I am not going to spend a huge bunch of time on casting in this post. Everyone has tons of content on that aspect. I am going to cover how my brand new MP hollow point mold worked and how the projectiles and alloys worked.

Maybe the Christmas before I got a MP round point 147 grain mold to cast and reload a bunch of target rounds. I liked the bullet and reloaded maybe 700 or so. I used 3.6 grains of N320 as my powder and set the OAL at 1.145″. I tested both our G17 and G19 barrels for fit and my daughter Springfield XD. The fit was good for all three, they shot well.

So now I needed to get get the same thing, but in a hollow point. Once here I got to casting and ran one pot of wheel weight lead and air cooled the bullets and then another pot of soft lead to cast some others.

Bullets as cast from the mold and ready for powder coat
Wheel weight lead bullets powder coated green
Pure lead bullets powder coated red to be identified.

I used the same 3.6 grains of N320 but changed the OAL to 1.083 as that is the measurement that seemed right for the G17 barrel when checking seated rounds. Now we can test them and see how soft lead compares to Wheel weight for shooting and expansion.

Wheel weighs at 10 yards seems to work rather well. I don’t shoot my Glock near enough and the pull right and lack of a better cluster is probably all my fault. I tend to favor shooting my 45LC revolver, it is just NOT a carry pistol!

Above is 10 yards with soft lead and the group is opening vs. the wheel weight bullets, but its is not really grouping. the WW bullets were pulling right and that is from me. The lead is drifting left and that is from the bullets being unstable.

Above is pure lead and 15 – 16 yards and only got 2 on the paper at that distance. I would not want to count on these for self defense if I had any range between myself and my attacker! I’ll either get dead missing him or hit unintended targets and have other problems.

Here above is the soft lead bullet pulled form the 55 gallon barrel. It weighed in at 155.5 grains and an expansion on the front to .779″ and a very good killing round, but not a very good round for accuracy.

Above is the Hollow point, MP mold in wheel weight alloy and air cooled. They bullets retain accuracy better and still expand and did not fragment. The bullet weighed 153.6 grains and had an expansion of .5545″ and that is over a 1/2″ and not too bad.

The original MP Mold that got me started casting for 9mm reloading. They shoot and chambers very well, but it is a hole puncher! This is the exact same lead allow as the green HP round above. This one weighted 148 grains and did not expand at all. It still measure .354 and exactly the same size as when resized in the Glock barrel.

My conclusions; The soft lead is just not accurate enough to justify using it in the 9mm cartridge, except inside a house only. Over ten yards and it is off target. The wheel weight bullets shoot well and mushroom enough to deliver energy to the target. The round point bullet, while shooting well, is just going to ventilate an attacker and probably pass through. It should be a target round only.

I think going in I figured the soft lead would fail and not retain accuracy. I was hoping the powder coat would stabilize it, but that is not the case. The WW hollow points will be my go to going forward and the round points will never be anything but a target, practice round unless SHTF and nothing matters. I might play with mixing wheel weight lead and pure lead to lower the hardness and see if that can retain accuracy and expand any better.

Enjoy!