Anyone Shoot Berry's

[Greg35]

While working up a 9mm load (124gr Berrys HBRN/TP, CFE, & trimmed brass with primer pockets and flash holes uniformed) I took a G19 and a 365 just because they are my two most often carry guns. A little while in I noticed the 365 seemed to be shooting much more accurately than the G19. I attributed it to the load/recipe and carried on. Then my surprise, the G19 was not shooting up to par with my regular factory ammo either.

Inspection showed some lead fouling on the G19. I can almost rationalize it to myself as ‘longer barrel = more pressure’ but I was no where near a maximum load and had only shot about 75 rounds in each. Just for S&G I also verified the land to land and valley to valley dimensions measured at the muzzle are nearly identical between the two firearms.

So… has anyone else experienced rapid fouling with thick plate Berrys or has anyone seen the Gen5 G19 to be more sensitive for fouling for some reason? I had expected the opposite from the limited research I had done on the Berrys before hand. (Can’t find HAPs anywhere)

[MarkinMT]

I have shot a few, however not in a Gen5 as I don’t have one. I have not noticed any undue fouling in the ones I have shot.

One thing you might check, if you have not, is your crimp. With plated you should run a very little to no crimp. If you cut the jacket you can get fouling. Just a thought. I used to run my own cast lead in my Gen4s, so I may have a different view on “fouling”.

[Brian139]

I have not. So, my questions are as follows. First, what were you shooting before Barry’s? Second, did you clean it prior to shooting the Barry’s and are you sure that the fouling was from the Barry’s bullets? Was it lead or copper fouling? If its lead, are you belling the case mouth enough so that you are not shaving the jacket when you seat the bullet?

[Greg35]

@MarkinMT It’s a thought worth checking. I don’t expect that I’m exposing lead because one gun seemed to have a problem and the other didn’t. Also I did check for flaking as part of my setup process and didnt notice any. I dont do a heavy bell/flare but it is there for sure. Maybe I will put one together and pull the round to see what it looks like next time I’m at the bench.

As far your view of fouling versus mine, I probably wouldn’t of even looked down the pipe till the end of the day if it wasn’t shooting like a shotgun (slight exaggeration for effect)

[Greg35]

@Brian139. Before Berrys was commercial ammo. Probably S&B or Remington.
I didn’t clean it right before shooting, but I usually field strip and run a bore snake 3 or 4 passes before packing up when I shoot, so if it was bad before I would likely of noticed (I think)
As far as type of fouling there was deffinately some lead in it, but I do believe I am belling enough. I would think that if I was cutting through the plating I would have had issues in the 365 also.
Heck I even trimmed the brass to length just to eliminate another variable while working up a load. This should give me a very consistent bell.

[MarkinMT]

I could be full of gas here, however from my experience barrels will react differently to fouling. In that my Gen4 barrels with lead fouling would get progressively worse on the accuracy side, while one of my regular rifled ones would look deadful and still be shooting just fine. I have not shot lead in quite a few years now, so perhaps it is just my old memory being wrong. When I first started with plated I was crimping too much, and I was cutting into the lead. Coming from lead, the bell for me was not an issue. I tend to crimp hard. However, compared to a lead round, it really was not that much anyway.

Now, I will offer another view, and that is of bullet size. I found that certain bullets were not big enough to work well in my Glocks (some barrels were worse than others), so what I was getting was powder residue baked in there from shooting, not lead so much. This is blow by from the bullet not seating as well in the barrel. I have not ever seen that with any of my other pistols (I did with one rifle).

I have pretty much gone back to all jacketed now. If you are looking for something that is akin to the HAP, I suggest you check out the MPR from RMR Bullets.

[Greg35]

Thanks and hmmmm. Now I have some things to think about &/or research tonight.
I think my most telling next step will be to seat a few and pull them to see what I get.
Regarding diameter the berrys are .356 but they are hollow base so I dont really know how much this helps, or hurts, with sealing. Or if that could even make them susceptible to being ‘squeezed’ (diameter reduction) during seating.
You mentioned rifling, doesnt Glock have a unique rifling groove?

[Greg35]

@MarkinMT
I found this while reading some of the 124 gr MPR reviews.

