[hcker2000]

I payed 12.95 for 50 rounds of white box winchester 9x18 ammo. I think I will be ordering online from now on because its alot cheaper.

[jem375]

Barnaul, S&B, and Wolf are cheaper..........

[DT Guy]

Maks were made for cheap, steel cased Soviet block ammo.

You're going to screw it up feeding it the good stuff :D


Larry

[MrTuffPaws]

Honestly, buy the stuff on line. You can get it for around 1000 per $100 if you look hard enough.

I have seen 9x18 on the shelf for $18 a box. I kid you not.

[hcker2000]

Yea I didnt have many brands to chose from. It was winchester or cci both the same price.

I'm going to order some when I get payed (probably 150 rounds). Any one know if the pa-63 will eat HP's or not? I want to know before I buy some because they are expensive. Maby this is the hand gun that will make me start loading my own when I get the money.

Well I was browsing I saw some shot shells from cci (none in 9x18 of corse) but they looked like they would be fun play with some time aside from they very high cost of them.

Oh and I know this would be a bad bad bad bad bad idea to do to a full round but has any one ever taken a bullet (just the coper and lead part) and drilled it to make hollow points? Seems like it would work to me from the HP's I have seen. Just would need to use a farly good size bit compared to the ammo. Agine DO NOT be stupid and try this with a loaded round.

[wingman]

The pa63 does not like "some" HP I recommend staying away from anything
over 95gr with the pa63, the white box is ideal for the pa63, wolf and some other brands are too hot for this gun and its alloy frame. The mak will stand
more pressure then the pa63, I have both but reload.

[M2 Carbine]

My PA-63 is not reliable with HP ammo.

$13 for 9x18 is a ripoff.

If you order small amounts of ammo online the shipping will probably still make the cost per box way too high.
If you have any friends that shoot 9x18 you could chip in and buy a case at a time.
I usually order a couple cases when I order and sell my friend the few boxes he uses so he gets the bulk discount also.

If you have decent gun shows in your area, the foreign 9x18 usually sells for $5-6 a box.

The 9x18 is a good round to reload.
My lead RN reload is very accurate and mild to shoot.
The big problem is .364 lead bullets are hard to find. I case my own.

9mm brass can be cut down to 18mm lenght with a cheap LEE 9mm case trimmer, ground back to trim the brass to 18mm.
This is a very cheap source of 9x18 brass.
When the East German Makarovs were first imported Makarov ammo was hard to find and very expensive.
I trimmed a thousand or so 9mm cases down to 18mm and the cases are still in use today, mixed in with my factory 9x18 brass.

[Ukraine Train]

I picked up a few boxes of Wolf at Cabela's for $6.50ea. I've seen it at gun shows for $6ish.

[Kramer Krazy]

$90 for 1000 rounds - http://www.aimsurplus.com/acatalog/copy_of_Brown_Bear_9x18_FMJ.html

[M2 Carbine]

And the shipping should be about $13+.

I just received a case of .380 from AIM and the shipping was $13.

[hcker2000]

Is the wolf to hot to run with a spring kit in the pa-63? I'm not to worried about shooting heavyer loads I was just hoping some HP's would work in it.

So did any one have any comments about my idea of "drilling out" the bullet portion so that it was similar to a hollow point before loading it in the the brass? The reson I wonder about that is because if you drilled out the bullet from a winchester round (the round nose fmj type) then you could make the hole alot smaller than normal HP rounds and it may expand better. This is all just hear say and conjecture on my part as I don't do much work with guns. Would be interesting none the less to see the results.

[M2 Carbine]

As long as you stay with bullets in the 95 to 100 grain range the PA-63 will handle them fine. There is no factory 9x18 ammo, that I know of, that is loaded "hot". All the 95 to 100 grain rounds that I've chronographed is in the normal 1,000 FPS range.
Going to a heavier recoil spring, 19-21 pound, is a good idea even in the Makarov when shooting a steady diet of 115-120 grain bullets or hot reloads.

Drilling out a bullet is pretty much a waste of time.
It takes a modern well designed HP bullet to reliably expand in the 1,000 FPS range of the 9x18.
I have a case of Fiocchi that has a very rounded JHP bullet, primarily designed to feed like a RN FMJ bullet.
Those Fiocchi expand VERY poorly and are a hundred times a better bullet than a drilled out JHP.

In the 1960's there was a great deal of 30.06 surplus ammo and new Springfield 03A3 and 03A4 rifles were $14.50 a piece.
I used to file about 1/8 inch off the nose of the bullet and it would expand pretty well.
Of course that was at least a 150 grain bullet doing aver 2700 FPS.

[SouthpawShootr]

One thing you need to consider with Wolf (and other ammo from former Soviet-bloc countries) is that many, many of these have bullets that have soft steel core. Most indoor ranges prohibit these b/c they tend to spark when impacting the armor. In fact, a local range nearly burned down several years ago b/c sparks from these bullets ignited something downrange. The range that I have a membership with expressly prohibits these bullets. If the bullet (not the case) is magnetic, you can't use it. Of the 3 remaining local indoor ranges, 2 of them prohibit this type of bullet. That's the bad news. It'll keep you from using the cheapest of the available ammo for indoor shooting. The good news is if you're outdoor, you're all set. Also, I've found S&B 9mm Mak ammo to be non-magnetic. I think the last time I bought some, I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $7/box of 50. I've burned up 1000s of rounds of their 9mm Luger ammo and it's never given me a problem.

BTW, I've been told that S&B makes 9 Mak ammo under contract for resale under the name of several US ammomakers. One of those is Winchester. Don't know it it's true.

[hcker2000]

Humm all good points. I still think it would be neet to try a drilled out bullet and see what happens at point of inpact. Flatning the tip on 30-06 sounds intersting. I wonder if the same would hold true for a 9x18 (probably woulden't expand as much because of the lower fps though). Only JHP I have laying around are from a .243 winchester round and my 7.62x39's. I notice that on the winchester there are slices in the copper jacket to allow it to expand. The wolf JHP's don't have this so I'm guessing the don't expand as well.

Any chance you could post some pics of the Fiocchi ammo? I'm guessing this is one of the only few that will cycle in a pa-63?

Also dose all wolf have steal core bullets? I held up the 7.62x39 that I have and it seems to be attracted to the bullet but it is hard to tell as the casing is steel.