word of caution on afte market barrels

[357reloading]

JUst a word of caution on Lone wolf after market barrels. The chamber is at or near Saami Specification for the Cartridge not the Saami chamber specs.
I know that sounds odd, but something that i learned through school of hard knocks. Lone Wolf barrels are advertised as match grade and they will say tighter chambers . They dont say if chamber gets a little dirty then rounds dont fully seat. They dont say if lead reloads must be sized/swaged down to less than the specfications for the cartridge they will seat. Only go in about half way.

commerical jacket bullets work just fine. I suggest you measure your reloads or send them three dummy loads when you order. Otherwise they want $30 to re chamber

Just my observation for my woes and telling the errors I made.

 

[ApacheCoTodd]

Good to know. I wonder if their philosophy is to leave a bit of meat for the persnickety among us to slide our pet reamers for pet loads up against.

 

[LiveLife]

commerical jacket bullets work just fine.

I wonder if their philosophy is to leave a bit of meat for the persnickety among us

I have Lone Wolf barrels in 40S&W and 40-9 conversion for G22/G27. The 9mm chambers are comparable to factory Glock barrels but 40S&W chambers are tighter.

My unmodified 9mm LW chambers will feed/chamber .356" diameter lead bullets with .376"-.377" taper crimp on the finished rounds and fall freely into the chamber with a "plonk". Of course, no feed/chamber issues with .355" diameter jacketed/plated bullets with .355"-.356" taper crimp.

My unmodified 40S&W LW chambers will feed/chamber .400" diameter jacketed/plated bullets with .420"-.421" taper crimp and fall freely into the chamber with a "plonk". The .401" diameter lead bullets with .421"-.422" taper crimp will chamber with "snug" tightness and any larger taper crimp won't fully chamber the round. According to Lone Wolf, this was done by design and not a manufacturing defect (if your barrel won't feed/chamber factory or jacketed diameter rounds, LW will repair the barrel under the warranty. If you want the chamber enlarged for larger lead diameter bullets, LW will perform the service for a fee).

I enlarged a G27 40S&W Lone Wolf barrel for lead reloads using P220/P400/P800 automotive wet/dry sandpaper wrapped around a marker cap on this thread - http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=561116

Since you just need to enlarge the forward portion of the chamber near the leade by .001" or so, it didn't take much sanding/polishing to get the job done. Neither the chamber mouth or the ramp was sanded/polished. Now, .401" diameter lead reloads with .421"-.422" taper crimp will fall in freely with a "plonk" (of course, modifying LW barrel yourself will void the warranty so do so at your own risk ).

For .400" groove diameter 40S&W barrel with fully supported chamber, tight chamber is a benefit for shooting higher pressure 40S&W reloads, especially if you use mixed range brass with unknown reload history (and I think for this reason, LW made the chamber as tight as possible, using smaller jacketed bullet diameter as reference and to give lead shooters the option to enlarge the chamber if they wanted to). The tighter Lone Wolf chambers do not bulge my brass while extending the life of brass and resizing the brass takes much less effort than the brass fired in looser Glock chambers.

YMMV

 

[357reloading]

Bds thanks . very informative. I shoot at a indoor range and pick up hundreds of once fired 40 S&W and 9MM brass. Consequently I return anything that does not have an orginal primer. (copper color).. including my own second fired. Would not want to sell second fired.

I learned from your comments about chamber pressure and chamber size. . double thanks

I ordered a new star sizer die from lathesmith at .4005

 

[2zulu1]

I have two Lonewolf 10mm barrels, G20 and G20 SF to gain full support for the casing. Having experienced a severely bulged Winchester factory ammunition casing through the G20, the factory SF barrel has never been fired.

I haven't experienced the problems you wrote of and I've done a lot of 10mm load development, from 135gr JHPs to 200/230gr WFNGCs. Actually, Double Tap's 230gr WFNGCs only weigh between 221-223grs and they have a tendency to tumble in flight when fired through factory barrels.

Resizing brass fired through the LW barrel requires a lot less effort than the factory barrel meaning the brass can be reloaded more times without splitting. I've witnessed case splitting in as few as 2 or 3 times fired through factory barrels, fortunately the LW barrels have made for less brass tossing.

With round counts well into the thousands, with many hundreds of rounds fired between cleanings, I've experienced reliable functioning in dirty chambers and with heavy WFNs.

Lonewolf puts out a quality product and I don't have any woes to warn other shooters about.

 

[357reloading]

2zulu1 could you please tell me what the size of your 10 MM rounds would be. My rounds have to be less than .424 which is the Saami Cartridge numbers. The Chanber per Saami is should be .4274. My bullets are sized to .402. Star sizer -

 

[GLOOB]

My LW 9mm barrel shoots cast bullets and my "glock-only" enormous OAL bullets just like the stock barrel.

 

[K1500]

Uhh...you do realize that you can reload with a copper colored primer, don't you?

 

[357reloading]

k1500 have not seem copper colored primer for ages. What brand? Would be nice to have.

 

[mgmorden]

k1500 have not seem copper colored primer for ages. What brand? Would be nice to have.

Last batch of Winchester SPP's I went through were gold/copper colored. Other brands I've tried have been too. The Fiocchi's I'm currently using are silver, as are the CCI that I often use.

In any event primer color is most definately not a reliable way to tell if something was a reload or not.

 

[2zulu1]

2zulu1 could you please tell me what the size of your 10 MM rounds would be. My rounds have to be less than .424 which is the Saami Cartridge numbers. The Chanber per Saami is should be .4274. My bullets are sized to .402. Star sizer -

I'm not exactly sure what measurements you need or where on the casing you are taking your dimensional readings, the lead bullets I load from DT and Lasercast are -.401 with jacketed bullets -.400cal.

Virgin Starline brass loaded with 200gr WFNGC, I crimp to 0.421".

A random sample of 1x fired brass from this load showed a case mouth diameter ranging from 0.422" to 0.426" as measured with a digital caliper.

Above the base of the casing, the same 1x sample measured 0.425" to 0.426".

Measuring above the base of the unfired, loaded casings showed a 0.421" diameter, same as the crimp diameter. In my handloading process, brass is resized and the seat/crimp is two separate steps with the final step using the Lee factory crimp die.

FWIW, WLPs are about the same color as brass casings.

Hope these measurements can help sort things out for you.