I loaded 9mm last night.
I started a little after dinner, when I was done, the clock said 00:30 .
And all I did was 200 rounds.
I can explain.
I hadn't used the press before to load 9mm. It's an old Hornady Pro Jector that I bought years ago, put it on the bench, and there it sat.
Complicating factors :
1. using cast bullets
2. setting up the Hornady case activated powder measure to expand necks
3. using dies that I hadn't used for years, from which I had taken bits to use in other dies
4. coming across berdan primed cases where there shouldn't have been any
The first time consuming exercise was getting the neck expander to expand the necks. For some reason, I couldn't get the height on the case activated measure right as quickly as I remember I could. When I had finished, I realised I had the .38 expander plug in the powder measure, not the 9mm. The difference is the 9mm plug is longer, and if I had used it I would not have had to mess around with changing the height of the powder measure in the case activated assembly.
The second issue that wasted a lot of time was the decapping rod in the Hornady sizing die. At some point, I changed it from the newer zip spindle type, to the old smooth rod, probably I needed it for another die and just put what I had extra back in it. It kept slipping, and it seemed the primer holes were too small for the pin. After limping through 40 or so reloads, I replaced it with a zip spindle and the new pin, and it was great.
I had no idea there were Berdan cases in the batch. I've collected so many over the years, this was a batch that I hadn't used before, and obviously did not check if any were Berdan.
I encountered about 6 of them, each time having to re-adjust the zip spindle. After I started visually inspecting the flash-hole of each case , there was not another single one.
Then the cast bullets. The first one lodged in the Hornady seating die. The clip at the bottom was worn, so it pulled the seating plug out with the round on the downstroke. It took a big chunk of time to extract it. I replaced the clip with a new one, and never had the problem again.
This morning, I was putting the cast bullets away, when I came across a box labelled '9mm Cast'. Inside that were 9mm powder coated bullets that had been sized.
I had loaded the entire batch with unsized 9mm powder coated bullets.
It's safe to say that age really is catching up to me.