9mm Reloaded Accuracy Advise Please

Is that typical of the accuracy you see with other ammo? I can typically put 10 shots inside 2" at 25m with a rest. But a lot comes down to your skill and practice shooting for groups. If you ignore the flyers (likely you not the load) it's ok.

Based on that target, the accuracy is poor since it looks like a 10" spread. It could be the bullets, the powder, the gun or any combination.

If you're pursuing accuracy, you'll need to try different bullets and powders. The bullet is usually the most important component in accuracy. Flat nose bullets tend to shoot more accurately than round nose bullets, but it depends on the bullet. Generally, jacketed bullets tend to be more accurate than lead or plated bullets, but it depends on the bullet.

You should get better results with little bit slower powders that use heavier charge weights.
I want to try 3N37, it's probably like 3x the price of titegroup and uses twice as much powder per shot. It's supposed to make like 2 inch groups or less at 25yd off a rest out of a glock.

I just started loading ultra fast powder in 9mm, nitro100nf, accuracy is a little worse, but all I want it to do it hit a coyote sized target from up to 30 feet away. It's my "clandestine 9mm load" for use with recoil boosted silencers on a pistol.

Your statement is that you shot from bench rest. What did you rest/secure your handgun on and how did you hold your pistol? What was the focus of your sight picture? What was the trigger press weight? If your range has a 7/10Yd line start there then proceed out to 25Yds. Pistol accuracy is a matter of consistency on the shooters part if there are no discrepancies with the handgun an ammunition combination.

milsurpguy said:

You should get better results with little bit slower powders that use heavier charge weights.

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I agree with this. Titegroup is just fine for blammo ammo, but for target work there are better choices.

Try a slower powder. Something in the AA#7 speed range would be a good place to try.

I've never heard or seen demonstrated that a slower powder produces better accuracy. Does someone have a link to some testing?

Without meaning to offend the OP, it is enormously unlikely that the gun or load is shooting that poorly. If it is, then something is badly wrong and needs to be fixed.

My nitro100nf loads have demonstrated a velocity spread of about 50 to 80 fps in my pistol. The flyers were the ones doing 70 to 80 fps faster than normal.
You should be able to load fast burning powder and get good accuracy. The ammo manufacturers do it all the time.

milsurpguy said:

I want to try 3N37, it's probably like 3x the price of titegroup and uses twice as much powder per shot. It's supposed to make like 2 inch groups or less at 25yd off a rest out of a glock.

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With all bullets? And all Glocks?

I would take a look at few things, what is the diameter of the DG bullets, are they consistent? Also, what is the overall length of the loaded cartridge? Are you using a taper crimp die? Over-crimped cast bullets can effect accuracy. Are you getting any leading in the barrel? What do the ejected cases look like? From my limited experience with cast bullets, I find that bullet diameter and seating depth are the two biggest contributers to accuracy.

Also, I'd take a look at the compensator, see if you have any coating being deposited in the ports

fxvr5 said:

With all bullets? And all Glocks?

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I would say most bullets, at least 115 to 125gr range jacketed bullets and almost any carry size pistol that uses a locking action.

DG bullets....never tried. Primarily use ACME coated cast which at least from looks are pretty similar. They're great for range plinking and esp steel targets since no jacket coming back at you. Anyway, that's me sitting uncomfortably or can't see the center red square on the target well if that was my group. I have 2 MR920's, the combat & the elite, and truthfully I prefer my stock gen5 G19 to the elite. It's just too light esp up front - so for that type shooting - sitting at a bench on a bag or some type rest, I wouldn't pick that ultralight gun just for all the jumping around it's going to do. Shadow 2 or something with some heft and a little more distance to the front sight. Also look at the fiber front sight vs a Shadow2 or similar - the MR920 is a much larger dot. Kind of like what your AR groups look like at 100 yds or so using a 2 MOA vs a 4 MOA Aimpoint or cranking the brightness to max vs barely visible.

