Bisley
posted this
23 November 2018
Been awhile since I last posted; coupla years, I imagine.
Thirty-two and some-odd years ago Dad stepped into the loading room and softy announced, "I am looking for a load for my quiet gun." Since closing his junk shop and gun store in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, in 1959, Dad had driven up the Alcan with my two oldest siblings to settle in Peter's Creek, twenty miles north of town on the Glenn Highway. The quiet gun was a suppressed STEN Mk II, which Dad said had been used by the British Frog teams in the south Pacific. He traded into it when he ran Shady Oaks Trading Post in AA County, and skipped the December 1968 amnesty period because "They just wanted everybody's name on a list."
In any case, people moved north with the oil money and let their dogs run loose. The SPCA-designed cage trap we built had it's tripwire cut. I bagged one stray with a .22 but we were worried someone would follow the noise and discover the mutt on the back of the truck before we went to the dump. I had also just started casting bullets and saw the 9mm as an opportunity to stretch my casting knowledge a bit. Besides, I had fired the STEN off the back porch and it was fun not to need muffs.
The bullet should be a hollow-point, I reasoned at the ripe age of fifteen years, and so chose the single-cavity 358439 off the shelf. Since I was loading for 9mm, I selected the 1950s-vintage Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook for charge weight. 4.8 grains Bullseye. Of course, taking safety into account meant a reduction in powder charge for starting loads. 4.5 grains would be a good starting load. Six of these were assembled in 1943-headstamped cases, squeezed into a magazine and pointed toward the six-cord woodpile.
I defeated, but did not further damage, the suppressor. My ears were ringing and the bolt remained closed. When I finally yanked it open, the head came off the case. Needed a cleaning brush to get the body of the case out. Finally settled on a load of 2.5 grains Bullseye with Lyman 358416 or 358439HP. Stayed quiet and fed reliably. But I was done casting bullets in a bathrobe by then...