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Yup you read that right, 165 gr in 9mm. The suckers are really long.
I bought 250 from xtreme, mostly out of curiousity in developing a really light recoiling load for my wife and newbie shooters. A little anxious though, because there's no real known data for this bullet in the powder I have (Universal clone CSB-1). So I had to extrapolate some charge weights from the known data for lighter bullets.
Loaded up 50 of them, 10 each for 2.8-3.2 gr in weight. OAL of 1.14 . I tried them out yesterday with some interesting results.
I only got through about 36 of them, mostly because I was encountering a particularly nasty malfunction. It seems like quite a few of the rounds (about 4-5 of them, all randomly occurring) would not chamber fully. So when the slide cycled and picked up said round, it would enter into the chamber partially but lock up before going fully into battery. I was using my CZ75b, so the purchase on the slide is not that great, and thus attempting to rack the slide to free the round did not work! It was completely jammed up. Perhaps the saving grace of using the CZ75b is that the round jammed the slide at the exact position in which it was possible disassemble the gun. I had to actually field strip the gun there (making sure it always pointed it down range, and without my finger entering the trigger guard), and then use a heavy object to hit the barrel lug forward to free it up. Very nasty and time consuming, as well as potentially unsafe if I screwed up my field strip procedure.
In terms of pressure, my testing went up to the 3.1 gr, all without sighs of overpressure. Unfortunately I don't have a chrony to measure the speeds, but accuracy was fine in the midrange (2.9-3.0 gr) and acceptable for others (probably more me than the rounds themselves). The recoil was mild, but it wasn't noticeably any more mild than my 147 gr loads. Because of the persistent malfunctions, I decided to stop there with this batch and take a look at the rounds when I got home.
So why did these malfunctions happen? All my other 9mm xtreme -- 115, 124, 147 gr -- have been very reliable and I never had this kind of malfunction before. I use Lee 9mm dies and I use the Lee crimp die as a last step which should theoretically resize the cartridge. On closer observation of the few rounds that failed, I noticed that the shape seemed a bit flattened and fat near the case neck, perhaps even mushroomed a bit. I probably should take a picture to show what I mean.. Measuring the diameter right above the case neck I find that it's actually much larger than .357, we're talking .36X. Taking a few of my trusted 147 gr rounds, the diameter above the neck is indeed much less than .357. I inspected the rest of the xtreme bullets that haven't been loaded yet, and for the most part it seems like the diameter is as advertised, .356. In fact, for the rest of the unloaded bullets, it does not seem to have any of these mushroom deformations. I'll trust that that bullets were made in spec in terms of shape and diameter when it came from xtreme, so that means something must have happened during the bullet seating process.
After thinking about it, I do remember several rounds that needed quite a bit of force to seat (something once again that did not happen with my other 9mm bullet weights), but afterwards I only measured the OAL to check that it was in spec and that was it. I'm going to guess that the extra force deformed the bullet -- something I missed observing during that reloading session -- squishing it lengthwise to cause the area above the neck to fatten up, and thus not fully chamber. Taking my trusty CZ75 barrel, I performed some drop-in tests and lo and behold, most rounds were ok but indeed these deformed rounds would not drop in freely all the way.
Why does this seem to happen for the 165 gr rounds? I don't believe it's because of powder blockage/compression -- many of the unfired 3.2 gr loads dropped in fine. It might be related to the extra length of the bullet and that length causing some issue with it being seated. Maybe I didn't flare the cases enough. Maybe I need to increase OAL to 1.16 or 1.18 . Or maybe my seating die has a problem. But these problems were not present for the other bullet weights. I don't like the idea of changing my setups to accommodate this bullet weight.
At the end of the day, I'm glad I only bought 250 of these and not more. While it is indeed super light recoiling, I don't think it's noticeably more light than 147. The extra problems induced make it a headache to reload quickly and efficiently. I will load up the rest, but I will also have to do the extra step of doing a drop-in test with my barrel and pulling any bad bullets -- an extra step I did not have to do for any of the other 9mm bullet weights. After these 250, I think I'll call it quits for 165 gr.
