Zero Mike coated bullets

[gary-t]

With the exception of the last few posts most of the posts are more than a year ago with a lot of experimentation still going on. What are the latest opinions on this type of bullet (all brands). I see that bullet corp has a special expander die to prevent leading. Is leading a problem. My Frontier bullets are up and I would be looking at 124 / 125 gr bullets.

What would the recommended powders be for reloading these.

[Snow]

With the exception of the last few posts most of the posts are more than a year ago with a lot of experimentation still going on. What are the latest opinions on this type of bullet (all brands). I see that bullet corp has a special expander die to prevent leading. Is leading a problem. My Frontier bullets are up and I would be looking at 124 / 125 gr bullets.

What would the recommended powders be for reloading these.

If you are going ZM, you need the bullet corp expander insert. Duane from 480 BC did an excellent write up about it sometime ago, can't find it now, either on his website or somewhere here on gunsite? But it WORKS, especially on ZM's as they tend to be a bit "fatter" than they say they are, closer to .3575 inch and not .356 or .357.

135gr shot fantastic, super accurate and nice recoil impulse. I did however end up settling with Silver Rapids as I got the 147gr's at a decent price (less than what the 135 & 147gr from ZM went for).

My loads out of a Glock 17 Gen 5 with CFE Pistol (28.62mm OAL for both) yielded the following:

135gr: 4.1gr of powder at an average weight of 136.13gr (bullet) did 943 fps, ES 42 fps, PF of 128.5.

147gr: 3.6gr of powder at an average weight of 150.50gr (bullet) did 860 fps, ES 49 fps, PF of 129.5.

Please use these at your own risk and consult a reloading manual.

[oafpatroll]

My homebrew powder coated bullets are sized 357 and I needed only a tiny increase in flare over what I was using for plated Frontiers to prevent shaving the coating. I wonder why they make them so fat that a special expander is required.

[gary-t]

If you are going ZM, you need the bullet corp expander insert. Duane from 480 BC did an excellent write up about it sometime ago, can't find it now, either on his website or somewhere here on gunsite? But it WORKS, especially on ZM's as they tend to be a bit "fatter" than they say they are, closer to .3575 inch and not .356 or .357.

135gr shot fantastic, super accurate and nice recoil impulse. I did however end up settling with Silver Rapids as I got the 147gr's at a decent price (less than what the 135 & 147gr from ZM went for).

My loads out of a Glock 17 Gen 5 with CFE Pistol (28.62mm OAL for both) yielded the following:

135gr: 4.1gr of powder at an average weight of 136.13gr (bullet) did 943 fps, ES 42 fps, PF of 128.5.

147gr: 3.6gr of powder at an average weight of 150.50gr (bullet) did 860 fps, ES 49 fps, PF of 129.5.

Please use these at your own risk and consult a reloading manual.

Thank you. this helps a lot. Do you use the bullet corp expander for ZM bullets>

[Snow]

Thank you. this helps a lot. Do you use the bullet corp expander for ZM bullets>

Yes, I did. I loaded about 5 of them without the expander and constantly snagged the coating, which annoyed me. And the ones that went in, had some coating scraped on the brass casing as well. I did not seem to impact accuracy at 10m, but rather safe than sorry for the remainder.

Using the Bulletcorp expander eliminated all of those scraping issues and I've since kept it in, even with my Silver Rapids.

Btw, yes, I do use Lee dies for both 9mm and 38 Spl. Funny enough, for my 38 Spl, I noticed a better expander die in the 38 Spl. I would recommend sticking with the factory expander for it over Bulletcorp. However, for 9mm, Bulletcorp's expander is king.