Need help with .30 bullet selection

[Sieger]

Originally Posted by CptCurl

It's amazing the years that have gone by since the last posts to this thread. Doesn't seem that long.

I'm back to the loading bench with the 7.65mm Parabellum. There have been some changes since my last dabble with this little round. The DWM 7.65mm Luger I was shooting back then is gone. A friend talked me out of it. In its place I have a super nice DWM 1920 Commercial. I had this pistol back then, but I wasn't shooting it. It's almost like new. The other was more of a "shooter" in terms of condition. Through the intervening years I haven't been shooting the little 7.65mm.

Within the past year I bought a Sig P210 chambered in 7.65mm. Why, I don't know. I already had one in 9mm. This hobby is a sickness!

Not long after I got it, I took the Sig to my range with some of the ammo I had loaded back in 2011. These rounds were loaded with the Rainier plated 100 gr. .312" bullets. I quickly found this loading was not going to work. The neck dimensions of the Sig chamber are too small to take a cartridge loaded with a .312" bullet. Out of curiosity I tried them in my other DWM and found it was too tight also. They had fit perfectly in the DWM I was shooting back in 2011. It shows you must be alert to any changes.

I bought a .309" Lee push-through sizing die. Today I shoved 20 of the Rainier bullets through the sizing die and found they came out with a diameter of .3095". Perfect! As an aside, I had lubed the bullets with anhydrous lanolin to easy their journey through the die.

Just now I have loaded several rounds using once-fired Fiocci brass, a Remington small pistol primer, 5.2 grains of SR4756, and my re-sized bullets seated to 29mm = 1.142" OAL. These fit the chamber of my Sig perfectly and also fit its magazine. I haven't tried them for fit in the Luger, but I fully expect them to fit perfectly there also.

My plans are to try them at the range tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Curl

Hi Curl,

Your powder and charge weight look about right to me, though you might want to ladder down or up 1/10 of a grain at a time to assure excellent accuracy and perfect function.

Recently, here on the board, another handloader (Scutzenbob) found 1.58 lnches to be the correct O.A.L for a Luger with these specific bullets; though regular DWM 7.65 truncated cone bullets, were, indeed, loaded to 29mms. If 29mms of O.A.L. is working well for you with these specific bullets, I'm surely not one to argue with success!

As stated in my previous postings above, the .312s chambered and fired perfectly for me in my 7.65 Luger. They did the same for Schutzenbob. For his load workup, he used Winchester WSF powder with much success.

Enjoy that new Sig!!


Sieger