[Mikey]

Why Monte - how kind of you to ask. I am quite a fan of the 10mm cartridge and have a history with the design and development of the cartridge that became the proprietary 400 CorBon.

I think the 10mm caliber is a solid performer. You can load the 180 grainers to almost 41 mag velocities, although you don't need to go that high with that caliber. You can load down the 10mm to match 40 S&W performance levels. You can go to the 400 CorBon case with heavy loads and peg your 180s right in at 41 mag performance levels and your 150s and the like even faster. My 10mm will hit to 200 yards. I developed the darn thing to shoot metallic silhouette and to substitute as a field piece when I couldn't afford a big bore wheelgun. It works.

I would like to see a 10mm in a carbine length lever action, I think it would be a great field piece.

There is something about a 10mm bore or 40 caliber that allows significant penetration. I would liken the 10mm performance range in autos to the 357 capabilities in revolvers, in terms of their respective abilities to be loaded up or down and in their application to law enforcement, target or hunting.

I think you can do a lot with the 10mm/40 caliber and I feel it has a much wider field application than most would think.

But this is the fun part, isn't it. Thanks Monte, this is Mikey.

 

[Mikey]

10mms

Monte: Buenos Morning on ya. Yep, that's a topic fer ya alright.

Hay, I can understand how you might feel uncomfortable with the heavy 10mm loads in the 1911. When I tested and later used regularly my bottlenecked 45 to 40 conversion I felt the same way as I was getting into the 'warmish' loads. The pistol I was using was a series 70 Gold Cup that was lighter in weight than a standard Gov't Issue 1911. I used recoil buffers, the mechanical ones not the little blue pieces of stuff, 22 lbs recoil springs from Wolfe, and a compensator that attached to the slide rather than the barrel. All in all, recoil with the heavier loads was stiff but not too much for the 1911.

As for pressures - a gunwriter named Dean Grennel once told a knifemaker named Bob Loveless, who wrote to Grennel about my cartridge and shared technical information with him about the design and loads I had produced, that my cartridge was definately in the 35-36,000 psi range and too hot for the 1911 platform (he had forgotten about or overlooked the fact that the 9mm and 38 Super pressures are the same as those he said were too hot for the 1911). Buncha hooey! The bottleneck design helps disperse pressure and the thickest part of the barrel was at the point where pressure would be the greatest. I wasn't concerned. I think a straight case design like the 10mm or the 40 S&W run higher pressures than the bottleneck.

I think the CorBon load, a 135 grainer at 1425 would be alright in the Ga Ga Glocks - (sumptin in my throat, too) but I think even in the 10mm Ga Ga the 135s at about 1800 might be a bit too much recoil for them, unless re-sprung and compensated.

With any compensator there is a concern that the weight of the compensator combines with heavy recoiling loads to add momentum to the slide as it cycles back during the extraction and ejection process but this is where I used the recoil buffer, and to good effect. The Gold Cup I used suffered no damage of losening whatsoever and I feel the compensator (somebodys dual chamber comp) helped control the recoil.
But, you are working off a Commander, so I would think the reduced weight of that pistol, even if an all steel pistol, necessitates a recoil buffer, heavy springs and a compensator.

I never used or tested the 135 grain 10mm bullets. They were designed by CorBon after I had finished testing out my cartridge. The last ones I played with were the Sierra 155 grain hollowpoints. Most of my loads were either the 180 grain 38-40 3/4 jacketed slug or a hard cast 170 grain Keith style SWC from an RCBS mold. The best I could get the 180 out to was 1375, and that increased by 50'/sec when I dropped to the hardcast 170 grainer. If I cast that 170 grainer out of wheelweight the bullets would drop from the mold at 185 and over 4.3 of WW231 she was snake-eyes accurate to 50 yds - that was my indoor target load and she was more accurate than I. If cast from Linotype, the same bullet dropped at 160 grains and was so hard that it would penetrate pine logs a bit further than a full house 44 mag load with 240 grain cast bullets - once I saw that I took the thing huntin' with me.

The CorBon load simply takes my case design, thanks directly to Dean Grennel, and drops the bullet weight to where pressures with the bullets they use are within SAAMI limits. It is a high pressure load for sure, at somewhere around the 35,000 psi mark but with the lighter bullets it is safe. In discussions with the CorBon people they have told me that they use specially designed powders to achieve high velocities and acceptable pressures and assured me that I could not replicate their loads with over the counter cannister powders - another buncha hooey (what the hay did they think got the bullets movin' so fast in the first place, hot air).

The CorBon case design follows mine and uses a short neck, about 1/8th of an inch long (mine is 1/10th inch long), and a farily sharp shoulder at somewhere around 35-40 degrees. I can chamber thier cases but they can't chamber mine. They use a short (lightweight) bullet to maximize case capacity. I jsut seated my bullets right on top of the powder. Their loads with the 135 at 1425 may be slightly more conservative than mine but it pops right out there. When I last played with mine, I could hear the difference between the muzzle blast and the bullet impact at 50 yds - not much difference but you could hear it. When I dropped the bullet to the 155 grainers, it was hard to tell the difference, they seemed to be moving that much faster. Also, even with a full charge, the 155s were too light to recoil the slide. I can almost imagine what the 135s would be like - faster than a streak of stuff I think.

Good Luck. Let me know how that 10mm shoots for ya. Hope this helps. Mikey.