But coated cast are for cost effective, mass produced, blasting ammo. Not for precision shooting. You need reasonable expectations. A very good idea if you're new and want to get your process straight, get some Hornady HAP or some RMR MMPR or some Montana Gold CMJ, etc. Get a bullet with known good performance for accuracy. Then go from there with charge ladders, then lengths to get dialed in. After you know you can make exceptionally accurate loads with proper components (thus proving your process is good), then start with the "training ammo" inexpensive bullets. Will not group as tight, but will still be good and typically outperform WWB, UMC, Blazer Brass, S&B etc FMJ you'd buy.

Lastly, what was performance like closer to 3.6gr starting load? I get better results - in general, not always - a lot closer to starting load than closer to or at max load with coated cast. Bump down 2/10 and see what happens.

Edit to add: I just noticed the part about red dot, you're not using the stock sights. So obviously turn down brightness to barely visible if you haven't. Don't know how much time you have with a RDS but for me I was very much surprised at the parallax difference between something like an Aimpoint T1 and an RMR. The pistol RDS (at least for me) are much less forgiving for inconsistency in your platform and slight head shifts - easy to do at a bench even if your standing pistol form is rock solid. But after seeing the RDS in the equation, just parallax from you not being in a good, consistent form on the bench will make a target look like that even though the dot looked great every shot.

OP,
I can shoot better than that at 25yds, standing, and shooting off hand. I agree something isn't right.
First thing I would do is bump up the load to 4.1gr of titegroup @ 1.125 or how ever long you can get away with, with a 124gr bullet. I get my best accuracy with Titegroup with that load.
The last time I shot my 4.1gr loads at 25yds for accuracy was with a Ruger 9mm precision carbine, From a standing position, I shot a 5/8" group of 5 at 25 yds,
That was from a standing position, unsupported, in front of witnesses. The carbine had a scope on it to.

I would also try shooting factory loads to see if there is any difference between them and your reloads from the same shooting rest.

Then try a different gun or find someone who is known to be a good shot with a pistol, and have him shoot your loads from your gun, from the same rest, to see if the pistol may be the problem.

That will eliminate a few things, including telling you if your the problem.

I've had people ask me to do this for them many times at the range.

I have found that most times, not always, but more times than not, the shooter is the biggest problem.

I've had people shoot my guns for me to see if I'm doing something wrong, on a bad day, and they usually don't shoot any better than I do, but sometimes they do, but it still tells me if the problem is me or the gun or my ammo. It's usually me.

I'm known to be a good shot at the range I shoot at, but I must say that is only about 50% of the time I can shoot really well, so don't be insulted by having to ask someone else to shoot your gun for you if your having a problem with accuracy. At $40.00 a box for 9mm factory ammo, yeah, I'm going to ask, but you need to compare your reloads to factory ammo to see how your loads are stacking up against the factory loads.

Your target should be much better than that from shooting from a rest.

milsurpguy said:

I would say most bullets, at least 115 to 125gr range jacketed bullets and almost any carry size pistol that uses a locking action.

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Interesting. Where did you learn this secret? It sounds like I need to read more about this powder. Thanks.

Various reloading manuals, reloading charts, gun articles not published by the big N.
3n37 is a most accurate load repeat offender and of course glocks are the most common "test gun".
I haven't ever used 3n37, of course I discovered this after all the powder was sold out everywhere. Oh and I don't have a glock or glock style action gun such as a Springfield or glock clone ghost gun.

I wonder if the accuracy will carry over to Beretta and scale up to my monster 7lb sten machine pistol.

milsurpguy said:

Various reloading manuals, reloading charts, gun articles not published by the big N.
3n37 is a most accurate load repeat offender and of course glocks are the most common "test gun".

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This is gibberish.

What is the big N?

You're going to have to produce specific examples. If you're going to make a claim, you have to provide data to support it. Without that, there's no reason to believe you.

