TargetTalk

The loads I shot engaged the rifling enough that it was hard to pull a loaded case out of the chamber. This was just a guess though and shorter might be better. That is why the more that chase this, the better the results we will eventually get. I ordered the mold at .314. I think it is supposed to be warm next Saturday here in the Midwest.

Back to the drawing board. I shot some more loads and had alibis if I got below 800 fps.

Also I shot a few bullets that were sized .313 along with an identical load that was .3145 and the .313's were better. I am wondering if being such a small bullet that sizing to the exact correct size might be very important. I have a local friend that has a .314 die so I think I might try it to see what happens.

As it is, my 10 shot 50 yard loads are running between 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches in the 850fps range so I still don't have the secret but as soon as I finish shoveling snow, I will be back to it. I am going to speed them up to between 900 and 1000 to see if it helps. Also this time I got way worse variations with the Power Pistol loads although it didn't absolutely ruin the groups.

I am nervous about shooting with a scope on the top because it won't stay still so I think I will get a Ransom insert. I was hoping I could prove well enough that a certain load was fine and not really care which was the best and avoid getting the insert but I guess if I'm in it, I might as well do what is the best. -- Bill --

Old Caster,
I sized your bullet at 0.314", 1.8 gr N-310, 0.860 AOL, 0.330" crimp, velocity was 1034'/sec, 12 sd, group size was 4" for 20 shots at 50yd. It was cold and windy and I was just shooting off a bench with a red dot so the group was bigger than it should be if the gun was held and aimed better. The group was nice and round so I'm saying it was my poor eyes and freezing fingers trying to hold the gun that opened the group so much. The gun functioned perfectly. My gun also does not like the 60 gr bullets to go down under 850'/sec.

4" group, just off the bench, on a windy day......I suspect that would be a decent group if out of a rest., maybe even a great group. You guys are getting close if not there already.

That does sound pretty good, especially with a red dot and 20 shot. I am going to try another round of bullets in the 950 or so range and I am going to compare some .313 and some .3145 to see which is better and then decide if I want a .314 or a .3135 die. I don't know how critical this is but will find out. -- Bill --

Oldcaster, we needed a couple parts to load the new bullets and they just came in. Hoping to get testing them in the next week or so. It's been too cold here to test at 50 yds anyways. Hopefully real soon.

Still waiting for a good day. I have around 200 bullets in different loads and am waiting for a warm day. I have to shoot these off the bench and want everything to be right so I don't have any errors and that is hard to do when it is cold. It looks like it will be at least another few weeks before this is over.

After you resize and deprime the 32 ACP brass what diameter is your expander when you are using lead bullets?

It is expanded with a .3145 expander and it goes around .245 deep into the brass counting the flare. I have no idea if this is the ideal setup as it is only a guess based on the experiences from several of us loading 32 long and it might change if it doesn't work well or if someone else has better results.

I shot the Pardini at 50 yards 10 shot groups off sandbags with 8 power scope and have some more information. It is going to take some deciphering since I got accuracy out of certain loads but don’t understand the why of it and I had some problems with alibis. The fastest alibis were 990, 987, 984, and the slowest without an alibi was 843 which maybe points to another problem not connected to velocity. The gun might be dirty but only has about 300 shots since it was cleaned. Maybe some of you that have used Pardinis for a long time would know if they have to be cleaned a lot. Before I do my next testing I will clean it because my best groups are around 900 – 940. All of the alibis are the same with the empty case seeming to not go to the rear enough to eject the case and jamming while the next bullet tries to come up from the magazine. I only used one magazine and need to at least look to see if it is not ejecting soon enough. All of the bullets are wiped after loading because I use Alox 50/50 and it is sticky. After I am satisfied with what I am doing, I will use some harder lubes and see if I can get away with them to make the reloading process easier. The BHN of the bullets is 9 and the bullets are seated at .839. If the brass grows with firing this might cause a problem. I don’t know yet if it will grow or shrink or as it sometimes does, both.


My accuracy dilemma in all this is the fact that my best groups were with .313 and .3145 while my decidedly worse ones were with a .314 size. Some powders tell me to give up on them because they are never accurate which is a surprise to me because I can’t imagine why it matters since my extreme spreads are typically not better between loads of a good group and loads of a bad group.

