Has anyone shot lead bullets in a .40 cal S&W. DO they lead? Is there a brand that works better for you? camcdaniel1@juno.com

Lead bullets are fine in your 40s&w as long as they are hard enough. I cast my own, so I haven't had any problems up to 1100fps or so from a USP & S&W. Some say you shouldn't shoot them in a Glock, I have w/o any ill effects. Use a hard bullet like the ones from Oregon Trail.

I shoot a S&W 610 revolver in 10mm/40S&W, and a Glock 23. I was told by another reloader that only new brass could be used in the Glock as part of the brass case near the head is unsupported. Thus, once fired brass in the Glock is near impossible to resize to use again. I never verified this for sure, as I only fire factory rounds in the Glock and use completely different brass exclusively for reloads in the 610. Needless to say, the Glock does not get shot much as the 610 is more fun to shoot, and cheaper too. Can someone else confirm this, or throw the bullshit flag on what I was told?

Johnny, the BS is flying. I have reloaded 1000s of rounds for my Glock17 & have never had a case head failure. I'm not saying it hasn't happened but it is safe to use reloaded brass in your Glock unless there is something wrong w/ the chamber/ramp in yours.

Shooter, If you aren't going to cast your own, the palted bullets by Ranier & Berry's are a cost effective alt. to jacketed w/o any of the leading problems. Check the prices @ Cabel's

The trouble isn't with the 9mm's it is with the Glock 40's. I always thought that it might be over blown until I picked up a bunch of 40 brass after the local sheriff dept shot I found several that had bulged cases. I do shoot reloads in my 40's and use cases more then once but I load them light.

Someone else suggested to me that the problem with cast bullets and Glocks is that cast bullets may be of slightly larger than nominal diameter, or have a shoulder protruding slightly at the front of the case, and in either case may prevent the round from easily fully chambering. He said that the Glock can be fired slightly out of battery, and this is potentially catastrophic. I don't know, I'm just repeating what I was told. But with my 1911 I've loaded rounds that hung up from the incompletely removed flare of the case mouth catching in the chamber and ending up just slightly short of full lockup, which in my case meant they wouldn't shoot. If it's true about firing out of battery, that'd be a big problem.

I don't have a .40 S&W, but have fired my friends SIG P229 in 40 S&W with his favorite handload. IT is a very accurate load. But the SIG is also a very accurate pistol.



He uses 170gr. LSWC Laser Cast (Oregon Trail) bullets and 4.8 gr. of Win 231 (borrowed from me). He loads them to min. OAL (1.135") because that's what it says in the book.



He said he didn't notice any excess lead build up during cleaning.



DaMan

I shoot lead bullets in my CZ 75 with 4.7 inch bbl, 20 pound recoil spring and longshot powder with no evidence of leading with 140 or 180 gr bullets.

However, I do carry a 40 cal Boresnake and run it through after 20 rounds. It's a snap with the breech locked open and the barrel hot. Velocities for the 140 gr cast bullets are over 1500 fps, but pressures are still pretty mild with the longshot.

The heavy spring is just to slow the slide down.

The problem with lead in a Glock has to do with the polygonal rifling they use. It leads. Replace the barrel with an aftermarket, land and groove type barrel and there is no problem. I have shot thousands of rounds of lead 40 and 357 sig through my Glock 23 using after market barrels with no problems.

This is gonna be part BS and part urban legend, but bear with me...

In days of yore there was the 10mm and that begat the .40s&w.

Apparently the 10mil ended up shooting through people with unintended consequences. But being that it was adopted by government agencies there was a metric ass-load of components made up for it, namely 180gr projectiles. As the 10mm was slowly turned into the black sheep, what to do with the 180gr bullets? Load them into the .40s&w and let the public get rid of them.

I may be wrong, and haven't looked it up in a manual recently, but I think the 180 gr .40s&w is probably one of the hottest rounds that can be shot in an autoloader.

So, start with an already hot round, add a chamber that doesn't fully support the case, throw in a possible bullet setback due to poor feeding, and you come up with the odd bulged case.

Could the lead bullet warning be tied to this? Dunno. Might be related to the rifling design.

