Old Hornady / Pacific Pistol Powder Measure Bushings

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I reloaded a bunch of pistol ammo a few years ago and then shortly afterwards pretty much stopped shooting matches. As a result I’ve still got 9mm, 40 S&W, and 45 ACP ammo on hand and haven’t had to reload anything for a while. This is good in a way but has created a problem for me, my old Lee 1000 has fallen into disrepair and I added 357 Magnum ammo to my need list.

 

I’ve still got an old single stage press but found my old Hornady / Pacific Pistol Powder Measure bushings are lost in space somewhere at my house but don’t know where. The bushing that was in it was from a time I was using a slower burning powder and is too big to throw a usable charge with W231 for a 158 LSWC 357 load. At some point I may find the bag with the bronze bushing for the powder measure but I’m not counting on that and finding replacements is hard to do because it’s been too long since they were manufactured.

 

So much for the background story and the ah shit part, now the good news. There bushings are a common size ½ inch round by ½ inch long. There are a lot of bronze, aluminum, and even nylon bushings / spacers made with usually one of three hole sizes predrilled: .190, .250, and .375 inch. Now of course these sizes don’t automatically make the right size for throwing a certain powder charge but they can be drilled out. To get the right measure of about 4.9 grains of W231 with a bushing I needed the hole at close to .265 that’s about a 17/64^th drill or G drill size to go a little small. ACE hardware had these bushing in the store so I picked up some drilled a couple to size and am now able to load a few rounds to play with my new Uberti cowboy guns.

 

 

Here’s a chart with drill size to CC size in the bushings and a chart with an Est. of the CC size need to throw a different number of grains of W231. Who knows someone may find this information useful.