Below, I have the loads in the three sizes of bullets that I have used and compare which ones are best to worse, and which ones are the slowest to the fastest. I also made a mistake and loaded the Accurate #5 at 2.9 instead of 2.8 in the 314 size bullets so it skewed my averages a little but I just put the 2.9 in the same category as the 2.8.

.313 size 60 grain 31 060A mold from Accurate molds.
Group size
Powder low high ave es sd size small to large speed

2.6 PP 869 942 919 73 21 2.718 3 4
2.8 PP 948 1001 972 53 19 3.252 4 7
2.9 pp 988 1052 1018 64 21 5.124 7 8

2.0 231 859 946 908 87 29 3.895 6 3

2.8#5 809 870 841 61 19 2.336 1 1
3.0#5 851 950 893 98 33 2.567 2 2
3.1#5 900 956 920 56 18 4.486 5 5

2.0#2 918 954 933 35 11 5.674 8 6

.314 size 60 grain 31 060 mold.

2.6 pp 907 989 959 81 24 4.556 4 5
2.8 pp 967 1056 1006 89 29 4.576 5 7
2.9 pp 1006 1058 1035 52 24 6.30 7 8

2.0 231 959 1019 983 60 16 5.160 6 6

2.9#5 867 927 888 60 21 3.361 1 1
3.0#5 877 967 910 90 24 3.395 2 2
3.1#5 862 9874 933 121 32 4.014 3 3

2.0#2 919 970 948 50 15 6.504 8 4

.3145 size 60 grain 31 060 mold

2.6 pp 940 992 971 52 16 2.234 2 6
2.8 pp 986 1053 1020 67 22 5.228 8 7
2.9 pp 1027 1084 1055 57 20 3.939 7 8

2.0 231 924 971 952 47 15 3.213 6 5

2.8#5 833 906 871 63 18 2.911 4 1
3.0#5 859 951 911 92 32 1.895 1 2
3.1#5 921 984 944 63 21 2.772 3 4

2.0#2 906 947 933 41 13 3.091 5 3


The first thing to notice is how the slower, in general is more accurate, and the #2 is never accurate except there was only one load however it is the speed I think I want. The Power Pistol and 231 are OK in some loads but the PP as a rule didn’t do the job and the 231 didn’t either but only one load each time is problematic. I went with the one in each case because of previous experience which apparently didn’t count. I will have to try the #5 at a higher velocity to see if it is accurate past the load of 3.1 because there is still room and if I can make it accurate, it might stop my alibis.

Another thing that could have skewed the results is that I loaded all the .313 and .3145 bullets at the same time with the exact same powder load because I didn’t yet have a .314 die and when dealing with such close tolerances, I would rather have kept all things as identical as possible. Another problem I caught after I was done was that my crimp wasn’t tight enough on the .313 bullets and they may have moved sometimes.

When I learn more and decide on a load, I will experiment with crimp amount and also how deep I expand my cases and how much. At this time, it is easy to push a .313 bullet in the expanded case and if not for the lube they would fall in so it is possible to get the wrong length from lube buildup in the seating or crimping die and not know it. The .314’s can be shoved in with a finger with a light pressure and the .3145 sized bullets are tight and are what I designed the expander for. I may have to make an expander for each size and flare in a different step so I can vary the depth also.

I wonder if any of you are having an alibi problem with these bullets at the faster speeds.

I hope my columns can be read. After a lot of effort to put things in order with explanations above them, it gets jammed into the smallest possible way by the software.

My Pardini jams the same way as yours. I have not been able to determine why either as it always happens when I'm shooting in competition and always during sustained fire. You would think it would do it during slow fire once in a while. It has done it with fast, medium, and slow velocities. Different magazines and it can happen on the first to the fifth round. It happens with different bullets. I am waiting until the snow goes away so I can have it happen when I can spend some time to look at what is happening.
Thanks for all the data too much snow for me to do much testing.
Do you get barrel leading with the smaller sized bullets?

No I don't get leading but I believe that soft lead and soft lube can make that difference plus a bullet of .313 size is only about .0007 smaller than my bore so .00035 on each side is a pretty close fit.

My HP32 jams the same way as well. Once a match, the empty case gets stuck on the way out and the next round can't go in. It's happened once every match. I was gonna clean it good before the next match and see. If it helps.

I wonder if the recoil spring might be too strong because even at a load of around 1000fps the brass doesn't eject very far. Since my best accuracy seems to at this time be around 875 I might try shortening it a bit if I can't find another reason for the alibis.

