9mm 158 gn load

[40s&w]

so I found out that I can size 158gn .358 plated Berry's bullets to .356 by inserting the .358 in to a fired .38 spl case and running it in a sizer die with primer rod removed. I want to load it but hardly can find any data for the 3 powders I got. if you can help that will be great . i have titegroup/unique/power pistol. I will be using a 4 inch fnp40 with a 9mm conversion.

[J-cat]

Why not just leave it .358" and load it.

[40s&w]

Cant shoot a 358 in a 355/356 will brake my gun ..

[Rwnielsen]

You need to be a little cautious here. You have a resized bullet that is now heavy (and longer) for the caliber as well as reduced case capacity because of deeper seating to chamber it. Both of those will increase pressures.
Any starting load for 9mm, 147g, could be too high

[call-in]

Because of the lube rings cut on the sides of a 147gr cast bullet, it ends up being too long and starts to get squeezed by the case's increasing thickness therefore a lot of them have boat-tails, I wonder if the 158 would be long enough to need a boat-tail also.

[GeoffLinder]

Make sure the OAL used does NOT push the bullet ogive into the lands of the barrel on chambering. This may require a fairly short OAL. You will need to test with a dummy loaded round to find this out. Once that is settled you will want to take 147gr starting load and drop at least 5% from that for your start load or take 12-15% off a max load for 147gr at the minimum.

Start way low with powder charge and you will be safe IF the bullet is not hitting the lands on chambering!

[Beelzy]

This is not a good thing to do.....the case will bulge, a lot.

[J-cat]

Cant shoot a 358 in a 355/356 will brake my gun ..

No it wont. How do you know your groove diameter is .356"?

[J-cat]

This is not a good thing to do.....the case will bulge, a lot.

I shoot .359" bullets in my 9's all the time. The cases bulge more than with .355" but they chamber just fine.

[40s&w]

slugged my barrel and its at .356. it will load with no case issue and because it is flat nose no issue with the OAL and chamber fine. I loaded some and will update as soon as I am back from the range.

[wtkaiser]

Width and length be damned - THAT A HEAVY BULLET for 9mm, and that's why you can't find reloading data for it. Guys way more capable than you or I have determined that 147 is as high as you can practically go. 158 is for .38s and .357s. I'd leave it at that.

[GeoffLinder]

Width and length be damned - THAT A HEAVY BULLET for 9mm, and that's why you can't find reloading data for it. Guys way more capable than you or I have determined that 147 is as high as you can practically go. 158 is for .38s and .357s. I'd leave it at that.

I have successfully loaded 160gr hard cast in 9mm and it works just fine. Only real problem is it has a trajectory like a mortar, but again, it works just fine.

[buffybuster]

Cant shoot a 358 in a 355/356 will brake my gun ..

Who said?

It depends on the chamber.

IMI used to have a 9mm subgun load with a 158gr bullet.

[rsrocket1]

I hope you don't take this as offensive, but if you think running a .358" plated bullet will "break" your .356" barrel, you have no business trying to shoot a 158g bullet in 9mm. The seating depth will be absolutely critical and a few 10's of mils can be the difference between a squib (stuck bullet) with too little powder and too long a COL, and a kaboom with too much powder and too deep a seat.

Titegroup is way too fast for such a load, Power Pistol will require too much powder and too much compression for a decent velocity, Unique may be your best choice, but it will probably be compressed which is actually pretty good for Unique, but it is very sensitive in that condition.

I run 120g bullets with 12% compression and get very good burn and consistent velocities with 4.2g Unique and .28" seat depth and 1100 fps out of my M&P 40 converted to 9mm. BTW, the lead bullets drop out at .357" and the barrel slugs at 0.3545" and the gun does not "break".

With a 158g bullet, a 4.4g load of Unique will give you a peak pressure of about 28 kpsi. Seat it only 0.065" deeper and the pressure goes up to 41 kpsi.

Stay safe.

[J-cat]

Bob Forker did an article many years ago on shooting 158gr bullets in the 9mm. He used, among other powders, Bullseye. I QuickLoaded a 158gr LRN on top of 3grs of Bullseye at an OAL of 1.120" and it yielded 890 FPS and 33000 PSI which mimics what Forker and Lyman got when they did their tests. Lyman lists 3.5grs of Bullseye as max with their 358311 bullet, BTW.