Home Forums Reloading Bullet Casting lee 200 grain SWC

I have some LSWC 200 grain conventional lube ring bullets that I cast.

I cant get them to feed worth a darn in my colt 1911 commander, I have tried a large range of seating depths, too short and the wont feed, too long they wont chamber.

they work fine in my ATI Philippine made 1911. Is there anything I should try or is there a bullet mold that you recommend for the colt for reliable feeding?

Seat it short enough to pass the plunk test. If it wound feed then, purchase a Blackhawk convertible 45 Colt/ACP.

Sorry, I'm a sixgun guy. Someone will be by to help.

Bryant, look here -->> http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-455184.html&s=1d75d53b4ee5f9daa389eb998a462e86&

You'll have to copy and paste the address because I can't make it a link for some dam reason.

That discussion is about that lee bullet causing the same problem you are having.

I never loaded that bullet, so I can't tell you about it. I can tell you that I do cast and load the RCBS bullet number 45-201-SWC, the NEI 220 grain Truncated cone, and the 230 grain Lee round nose. I shoot those bullets in three different 45 autos WITH NO PROBLEMS.



This is the RCBS 200 grain SWC. It shoots with no problems.





Three different cast bullet loads fired in three different guns with no problems. If you are having the problems you say you are, try another bullet or try those you have in a different gun to see if it's a bullet issue or a gun issue.

If you are just looking for a reliable feeding 45 auto bullet, get any 230 grain round nose bullet design from just about any mold maker and if your gun will not shoot that bullet, throw the dam gun away.

Blackhawk or vaquero is on the short list of guns I want to get

Just for drill Bryant, will your Colt Commander load that bullet when you use the magazine from the other pistol? You may have a magazine problem and that test will tell you.

But from what I read in the discussion referenced above, it sounds like a bullet problem. The good news is that is easily solved by simply getting a different bullet design that will shoot in your pistol.

Thanks I'll try diff mag. Probably will get another mold too this lee swc has been a PIA

Did you actually read the discussion referenced above? If you did you will read those EXACT same words from others who have tried to shoot that bullet in 45 ACP pistols.

In fact Quote Jumping FrogJune 8, 2009, 04:37 PM


If misery loves company, you have plenty of it.

When I started casting for my 1911s, I bought a Lee six cavity 200gr SWC mold. After a few years with it, I upgraded to two RCBS two cavity 45-201-SWC molds and NEVER looked back.

I have no regrets about my RCBS molds but if I were to do it again, I may look at one of NOE's molds before I went to RCBS again. Not a knock on anything about the RCBS molds, but I have been real happy with everything I have ever gotten from NOE and like supporting the little guys when possible.

Bah. There's nothing wrong with that Lee 200 SWC bullet. The problem is with the guns and magazines that won't feed it well. Any 1911 can feed this bullet, but some of them don't do well with anything other than RN until they get a little love on the feed ramps and better magazines.

I have run many thousands of these bullets through 1911's and other 45 semi-autos, and can honestly say feed issues with it are a gun problem, not the bullet.

Yes any of them can be made to shoot that bullet and all of mine and apparently yours do. That is probably because we have been shooting and tinkering with and working on and building 1911's for 50 years or more, so we know all the little tricks. It is obvious that Bryant does not know them because if he did, he would not be here asking his question. It is a serious question to a new 1911 shooter trying to get started reloading for it and he deserves a little consideration which most shooters do not get on the Camp Fire. Either of us would get out a file and work over the magazzine lips and then we would polish the feed ramp and then if it still didn't work, we'd throat the dam thing and we would do all of that ourselves. But some of the people who post here are not as experienced as we are and those people ought not try to do what I just said.

My guns will feed an empty case from the magazine into the chamber and if I could get a dam wrench in the magazine, it would feed it as well. But Bryants gun WILL NOT DO THAT and he is obviously not a gunsmith, so short of getting a bullet his gun will shoot which is going to be his least expensive way to get his pistol shooting, he is going to have to have a competent gunsmith work over his pistol. I don't know what they charge for that, but I'm guessing it will most likely be a hellofva a lot more than the price of a new bullet mold.

You say:
And when Bryant has run that many rounds through his gun, he will know how to address the issue he currently has, but until then, he has to come here and ask for suggestions. I have offed him one. It's up to him to take it or not.

i don't know if this is your problem, maybe not but worth dinking with. You see in that picture where bob has seated the semiwadcutter. There isn't much of that band showing above the case mouth. If i remember this right, in a 1911 type gun the round has to "jump" a little to get on the feed ramp. One time i couldn't get the semiwadcutters to work for nothing. I had a little to much of that front driving band exposed. Seated them down equal to the case mouth, no more problem. looking in my lyman book for 200grain i show for one bullet oal at 1.235 and another, different 200 grain oal at 1.161
I want to say just from memory it was suggest going to about 1.45 to 1.50. I believe the 45acp headspaces on the case mouth.
the problem could be where you are seating the bullet.
i would also remove the barrel from the gun and place a round in the chamber to see if it goes in freely and all the way.

