Powderman
Member
That's a pretty light load. Even if it was a double charge, it should have still been safe. I've shot 7.0 Clays with no problems.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but if you are loading 7.0 grains of Clays with a 230 grain bullet, you are shooting a bomb.
The max load from the Hodgdon website for Clays for the 230 grain bullet is 4.0 grains. Period. You risk grave injury or death with a load that is 3.0 over the published max.
Maybe some copper plated--I mean "copperized"--bullets are different, but the ones I've had experience with were no better than plain lead.
Amen.
I went directly to the source--a lengthly phone call to Glock in Smyrna, GA. This is what I learned there, and also from a Glock Armorer's school:
The factory barrel on Glocks are done using polygonal rifling. This is accomplished by placing a barrel blank on a mandrel with the reverse image of the rifling. This is then placed in a rotary hammer machine, and has the h-e-double toothpicks beaten out of it. The mandrel is then removed.
The result? An extremely smooth barrel. Smoother internal finish than grease on glass. So smooth in fact that lead or copper plated bullets actually skid across the first part of the bore before accepting the rifling. This builds up quickly, and eventually will cause the bullet being fired to hang up momentarily in the bore. When that happens, the pressure has to go somewhere.
So far, I have loaded more than 20K rounds for that most troublesome of calibers, the .40 SW. All of it is fired from two Glock handguns.
I have never bulged a case, and I have never blown up a Glock. Why?
I do NOT load to the max. EVER.
I make sure the round is assembled correctly.
I use medium burning powders in the .40. I especially like Herco, Blue Dot and AA #7.
If you MUST shoot lead, spend a few bucks. Get a conventionally rifled barrel.