I bought 250 from xtreme, mostly out of curiousity in developing a really light recoiling load for my wife and newbie shooters. A little anxious though, because there's no real known data for this bullet in the powder I have (Universal clone CSB-1). So I had to extrapolate some charge weights from the known data for lighter bullets.
Loaded up 50 of them, 10 each for 2.8-3.2 gr in weight. OAL of 1.14 . I tried them out yesterday with some interesting results.
I only got through about 36 of them, mostly because I was encountering a particularly nasty malfunction. It seems like quite a few of the rounds (about 4-5 of them, all randomly occurring) would not chamber fully. So when the slide cycled and picked up said round, it would enter into the chamber partially but lock up before going fully into battery. I was using my CZ75b, so the purchase on the slide is not that great, and thus attempting to rack the slide to free the round did not work! It was completely jammed up. Perhaps the saving grace of using the CZ75b is that the round jammed the slide at the exact position in which it was possible disassemble the gun. I had to actually field strip the gun there (making sure it always pointed it down range, and without my finger entering the trigger guard), and then use a heavy object to hit the barrel lug forward to free it up. Very nasty and time consuming, as well as potentially unsafe if I screwed up my field strip procedure.
In terms of pressure, my testing went up to the 3.1 gr, all without sighs of overpressure. Unfortunately I don't have a chrony to measure the speeds, but accuracy was fine in the midrange (2.9-3.0 gr) and acceptable for others (probably more me than the rounds themselves). The recoil was mild, but it wasn't noticeably any more mild than my 147 gr loads. Because of the persistent malfunctions, I decided to stop there with this batch and take a look at the rounds when I got home.
So why did these malfunctions happen? All my other 9mm xtreme -- 115, 124, 147 gr -- have been very reliable and I never had this kind of malfunction before. I use Lee 9mm dies and I use the Lee crimp die as a last step which should theoretically resize the cartridge. On closer observation of the few rounds that failed, I noticed that the shape seemed a bit flattened and fat near the case neck, perhaps even mushroomed a bit. I probably should take a picture to show what I mean.. Measuring the diameter right above the case neck I find that it's actually much larger than .357, we're talking .36X. Taking a few of my trusted 147 gr rounds, the diameter above the neck is indeed much less than .357. I inspected the rest of the xtreme bullets that haven't been loaded yet, and for the most part it seems like the diameter is as advertised, .356. In fact, for the rest of the unloaded bullets, it does not seem to have any of these mushroom deformations. I'll trust that that bullets were made in spec in terms of shape and diameter when it came from xtreme, so that means something must have happened during the bullet seating process.
After thinking about it, I do remember several rounds that needed quite a bit of force to seat (something once again that did not happen with my other 9mm bullet weights), but afterwards I only measured the OAL to check that it was in spec and that was it. I'm going to guess that the extra force deformed the bullet -- something I missed observing during that reloading session -- squishing it lengthwise to cause the area above the neck to fatten up, and thus not fully chamber. Taking my trusty CZ75 barrel, I performed some drop-in tests and lo and behold, most rounds were ok but indeed these deformed rounds would not drop in freely all the way.
Why does this seem to happen for the 165 gr rounds? I don't believe it's because of powder blockage/compression -- many of the unfired 3.2 gr loads dropped in fine. It might be related to the extra length of the bullet and that length causing some issue with it being seated. Maybe I didn't flare the cases enough. Maybe I need to increase OAL to 1.16 or 1.18 . Or maybe my seating die has a problem. But these problems were not present for the other bullet weights. I don't like the idea of changing my setups to accommodate this bullet weight.
At the end of the day, I'm glad I only bought 250 of these and not more. While it is indeed super light recoiling, I don't think it's noticeably more light than 147. The extra problems induced make it a headache to reload quickly and efficiently. I will load up the rest, but I will also have to do the extra step of doing a drop-in test with my barrel and pulling any bad bullets -- an extra step I did not have to do for any of the other 9mm bullet weights. After these 250, I think I'll call it quits for 165 gr.
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