Late Sunday afternoon I hit the range to test out my first .380 ACP reloads.  All I had was 115 gr copper-plated Rainier HP bullets, and the Lee manual only listed HP38 powder, not Accurate #5.  So I had to guess at the powder charge to use.  Nominally .380 uses lighter bullets, more around 90 gr, but I've seen loads for 115.  Anyway, the trend is that for the same weight bullet, copper-plated uses less powder than lead, which uses less powder than jacketed.  So I estimated.

I probably should've done some more reading online, but hey, I like to live on the edge.  I ended up loading three with 2.5 gr, one with 2.6 gr, and one with 2.7 gr.  It would've been funny to see me shoot the first round, not sure if it would blow the gun or what.  The first 9x19mm reloads I did were like that, too.

The first round stovepiped, but the following two cycled normally.  At first I thought the charge might've been too light.  However, the 2.7 gr one stovepiped too.  The cases didn't seem particularly stressed.  One of these days I need to buy a chronograph so I can use the velocity as a factor in interpolating load data.  It's kind of hard to do such work without one!  A chamber pressure sensor would be even more useful.

I also tried reloading some CCI Blazer aluminum .45 ACP cases.  A gentleman I know who does a lot of shooting and reloading told me that the Blazers are reloadable once.  Turns out they take small pistol primers, not large ones like standard brass .45s.  Those worked fine, too.

As with the last few times I was at the range, there was plenty of brass to harvest.  I picked up everything I could find: .380, 9mm, .40, .45, and some good Lake City 5.56x45mm brass that someone left a pile of.  The picture shows me drying out the brass on some newspaper in the basement.  'Tis a thing of beauty, is it not?