Keyhole with 9mm Remington 147 Golden Saber

[Wayne Dobbs]

I've wondered about twist rate.

Last summer, I tested a number of hand loads with cast bullets in this G17 and another G17 with a Wilson Combat barrel while I was getting ready for a deer hunt. (Deer where I hunt are really small and 30 yards is a long shot, so I figured the G17 would be OK.) I quickly found a load with the 124-grain XTP that outshot every factory load I've ever tried in this gun, so I switched to fiddling with cast bullets. Neither WC barrel shot 0.356" cast bullets well at any velocity from 800-1,100 fps. I switched to 125-grain cast bullets sized 0.358" and pushed to about 1,150 fps. Groups improved considerably in both guns, shooting almost as well as the XTP load, but went south again with 0.358" 140-grain bullets at 950-1,000 fps. One barrel would barely keep 10 rounds on the paper at 25 yards--making keyholes about half the time. The biggest surprise was that both pistols shot 125-grain cast bullets very well in the OEM barrels. One of them even shot better with the cast bullet in the OEM barrel than it did with the XTP load in the WC barrel.

So yeah, there's a certain mystery to it...


Okie John

Can you share the XTP load you developed? I'm always looking for great 115 and 124 grain 9mm loads.

[okie john]

Can you share the XTP load you developed? I'm always looking for great 115 and 124 grain 9mm loads.

5.5 grains of Unique, once-fired Sellier & Bellot case, Winchester small pistol primer. Alliant lists 5.8 as the max for a 124-gr. slug but I stopped at 5.5 because velocity was a little faster than it should have been and I was concerned about pressure getting out of hand. Velocity was about 1,190 fps. Extreme spread was around 25-30 fps. Standard deviation was in single digits.

I cut the charge to 4.4 for the cast .358" cowboy bullet.


Okie John

[Wayne Dobbs]

Thanks, okie john. I've killed lots of deer with a pistol, mostly in .45 ACP/AR, but finally popped one with the 9mm last year. One shot and crash in its tracks...

[okie john]

Thanks, okie john. I've killed lots of deer with a pistol, mostly in .45 ACP/AR, but finally popped one with the 9mm last year. One shot and crash in its tracks...

You're welcome. That outcome isn't really surprising.

The deer around here are tiny and shots are usually inside of 30 yards, and I've killed several with .429" and .452" bullets at 1,100 fps. I've wanted to get one with a 9 for a while now, and a fast 124 seemed like the best balance of trajectory and bullet weight. I zeroed that load an inch high at 25 yards, which put it an inch low at 50, so even if the typical range doubled I'd still be OK. But it looks like the game regs have changed on me this year, so based on GJM's posts about the HK USP 45, I'm testing one of those.

Vamos a ver.


Okie John