revolvers you can load cat sneeze loads for plinking. When loading for semi-autos, you have to have a certain velocity for the gun to work right. Hodgdon list only about 100fps less from their starting load than they do from their max load. You will probably not be able to tell the difference in recoil. I don't feel (and neither does my wife) that 9mm ammunition recoils much at all.

If your wife doesn't like the recoil of a 9mm, then maybe she needs to shoot something else and pick out her own gun instead of piggybacking onto yours. However, that's a whole different thread.

My wife has arthritis, so she shoots 9mm.

I have loaded almost 50,000 rounds of 9mm for a full auto MAC-10 and used 124 RN cast & WW231 in all the standard velocity rounds. It also had a silencer and used 130 and 147 jacketed and AA#5 for them(maybe 2000 rounds)

Since my wife shoots a GLOCK, she only shoots jacketed bullets, Because Glocks don't like plane lead bullets (the type of rifling causes issues).

My old S&W 39-2 and my M&P 9c eat whatever they are served!

Ivan

Non-garbage plated bullets work fine in stock Glock barrels.

As stated don't go with podunk loads. With most semi autos you will need somewhere close to factory velocities to make the gun work. But most of all whatever you load..have fun!

OP

As you can see there are a lot of different opinions on things handloading. I would say though as far as philosophy goes, many of us when we were starting out tried to duplicate our factory loads. In 9mm that means 115g jacketed bullets.

The beauty of handloading is you get to experiment with all kinds of things to make what works best for your particular application. The thing about 115g jacketed is, It requires a hefty load to get enough oomph to work the slide. This may not be what you have in mind.

W231 (or HP-38 which is the same thing) is a fairly good place to start. But I would recommend that you purchase 100 pcs of several different bullets in different weights and sizes and do some experimenting. I would also suggest that you consider plated and/or coated bullets.

I use a variety of bullets in 9mm. 115, 124 and 147g plated RN and 95, 135 and 160g coated RN and yes 124, 125 jacketed RN and JHPs. I don't use a lot of the jacketed because I shoot a lot of ammo and to keep costs down I use mostly coated but the 124 JHP with W231 work very well for me. Also, consider other powders such as titegroup or Clays.

I don't normally make purchase recommendations because everyone else does but I found a really good deal on once fired 9mm brass, 6000 pcs shipped for $132.00 from nereloading.com (12) 500 pc bags. Availability is hit or miss.

Enjoy your new hobby. It has a way of taking over your life and sucking basically every bit of spare dollars out of your pocket. It's like a drug and you gonna be addicted to it. You will be constantly thinking about trying some new load or buying a new press. There really isn't much you can do about it and it will ruin your life. So now you know.