Odd Day At The Range

[KN]

I went to the pistol range today to practice with my carry gun, a Kahr P-9 covert. when I first bought the gun I tried several brands of premium ammo for it and ended up using Winchester Silvertips. I tried Hydra-shocks and they grouped terrible. My normal practice load is a 115gr ball over 5grs of W-231 using a mixed lot of brass and it Works real well. Now the odd part. I loaded the nickel brass from the Hydra-shocks with the same load, at the same time, as the rest of my practice loads and my groups fell completely apart. If I go back to the mixed brass the groups look great. The only variable is the nickel brass. Any one else ever seen a huge difference in groups from a pistol just from a particular brass? I know there will be some variances but this was huge. 1-1/2" groups from my mixed brass to all over the paper with the nickel brass. Any thoughts?   KN

[jhalcott]

probably hard necks in the nickel brass, squeezing/deforming the bullet. Had this happen with my 358JDJ using nickel brass and cast bullets.

[Duffy]

I had some Fed nickel and regular Fed brass and the plain would always out shoot the nickle. I sort of blamed it on the nickel being slicker on the inside, lowering psi, changing ballistics yada yada yada.... I also had a similar instance with some powder. Loaded up some acp's with Universal Clays.  The ES on the load was around 120 fps or worse but they shot the best of all the loads I tested that day. Go figure....  :?

[KN]

I considered the cases being slicker as a problem. It did seem like the rounds did not recoil quite as much as the brass cased ones. And my practice load is on the low side. Maybe my velocity is too low using the nickel cases. I cant really get a great crimp on 9mm rounds. I'll load a new batch of both and run them across the chrono and see what happens.   KN

[MnMike]

Interesting. I have a Contender in 7-30 Waters that seems to shoot better with factoy loads than with my handloads. I have been using nickel brass (I bought a hundred) for my handloads. The factorys are pure brass. I will have to try using some of my factory brass cases to see if it makes a difference.

mike

[KN]

Well I loaded another batch using both brass and nickel cases. I ran them through the crono and only saw a 20fps difference between the two. The brass ran 1150 and the nickel ran 1130 avg. I also shot some factory silvertips and got about 1120 so I don't think velocity as any thing to do with it. I'll shoot them for accuracy next time I get a chance. Maybe I was just having one of those days.   KN