“One thing i ran into while reloading these for my G19 Gen5 was due to glocks marksman barrel the bullets had to be seated to an OAL of 1.055 or less to properly chamber the round, any greater and the bullet made contact with the rifling before the case was fully chambered and not allowing to go into full battery. Its a Gen5 thing and nothing to due with the bullet. So to possibly help the next guy, i loaded with 4.8gn of CFE with a oal of 1.055 and chronographed at 1101fps with a dv of 9.9, i was very happy with that load.”

Obviously I can’t compare the Berry’s OAL to this guys, but his comments make me think there there really are some ‘special’ things about the gen5 19.

I used to spend a lot of time getting free bore and other things just right on my rifles. Never really thought I would be massaging stuff even as much as I already have for 9mm though.

[MarkinMT]

You are getting into some things that are particular to brands, or where they are made. European barrels tend to have zero throat, where US ones have some. So, you may have to set the bullets back a bit more. This is VERY common with CZ, so I ran into it long long ago. I load all my stuff to the shortest throat. Look up the “plunk test” and that will help you understand. The polygonal rifling that was used by Glock up to Gen4 is generous in this area. Like I said, I have zip experience with the Gen5 stuff.

The hollow base on the Berry’s “should” help it to expand, in theory.

[Craig6]

I’m not sure if it’s germane to the conversation but in my precision rifles I have noticed that shooting different manufacturer boolits will sometimes produce significant changes in accuracy. I can interchange Berger 210’s with Hornady AMAX 208’s all day long and they will go into the same hole. If I shoot a Sierra through it there is no telling where the next 20+ rounds will go. If I take the tube back down to steel after 50 give or take rounds of Sierra all is well and happy, shift to Berger or Hornady and it’s a crap show and never reaches full potential until I scrub it out and start over. This is a high performance rifle and I have multiple documented <3.5" groups at 1K with it, actually one of the best groups I ever shot was ALTERNATING Berger and Hornady rounds, 10 shots, end of the day in a touch under 3" @ 1K.

It may be worth a try to experiment as above. I know jack about Glocks or their barrels but early on there was much talk about lead and the polygonal rifling in their tubes. It’s been so long ago that I don’t even remember what the consensus was.

I would submit the final question is how does it shoot with your defensive rounds after running Berry’s or other through it?

Cheers,

Craig6

[MarkinMT]

@Craig6 I think it adds to the discussion. As I stated above, Glocks, at least up through Gen4, have polygonal rifling. A few other makers do as well. So, they tend to ‘smear’ with lead bullets, and foul up pretty good. Yes, it voids the warranty, may blow up, etc etc etc. The barrels look like hills and valleys rather than lands and grooves. Yes, I did shoot a ton of my own cast lead through the barrels, no problem, since that is what I could afford at the time (melted wheel weights actually). Nasty stuff. Do not recommend it. Kept me shooting though. I just cleaned them a lot more often, like every 200 rounds instead of every 500 to 1000. Sorry, I have digressed.

Neat discussion!

[Craig6]

@MarkinMT back in the day when I was shooting thousands of rounds a week, some on my dime most on Uncles I would actually take a propane torch to my barrel after shooting a bunch of lead through it. The amount of lead that came out of the other end was startling to say the least. I tried the shoot FMJ through it after a bunch of lead to “clean it out” but found that made a lead and copper sammich. There was some experimentation with mercury but cancer, contamination and availability kind of nixed that. I did find that a good copper "base coat"made it much easier to get the lead out.

Cheers,

Craig6

[larry84]

Greg35, I have found in the past that the folks at Berrys are great at finding answers for you. They do a large amount of testing in a large number of weapons, leading or other problems must be addressed quickly due to their contracts with military and law enforcement.
A quick call and a discrption of the problem will IMHO net you an answer and may lead to a product/loading improvement.

Larry

[Greg35]

@MarkinMT @Craig6
Plunk test, yup I get it. In the past with rifles (distant past) I went through guages that index off of a bore sized orfice and other wiz bang widgets until I eventually learned that what worked best for me was to just

• make up a dummy round (without sizing the neck all the way back down)
• chamber it in the rifle and let the lands be the depth stop. Yup just drive it into the case.
• put the dummy round in the press and run the ram into the seating die. Then turn the seating shoe down to ‘find’ the bullet
• The last step was to take a couple of thousandths off of the OAL using a micrometer head depth adjuster in the seating die.