I fired another 120 rounds of .313, .314, .3145, and .315 60 grain SWC as above. The .315 was the worse of the bunch and the .313 and the .314 were the best which does not compare with previous trials. The .315 had hard lube and the rest had soft so the size or the lube may have been the cause. The load that is pretty consistent is the 2.9 of # 5 and is around 2.5 to 2.7 inches for 10 shots at 50 yards, but I have had variances in which size is the most accurate in any given try which might tell me it might not be a very important variable. A big variable that I don't know what to do with is that crimp that is enough for the .313 is too much for the rest and changing crimp for each size might be skewing my results.

One of the things that I haven't figured out is the alibis I am having. Apparently there have been some with jacketed also. Even my loads of right at 1000 fps might alibi but not as much so it is speed related but many times I shoot bullets at 830 and they don't alibi. I wonder if we need to look at the lip on the magazine that is a pressed piece of metal that is a ramp for the bullet. Mine has rough edges so I am going to slick them up to see if that is part of the problem. It seems that the bullet in the magazine is coming up before the empty can eject but it is also possible that it isn't going back far enough to eject. Also maybe the bullet is hitting the rough ramp and going straight up hitting the empty so it can't eject.

At the velocities I am shooting, the brass doesn't get thrown very far so I suspect speed the most and might try in the 1080 to 1100 range however my worst accuracy is around 1050 and the best is at 900 so far.

The case eject issue may not be related to the bullets. I was having that issue and was told by Pardini to put the .22 magazine spring in the HP magazines. This fixed that problem on my bulleseye edition. I'm currently shooting hornady 60gr, .895 aol, .330 tapper, 1.8gr NN310 I have some Rimrock .313 flat points on order to try for a practice load at 25yds.

-Tim

bullseyeshutr, I assume that the idea on the spring change was to make the lift on the bullets in the magazine less which would make sense. I hadn't shot any Hornady 60 grain bullets and had the problem only with lead and I suspected that maybe they were catching on the magazine front lip -- ramp more easily than the jacketed. I don't have any 22 magazines so I might have to contact Pardini.

I did just buy a box of Hornady XTP loaded ammo to do a benchmark test for accuracy but boy were they expensive and only 25 to a box. I will compare and post next time out.

If you are interested in trying some of the 60 grain lead bullets some of us are trying, let me know and I will send you some. The more who try them the smarter we get as a group.

Does anyone have some new data on shooting lead from the Pardini 32 acp?

Sorry for the ignorant question. I am new to this forum and just figured out that I was looking at the join date thinking it was the posting date. Thanks for all the work on the lead bullets for the Pardini oldcaste! Has there been much of a problem with leading? It appears you are using the 50/50 Alox for most of your loads.

I am using 50/50 from white label lubes pretty exclusively because soft works good. Doesn't mean that hard won't work, but the odds, especially when working up new loads are with you since soft is more forgiving. I would rather use hard because then we wouldn't have that sticky stuff smeared on everything, especially the bottom of the bullet that has to be wiped off every time we seat one in a case and will try to use it after everything else is figured out. It also makes it way worse if we send some bullets to each other in the mail and is primarily why a commercial outfit would never use it.

When using an alloy that is around 9 to 10 and soft lube, I have never had leading in anything that I shot. When I was testing all kinds of commercial bullets in a K38 trying to find one that would work for Distinguished revolver loads, I had a lot of leading and contribute that to hard lead and hard lube but mostly to hard lead. I never did get any of those bullets to be accurate either and some shot so badly that they were a joke among myself and friends. When I molded my own out of soft lead, a Lyman 358477 and a RCBS 150 both shot very well with soft lead at decent velocities. If I used hard lube, they had to go around 840fps to be accurate and since the 32 ACP can be shot around that speed or faster hard might work.

Don't ever worry about a question being dumb because if you think about it, at one time, none of us knew anything about what we are doing and learned it by listening to the right people and experimenting ourselves. When I was casting bullets for the AMU in 1965 I was told soft lead, soft lube for bullseye an it was amazing how long it took for me to admit they were right even though they were the experts at the time because I listened to the gun writers in magazines who all claim they are experts.

In another few weeks, several people will probably be writing about their experiences with the ACP since it is finally getting warm enough for them to get out.