I do know that I've shot 180gr rounds out of my glock 23 for at least 10 years now and haven't come across any bulged cases. Note that I don't hunt down every single empty, the rounds are too cheap not to buy them at wally-world.

Personal opinion is that if you do find the odd bulged case, switch to 150gr. That might give you just a little more wiggle room if you do have some bullet setback into the case.

Again, urban legend/BS. I don't have any facts to support my claims nor can I remember the website that talked about the setback problems leading to the bulged cases.

Don't let this keep you conspiracy theorists up at night...

BULLSHIT! There ya got that much anyway, no flags.

The polyaganal rifleing doesn't take kindly to SOFT lead bullets. That means the stuff zero puts out, the soft swaged lead bullets, lubed with parrafin wax. They would lead up a glock in a hurry. The probelm then comes from the buildup in the bore causes higher pressure. Couple that with loaders wanting factory power from their glocks. So they load to top velocity with fast burning powders that produce high chamber pressures.

Yes the unsupported part of the case where the feed ramp is CAN bulge the case.

I have NO trouble getting rid of the bulge with the combination of lee carbide sizer dies and the lee Factory crimp die. The lee FCD has a carbide ring in it's bottom that further sizes any case with a bulge that didn't quite get ironed out in the sizer.

Then I use a slower burning powder which stretches the pressure over a longer time to minimize the bulge. I have shot quite a few lead bullets through my glock 22 with no problems. I shoot a lot more west coast plated bullets, again with no problems.

Wonder how the old Whitworth muzzleloaders used to shoot so well with polygonal bores and pure lead bullets?

There is what the late great Gale McMillian said conflicting with what poster at Glocktalk say who have shot 10's of thousands of hard cast bullets.

AT:
http://www.thefiringline.com/forums/index.php
According to the late great:
Gale McMillan
Posted: 10-05-1999 10:23 AM
The reason that a polygonal barrel will blow up when shooting lead is
not due to fouling. It is that the soft lead wants to skid and if it
does it locks up between two rifling flats and the pressure goes sky
high. When I was making polygon rifle barrels the lead lap I used to
lap the barrels some times would lock up and the only way you could get
it out was to melt it out. If it were very hard lead it would help but
why take the chance?

I'm scratching my head in befuddlement as to how that could happen.

my .02 on the bulge. Yes you can resize the bulge in the .40 Glock (and there are other non supported designs) That is part of the problem. The situation is worst with hotter rounds. Here is the problem. Hotter rounds have greater heat and the brass cools slowly. The bulge is there and it is resized working it each time. The brass at the base becomes brittle from heat and working and since it expands each time it creates a formula for failure. As the brass becomes more and more brittle just ahead of the web at some point a failure occures. To load this brass more than a handfull of times is courting a burst case. It is like the saying about computer hard drives. the question is if the drive will crash and die it is when. We all know that different brass mfgs. have different formulas. Some brass is softer than others and some are thicker at the web than others. It is a dice game you cant't win. Brass gets brittle with age alone and we all know that working brass and heat will do the same. It's just not worth blowing out the bottom of your pistol for saving a few bucks on new brass. Bottom line, we know this stuff about brass why would one think it does not apply to the .40 in a unsupported chamber? JB

I've fired thousands of hardcast bullets in 9mm and .40 S&W in the past 15 years. Very little in Glocks, mostly S&W 5903's(9mm) and SIG 226,229's (.40 S&W).With Zero problems.

I do use hardcast bullets, trunctated or semi wadcutters, designed for autos. I use a light or medium load nothing near max pressures.

As far as the unsupported case deal. I saw two case failures over the years with autos. One was with factory ammo and a glock forty. Reportedly it was factory ammo but I'm not so sure. VERY scary! The case ruptured at the web. The gas went into the magazine, spit the mag out and split the frame. It does happen but IMHO its more of a firing out of battery than case failure problem.

FN in MT

I had a Glock 23 at one point that I fired with a lot of handloads. I stuck with jacketed 155 grainers, and used Blue Dot, and still got a slight bulge on the cases. I traded that gun in and got a Smith .45 instead, as the bulging brass made me nervous about a blowup, and I don't like shooting factory ammo any more than I need to.

My suggestion is don't bother trying to handload for a Glock .40. Get a SIG or Smith instead.