This worked well for me because i was running my brass fire formed and only neck sized in bolt guns.

I hadn’t really figured on learning all my individual chambers or turning this particular venture into science, but why not stack up the dominoes and start the chain reaction.

The good news is I’m probably saving about $0.005 on each 9mm plinking round if I consider that I already had the brass and my time is worth absolutely nothing.

10 rounds inside 3" @ 1k… you have my respect and admiration.
Defensive rounds after Berry’s in the g19…hmmmm I bet you grinned when you typed that… . I’ve been carrying the 365 since this little boondoggle started. I did bench clean the g19 after this though so I’ll have to re-booger it up if I decide to run that test.

[Craig6]

@Greg35 In general I have gotten away from OAL as a measurement and much prefer to to Ogive length seating. I’m also pretty fond of powder fill volume at 100% at initial dump. I will seat to a “long” ogive length, tapp on the bench twice and let them set and then go back for the final adjustment seat. Rarely more than 0.005" to final. Possum Hollow (now Hornady I think) as well as Sinclair’s have ogive seating tools, for precision distance efforts I think it is worthy of having as the “jump” is as good as I can make it and OAL is disregarded.

Don’t think I grinned, I know a lot of folks that shoot lead for practice then reload with the “good stuff” I give them the same caution.

For GP pistol ammo I have one powder charge weight per boolit weight and one seating depth (via OAL ) and I check case length via a couple fender washers nutted to some all thread. If it fits, load it, if not, toss it. I don’t trim pistol brass.

Cheers,

Craig6

[Greg35]

@Craig6. Just to make sure I’m picking up what your laying down. Two taps is to settle powder and fill volume at 100% is a compressed load???

I absolutely get what you say on ogive seating. That’s essentially where my approach was aimed with finding the distance to the lands and taking a couple thousandths off. Actually now you have me trying to remember what kind of seating shoe I had/have in my dies. Anyway, it wouldn’t of mattered that much for me because I was shooting high power KD so anything under a minute was icing on the cake.

[Craig6]

@Greg35 I bounced mine off the table twice because if I didn’t I would sometimes get “push back” from the powder. I didn’t believe it was possible until I checked it. 100% case fill is NOT a compressed load and a load poured into a funnel that hit’s the neck is not 100% case fill. You can also see how much your “real” case fill is by placing a powdered case on a vibratory tumbler and watch the powder “sink” in the case.

I double tap the case after the primary seat just to get the powder to “kind of” settle down for the final seat. The 100+ mile road trip to the competition takes care of the rest.

I did the KD High Power thing from 88 to 94 on the Navy Team. When I got back from Perry in 94 my rifle went into the safe and did not come out until 17 when I got invited to an old farts match. I still suck at Awfulhand but I cleaned 600 and 1K. with a fist full of X’s in both. I bet I was the only guy there shooting Mexican Match M-852 with D-47 Lapua’s.

Cheers,

Craig6

[Greg35]

I put this together mostly just ‘because I can’ and because I’m curious.

Shown in the picture below (from left to right) are:

• Speer 124 gr TMJ bulk bullets
• Berrys 124 gr HBRN/TP bulk bullets
• Federal 115 gr FMJ pulled from factory load
• Sig 124 gr V-Max pulled from factory load

My observations from this are essentially meaningless but still a little intresting to show the difference between quality construction and plinking rounds:

• the lead in the v-crown is unquestionably superior to the others. Did not gall like the others when it was lapped to show the thickness of the jacket and it is easy to see that it must have a higher density due to having about the same physical cross section as the 115 gr Federal.
• Federal factory plinking ammo has the least plating of any of the rounds shown
• speer and berrys bulk bullets plating is about twice as thick as the federal FMJ
• the v-crown bonded jacket is orders of magnitude thicker than the others and if you look at its base it is extremely thick (comparitively), which should help maintain dimensional stability under pressure.

And there you have it. Factoids for everyone.