A recent thread on AR15.com discussed some fairly cheap frangible bullets being sold by Midway. It sounded like a good deal on some bullets, so I placed an order for 2,000. The bullets I got were listed as:

“Remington CTF Frangible Bullets, 357 Sig/ 9mm (.355 Diameter) 100 grain Flat Nose Box of 500 (Bulk Packaged).”

I ordered 4 boxes, and with shipping, paid $97.61. That worked out to 4.8 cents per round, a great price.

I had not reloaded any yet, but my good friend Journeyman1 told me he had tried to load some bulk bullets recently and they were undersized and just “fell” into a resized 9mm case. I got to thinking about that and wondered if my bullets were the right size. One way to find out... Get out the micrometer.

I measured several and they were right at .355 inches.

But to be sure, I decided to load up a batch and make sure that they worked in my pistols.

I load bulk bullets with my Dillon 550 Reloader.

If I am just loading 50 rounds of some caliber, I use my RCBS Rockchucker.

But when I am going to load a thousand or two, I set up the Dillon.

Here it is set up for .38 Special, with my stepson Abel hamming it up.

The press has an easily changed plate for each caliber.

Here it is set up for .38 Special.

Changing it to 9mm is quick and easy and the dies are not moved and stay set up for the next use.

I have built a base of 2 X 12 lumber that allows me to sit on a bench and pull the handle and really crank them out once it is set up.

I have learned (the hard way ) not to load up a thousand rounds without first making sure that they feed and function well and shoot accurately.

I just switched out the dies from .38 Special to 9mm and set up the powder dispenser to drop the correct weight of powder and I was ready to load.