Welcome Mr. Randy Shelley designer of the 9x25Dillon cartridge

[The_Shadow]

More pictures from Randy Shelley; This is a picture of me and Eric Harvey. We had a commercial loading business from 1979 to 1983. We loaded about 230 different calibers of custom Ammunition.


I was using CH and Stars, for my business. Mike Dillon sure changed that. Right place, at the right time, with the right product. I saw the potential, so I went to work for him. It has been good.

Xavier Gonzales and I  working out some final details before releasing the the RL-1050 (1988)

[The_Shadow]

Mr. Shelley, the 9x25 Dillon conceived by you and back in the day and was used by yourself, Arnt Myhre,  Rob Leatham, Jay Phillips and others.  As I recall you all were working to a specific power factor for those matches.

Arnt Myhre's 9x25 2011 Race Gun. Springfield Armory and STI parts. I believe they only built 4 of these for team Springfield Armory.





Correct me if I am wrong...The 9x25's as driven with the heavy charges of slower powders like Winchester 296 / Hodgdon 110 to generate enough gas volume to work the compensators on the Race Guns of the period.  This extra gas volume blasted out of the compensators to push the muzzle down to eliminate muzzle rise.  In some instance it was said that it would even cause the muzzle to dip because the 9x25 cartridge worked so well.

Questions...
Did anyone compete with the guns chambered for 10mm cartridges?

[Randy Shelley]

Shadow, I have never shot competition, in my life. Yes, I shoot a lot, but not competition. I bought a Bo Clerke 38/45 conversion to go in my 1911, from a friend of mine. I was impressed with how well it performed. Working at Dillon, and the guys, trying to meet major power factor with 38 super, were complaining that our dies were not good. Well the problem was, they were overloading the 38 super, and blowing the web completely out at the base of the case. Much like .40 cal Glock fired brass does today. I decided that 10mm was the perfect case to neck down, because, the brass was originally designed to handle 44,000 psi. We ordered a 38 super barrel to fit Eric Harvey's 1911. I had Xavier Gonzales, draw my design to send to JGS for reamers to be made. I built the prototype on a WW2 1911. It actually worked using the 45 ACP magazine, and no change to the slide face, other than a new extractor. Then I proved it worked. All of this happened in 1987 to 1988. In 1992 or 1993 Nyle Leatham, came back from the world shoot in Australia, he handed me a cartridge very similar to mine. I believe it was called 9mm super G. I reached in my desk drawer at work and pulled out my cartridge, and told him, I built my version several years ago. He told me Rob wanted to experiment with it, so I handed him the reamers, for Rob to take back to Springfield Armory. Rob Leatham is the one who took the cartridge, to the next level.

[The_Shadow]

So this must be Xavier Gonzales' work as sent to JGS...and the machine coordinates as shown.







By the way these were part of a package I received from a GlockTalk forum member named Fred Ross, he was kind enough to share these copies.  In that package is some load data notes labeled as being Randy Shelley.
Do they look familiar to you?  After talking with Randy these loading notes may have been testing by TCCI (Thunderbird Cartridge Company Inc. in Phoenix) as faxed to Dillon.  He writes;

I went there with loads to test, but the equipment was not working correctly.

Page 1


Page 2

[Randy Shelley]

Shadow, the drawings, look like the real thing. The loading data, is not my hand writing, so my guess, is Jay Phillips is the one who supplied this info. He was the person, experimenting and loading for Rob Leatham, at the timeline I see listed.

[Randy Shelley]

Shadow, I just watched that Colt pro shooting event you posted. I had never viewed it before. Great stuff. The questions you asked earlier are correct. 9x25 does prefer slower burning propellants to maximize the compensator. Rob, ended up putting side holes in the compensator to keep the muzzle from going down too far. They ended up using Winchester 296, and Hodgdon H110 for most loads. They were also experimenting, with Hodgdon H108, which is a surplus, 30 carbine powder. Arnt gave me some to try but I have not used it yet.

[The_Shadow]

I have heard of the Hodgdon H-108 said to be the same as Winchester WC820 before some guys were trying it in the 10mm.  I think the older AA#9 I had which was 100% microbeads may have been H-108/WC820.

WC820 was one of the main components (80% to 90%) in the blends of Accurate Arms #9 powder.
No 9 Blend (IMI No7 20%, WC 820 80% - 118/92)
No 9 Blend (WC 820 90%, WC 350 10% - 106/94)

I posted several pictures of AA#9 powder variants in the post of this link.
http://10mm-firearms.com/reloading-10mm-ammo/accurate-9/

Data from; http://www.ilrc.ucf.edu/powders/search.php?resultPageSize=50&resultPage=1

[Captain O]

Nice having you aboard, sir! The foregoing information is most illuminating!

Thank you!

[Pablo]

Great thread. Thanks for bringing it back up!!

[agtman]

What a great and historically important thread about a 10mm-derivative cartridge! - the 9x25 Dillon!

Thanks to Shadow & Randy Shelley for providing this information.

My current interest lies in seeing a revival of the 10mm Magnum, but in revolver form. Randy mention this cartridge above in relation to the reaming out of a 38-40 cylinder of a Ruger Blackhawk.

I'd like to see Ruger chamber the 10mm Magnum in a standard (DA) Redhawk, offering it in a 7" "hunting" model & a 4.2" carry model, with the cylinders made compatible with the same 10mm moon clips the Smith 610 revolvers used.

You'd have one revolver that could fire three different cartridges, (.40/10mm AUTO/10mmMag) all using moon clips.

Having researched the 10mm Mag quite a bit, you got some really impressive fps/fpe specs that tread into .44 Mag territory   - except all the data I've seen was generated from AMT's 10mm Mag autoloader, which is handicapped by the COAL necessary to cycle the gun reliably.

That's not an issue in a wheelgun, so you could do some interesting experimentation with long-loading the bullets out a bit beyond the 1.555 COAL restriction for chambering in the AMT semi-auto.

[The_Shadow]

Reeder custom guns was doing these a while back...Skorpion

[agtman]

Shadow: thanks for those pics.

But what were the Ruger base guns that Reeder used for the conversion?

That one in the bottom pic looks like a GP-100 (?).

[sqlbullet]

Both are GP-100

http://www.reedercustomguns.com/revolvers/skorpion.htm

[agtman]

Good to know! Thanks! 

[Overkill338]

This seems like a good place to learn from. Am I making a mistake converting my Glock 29 to 9x25 for my EDC.