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Posted: 5/3/2011 11:43:39 AM EDT
| Will I have any problems throwing my 9mm and .45 Hollow points in the tumbler after they are complete? I always tumbel my complete ball rds before I store but I have never tried HP's. Bullets in question are Rainer 115gr 9mm and 200gr .45 with corncod media. |
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I've never been comfortable tumbling loaded ammunition. The burn rate of the powder is dependent on the shape of the powder grain (flat/flake, sperical, extruded, etc) plus the presence of burn inhibitors on the exterior of some powders to help even out the surface area and either reduce the pressure spike or lengthen the pressure curve as the powder progressively burns. Tumbling has the potential to screw with that and alter the burn rate and pressure curve to some unknown extent.
Admittedly it might be a small chance and would be very powder dependent, but I've never felt any advantage gained by tumbling a loaded round was ever sufficient to offset the potential risks in terms of internal ballistics or reliability of the round. That said, if you had the capability to measure pressure and velocity of tumbled loads versus non tumbled loads used as a control and could demonstrate no change occurs in the load, then it's a different story. At a minimum, I'd tumble the bejeesus out of a small sample of the intended load (create a worst case sceanrio), then pull them down to inspect for any changes or degredation in the load, before I adopted tumbling as a standard practice for that load. I have on rare occasions tumbled hollow point and soft point bullets to clean them up a bit prior to loading, and the only changes I have noted is some darkening of the lead in the hollow point, but assuming it is suitably large, the media falls right out. If packed too densely it is possible that you could get some very minor surface damage (more of a bead blasted finish) to a hollow point with a large exposed tip of soft lead where the lead point extends above the jacket, other wise it would be a total non issue. |
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