The big N is vihatavuori, they make 3N37. All their powders have N in the name such as N555, 20N41, 3N37, ect.
Can you spell vihatavuori? I can't. Had to go look it up.
Any nozler load data has "most accurate load" marked for a given bullet. Hornady manuals have an appendix for each cartridge that tells most accurate powder tested and a brief description on loading.
Appears that it scales up from normal to 9mm major loads too.
https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2018/1/9/how-to-use-9-major-in-a-short-barrel/
Here is one article, that's 9mm major so it's loaded to way higher pressure than normally 9mm ammo.
Not going to do all the leg work for you.

Too many variables to answer.

might be your skill level, how well can you shoot quality factory ammo at 25 ?

could be your reloading technique

could be your barrel or comp.
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I shoot these bullets -- https://precisionbullets.com/shop-now/ or https://www.snscasting.com/new-9mm-125-grain-round-nose-red-coated-1000ct/ with a fast burning powder called Sport Pistol

They are accurate enough for clanging steel at 90+yards.

I do pistol work ups at 10 yards so my results are all based on the same range. I dont have a ransom rest like I should for workups but we work within our limits. One thing that is important is having a test standard. For me it's a load that I shoot a lot that I compare new loads to. Relative performance is what I deal in as I'm the operator. Raw accuracy needs to remove you from the equation. If your curious my test standard load I'd 4.0 grains of tightgroup under a 115 match winner at 1.090 oal. It seems to go exactly where the trigger jerk points.

It would be interesting to see your bench rest set up.

At 25 yards that’s not bad. A lot of people would be happy with that at 10 yards.

It’s impossible to know what caused the flyers. Like derek45 mentions there could be a wide variety of causes for the outliers. Have you ever shot better at 25 yards with that same gun?

milsurpguy said:

The big N is vihatavuori, they make 3N37. All their powders have N in the name such as N555, 20N41, 3N37, ect.
Can you spell vihatavuori? I can't. Had to go look it up.
Any nozler load data has "most accurate load" marked for a given bullet. Hornady manuals have an appendix for each cartridge that tells most accurate powder tested and a brief description on loading.
Appears that it scales up from normal to 9mm major loads too.
https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2018/1/9/how-to-use-9-major-in-a-short-barrel/
Here is one article, that's 9mm major so it's loaded to way higher pressure than normally 9mm ammo.
Not going to do all the leg work for you.

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I hate to break the news to you, but even after you looked it up, you still misspelled Vihtavuori.

I don't see 3N37 used in Nosler's 9mm data where it shows it being the most accurate. Please point to examples where 3N37 is the most accurate powder in Nosler's data. Surely you didn't just make this up, did you? (When Nosler does indicate which load or powder is the most accurate, we have no way to know HOW MUCH more accurate. Technically 0.01" difference would be more accurate, but is meaningless in the real world.)

Which Hornady data shows 3N37 as most accurate? Where is this appendix in the Hornady manual that shows 3N37 being the most accurate? I don't see it in my 10th edition. Please show me where to find it. Thanks.

The article you posted shows 3N37 producing very small groups in a Glock. But that's one Glock. And it's not even a Glock barrel.

You'll be proud of me. I did some legwork on my own. If you followup and look at that author's second article on 9 Major accuracy, you'll see 3N37 produced some of the largest groups in a different gun. So your claim of it being the best in most handguns is not supported.
https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2020/4/28/accuracy-of-9-major-handloads/

Is there other data you can direct us to that shows 3N37 producing the best accuracy?

I get the feeling you made up that part about 3N37 being the most accurate in . . . "almost any carry size pistol that uses a locking action." You only provided one example and your other 'examples' (Nosler, and still waiting for your Hornady information) don't support you.

Good point about not being a glock barrel, good choice I say. I don't own a glock but if I did first thing I would do is toss the factory barrel probably before I ever shot it and put something in there thats extend with American threads, normal rifling and a fully supported chamber.