Reloading components multiple reviews

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SoupOrMan
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Reloading components multiple reviews

Post by SoupOrMan »

HSM Custom Bullets .40 S&W 180gr Plated Flat Nose

$64.99 per box of 500 at midwayusa.com

Capsule Review - No problems with lead vapors, easy to load, but take the calipers to them and load accordingly.

Fiocchi Zero Pollution Small Pistol Primers

$52.99 per box of 1500 at midwayusa.com

Capsule Review - Easy to recognize your brass from others', no misfires yet, but the presentation isn't flip tray-friendly.

Hodgdon Universal Clays Pistol and Shotgun Powder

$23.99 per pound at local gun shop

Capsule review - It burns cleanly and leaves the cases cool to the touch. It's also easy to measure and dispense.

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Since I started shooting USPSA matches a few years ago I had been buying factory ammunition by the caseload and watching my costs skyrocket. Every match I was told "You'll be reloading soon enough" and after reading online about reloading, reading through the manuals and collecting enough brass and equipment to get situated, all I needed after that was bullets. I primarily shoot indoors, so I try to minimize my exposure to lead vapor to the lowest level possible. To keep from getting too much lead vapor into the air I decided to use Winchester's "WinClean" ammunition as the standard for low-vapor and clean-burning ammo. Those cases come out clean enough that you could reload them without running them through the tumbler if you so desired. Unfortunately, I came into gathering my supplies as the Obama-fueled buying frenzy was still in its full force. I've had to make do with good timing to get primers and bullets.

First there's the HSM bullets found at Midway. I'm guessing this is an imprint of Hunters Supply, one of the brands that's known more for selling cast bullets in bulk. I received my first box of 500 from them and got to work reloading. The quality of the bullets themselves is fine, but I've found a lot of variation in weight and diameter and length. Weight goes from about 179.8 grains to 180.3 grains. Diameter goes from .399 to .403 inches and length can vary up to .02 inches, which can make seating a challenge. The bullets have no cannelure and no lead is exposed. The bullets with length and width problems are easily found, since the problem children among the bullets tend to have wider flat noses than the rest and can even be eyeballed to see that they're shorter. On average, you'll find one of the fatter shorter bullets once out of every 25 bullets. I began setting those aside. The average bullet is .400 inches wide, about the same length and weighs in at 180.1 grains. They load easily in Lee dies and take a taper crimp very well. The post-sizing feature of Lee's Factory Crimp Die really helps on the wider bullets, too. Case in point: I found that two of my loaded cartridges had not gone through the Factory Crimp Die and had been causing feed errors over and over again. The cartridges would get stuck in the chambers of both of my .40 pistols because of excessive width. So, I pulled the cartridges apart and took the calipers to the bullets. One bullet was found to be .405, the other was .407 inches. I fixed the problems by reloading the bullets and running both of the cartridges through the FCD about ten times each. The cartridges chambered and fired nicely. The OAL of the finished cartridges averaged out to 1.126 inches, give or take a thousandth.

The bullets aren't too bad at all on average, though you definitely will want to sort them out and sequester the bullets that are obviously different. Those will still be useable if you're willing to size the daylights out of them. How do they group, you ask? They don't group any differently than any factory FMJ ammuntion found from Winchester or Remington or CCI/Speer for IPSC purposes. They all hit in the A-Zone at 25 yards if you don't fire wildly. They're good enough for plinking and IPSC.

Now, the bullets might be the payload, but you need your ignition and fuel to get them there. Due to the current buying frenzy, I was constantly checking for any signs of primers anywhere for small pistols. My local gun shops were out, Gander Mountain only had Large Rifle Magnum primers and 209 Magnum Shotgun primers, and even the online retailers had no end to the drought in sight. That changed one night around 11pm when I saw that Midway had introduced Fiocchi primers to their selection. I was going to go with the regular Fiocchi primers but they had already sold out, leaving my only real choice to be the Fiocchi Zero Pollution primers. The box claims that they're heavy metal free, which either means that they really dig Andy Williams and Celine Dion or that there's no lead or arsenic or similar elements in the priming compound. I'm going with the latter guess. I'm no "OMG let's not hurt Gaia" type person, but the less lead, mercury and arsenic vapors we have floating around in the air inside my gun club's indoor range means that there's that much more lead, mercury and arsenic to use elsewhere on our nation's enemies. So, I bought two boxes. First off, they're not your usual shiny gold or silver primers. They're a flat OD green, about the same color as ordnance tape. This is great when you're policing your brass at the end of your run, because you know right off the bat that those are your cases. They fit the primer pockets of the brass easily. A word of advice: Decap them as soon as you get home. You'll find this white crud in your primer pocket that's a pain to clean out if you let them set for a while. How do they ignite, though? So far, no misfires, even the ones that have been exposed to things like skin oils, concrete, dust and other such things that are warned about in reloading guides.

