The Lee manual is good but lacking in some areas ... to fill in the gaps pick up a Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook 4th edition ... it has some good 9mm luger loads with many powders ... some of the best money you will ever spend if you reload Lead and if you reload lead bullets in the 9mm Luger .
Actually, Speer never made any cast bullets. They offer cold swaged lead bullets (soft). They only offer a 125 gr round nose for 9mm, and for Unique powder list a start charge of 4.1 gr with a max of 4.5 gr with a C.O.L. of 1.130”.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I have heard that Lee doesn’t actually test loads (they don’t have a ballistics laboratory), but merely reprint loading data from other published sources.
4th edition??
I agree with that 100%!
In all fairness if one does not trust modeling, one should not get in a car, a plane or go to work in a highrise. Validation of information is definitely a thing and starting at start is also a thing, along with quality inputs. Validating output with manuals in applicable senerios is advisable. A use case. One loads for 45c but wants 20kpsi loads. One could make a model run validating that the book max matches with the same model run and then the higher charge and pressure is at least single point sanity checked.
I agree that regression theory models are useful tools but I strongly disagree that they can replace test results. If nothing else at least admit the models are based on testing. This has to be the dumbest argument in all of handloading. The idea that a model can predict beyond the range of its input data without any testing results more accurately than testing results. That’s stupid. I don’t know a single real engineer who would suggest it
Somehow replacement got tossed in. I find modeling most useful in the absence of other data. Want to run 7.7 on aa4064 where's the data. The first protest is always that data isn't provided then obviously its not an appropriate powder. Considering it's very closely related to 30-06 and 303 that would be nonsensical. So do we just not use the powder we have because we know it's a good fit but there is no test data in a book. The next example is wild cats.... what do you do there.... it's a tool. And that tool should be given the best inputs you can feed it. It should be cross checked as possible, and outputs should be validated at adjustment made. It spits out a load range, you test start and tweak output to match your real life test.... at that point it's better than the book load and only getting better.....
There is an assumption of accuracy which is false. That’s dangerous. However, trying to claim a model quantifies data accurately in the absence of accurate inputs? That’s selling crazy. The list of assumptions made to create the curve is a disqualifier.
Unique is in every bullet weight of 9mm in the handgun section of the load data. In the rifle data section, it's in the 147 gr TMJ and 147 gr cast only.
As others have already alluded to, the answer, reduce the stated charge by 10%, is found in the site's instructions.
Yes ... Lyman Cast Bullet HandbooK 4th Edition ... dark blue soft bound covers , that's the one !