While the primers are great, the packaging leaves a lot to be desired. First off, the primers come 150 primers to a sleeve, with ten sleeves to a box. Second, the primers are packed sideways instead of anvil-down. This means a little more time spent with your flip tray when trying to get them to face anvil-up and you have to carefully slide the plastic sleeve out so you don't wind up with primers everywhere. The packaging is really the only bad part of the Fiocchi primer product.

Well, squib loads might be fun for some, but I like for my reloads to go out well past the end of the barrel, so I looked for powder that would work in a majority of pistol calibers that I'm likely to load in the future. Right now it's just .40 S&W and .38 Special, but .380, 9mm Luger, 10mm and .357 Magnum will also likely show up eventually. Considering the plethora of powders that will fill that order, I asked around to my fellow shooters what they used and with one exception of "2400 works great in everything! Trust me!" I got "Universal" for my answer. It's a middle-of-the-road powder, though I've noticed that the pressure generated can be a little on the high side at higher-end loads. I set my powder measure to 5.0 grains and left it there, trying to get the best number of loads per pound. It doesn't burn as insanely clean as the WinClean ammunition's powder but it burns cleanly enough to leave only a little residue on the case wall. I get around 950 to 960 fps in those loads when fired out of my 1911, good enough to make Major Power Factor. The recoil is mild on the reloads and if you pick up the cases immediately, you'll find that they're already cool to the touch. I'm used to the brass still being obviously warm when picking up brass after each run. Some people have overlooked the brass, thinking it's been on the ground for so long that it cooled down. So, other shooters have gotten blamed for missing their brass until I explained how cool the cases are after firing. I'm trying to get the most uses out of each case, so right now I'm running minimal loads. It also works pretty well in .38 Special, though I'm having a few moisture problems that leave some nasty flaking residue in the .38 cases. I don't find those flakes at all in the .40 cases, oddly enough. Overall, though, it's a decent powder.

This combination of powder, primer and bullet was made due more to the vagaries of the market than any real plan to use these specific components to approximate WinClean. I was actually looking for other items to use instead, but these three components work very well. It's a pleasant surprise. Don't worry if these are all you can find, they work well together.
Remember, folks, you can't spell "douche" without "Che."

“PET PARENTS?” You’re not a “pet parent.” You’re a pet owner. Unless you’ve committed an unnatural act that succeeded in spite of biology. - Glenn Reynolds
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Combat Controller
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Re: Reloading components multiple reviews

Post by Combat Controller »

Great review, thanks! I like Unique myself, works in everything very well, and is low pressure too!
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Netpackrat
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Re: Reloading components multiple reviews

Post by Netpackrat »

CombatController wrote:Great review, thanks! I like Unique myself, works in everything very well, and is low pressure too!
In the first iteration of the forum, we had a member named Allen Davis, who was constantly extolling the virtues of Unique as an all purpose pistol powder. Nowadays, other than the IMR800X I use to feed my 10mm, Unique is pretty much all I use for pistol loads.
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SoupOrMan
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Re: Reloading components multiple reviews

Post by SoupOrMan »

I was thinking about switching to 800-X, but I'm going to wait until I'm done with this jar before I try anything else. I really like how well it keeps the inside of the case clean. If not that, maybe Longshot for some hotter loads.
Remember, folks, you can't spell "douche" without "Che."

“PET PARENTS?” You’re not a “pet parent.” You’re a pet owner. Unless you’ve committed an unnatural act that succeeded in spite of biology. - Glenn Reynolds
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