As usual, your observations are spot on Ron regarding how the bullets are seated as is your suggestion to check the cartridge fit in the chamber. But as I have already said, if Bryant just wants an easy bullet to cast that is highly likely to work in his gun, he can get any good 230 grain round nose bullet mold and that will most likely solve his immediate problem. There is a reason the military uses a round nose bullet in that gun and the combination of a round nose bullet and John Brownings 1911 works in mud, snow, rain or shine, so there is every reason to think it'll work in Bryant's pistol. As you suggest, he will have to adjust his seating depth to where his cartridges will feed in his gun, but that is not difficult to do.

If you want to become really proficient with a 1911, you have to live with it awhile and shoot it and tinker with it. If you don't understand every little nuance about it, then you don't know the pistol. Getting to know it takes time and effort and a goodly sum of money.

There are those of us who have been doing this stuff for over a half century and we've been competitive pistol shooters in all the various shooting games. We come from the time when you could go to a gun show or to Army/Navy Surplus Stores and buy a shoe box full of 1911 barrels, slides, links and link pins, magazines, magazine followers, recoil springs, magazine springs, extractors, ejectors, triggers, frames, sears, disconnectors, main spring housings, hammers, safties, slide locks, barrel bushings, sights and other parts for 35 or 40 bucks and there were a lot of 45 autos around selling very cheaply. I bought several for 50 bucks each. 65 dollars was about the top price for one and it had to be in excellent condition to bring that much. It was a ready made situation to build 1911's, shoot them, and in my case, butcher several learning what not to do. I took a shoe box full of parts and assembled them and made probably 20 or 25 1911's. I probaly had an average of 35 or 40 bucks in each one of them. And after you do that for awhile, you understand that pistol and what it takes to make it run.

But there are people who either do not want to go to that level, or don't have the time or talent to do it, and today it is much more expensive to do that than it once was, but they want to be able to go shoot on the weekend and they want to reload their ammo. In my opinion, those people ought to be helped and encouraged because we need every shooter we can get. We don't need to put them down because they don't know what we know and frankly, they really don't need to know it. When it comes time they want to know, they'll get it just like we did.

In the meantime, they just want to shoot and I think every experienced shooter ought to help anyone else who wants to shoot more and learn more. If we don't do it, we may not be able to do any of this much longer because the usual suspects are dam sure out to make sure we can't do it. They have come a long way in my lifetime towards achieving that goal.

I don't generally load for anyone other than me. But a friend does. He has gone to the 228 grain round nose .45acp for exactly those reasons, they will feed, or should feed, in almost anything.
Your comments on the parts gave me a giggle.
I had a good friend die a few years ago. He was in the marine corp pre WWII, and of course was in that.
He was at one time in the 50's one of the top ten shooters at camp perry. We shared a LOT of interests, such as garands, springfields, carbines, reloading, casting etc.
when he died i ended up buying a lot of stuff.
One item was a remington 1911A1, he had gotten from the nra for like 18bucks. It came with about three different barrels and a bunch of other stuff he was tinkering on it with.
He was shooting bullseye with it, and had replaced that rear sight with a target sight very popular in the 50's. I'd have to look to get the name on the side of the sight.
I managed to get an original rear sight for the date of the gun, never was able to get the correct front sight. Just from memory it was made 11/44.
Those front sights are pegged in, so a little difficulty in gettin an original.
I finally left his sights on, have the right original rear with the gun, and that was that.
I just did another three boxes of those 358429 165 grain bullets in 38special. kind of ticked cause i ended up using a lee powder dipper for the charge. My rcbs powder drop is set for larger amounts, and i couldn't find the dang part to switch out to get down in the 3grain area.
it's only gonna be around 115 tomorrow here, and my interest is sagging.
but, we did put up 3gallons of apple juice to ferment today, for hard cider.
I don't drink, but enjoy making that stuff from the peelings, rather that just throwing it away. awful tempted to feed it to the goats. Never seen a drunk goat.
i have a number of molds for the 45, but i do have that lee 228grain round nose. It works good.

it took me almost 50 years to get a real civil war calvary sword. I remember them as a kid in a bucket at a army/surplus store. My dad wouldn't let me have one, afraid i would stick somebody probably.

The drunk goat thing sounds like a great idea! Post a video please.

I have that 228gr 1R Lee mold, but hate it. Minor variations in diameter result in big changes in the front driving band location after sizing, because there's no step between the ogive and driving band. I always ended up having to seat it deeper than I wanted because of that. The TL version got the nose right, but I don't like the tumble lube grooves as much, even for powder coating. Reaming those out to a straight body should work well though.

My dad was a corporal in the Marine Corps when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbour. He was stationed in China, I think it was Shanghi becuase I have photo's of him there. He got to land on all of the Jap infested islands all across the pacific. He retired as a Sargent Major and chief hand gun instructor to the Midshipmen at the Naval Academy at Annopolous. He also taught my brothers and I to shoot correctly. I have three brothers and we were raised on a 1280 acre beef cattle ranch in south Mississippi right on the banks of Bayou Bernard which was the north border of the property. We were raised like Marine recruits and we could all shoot and ride and rope and build rifles and pistols by the time we were 15 or 16.

Funny you should mention those NRA/DCM 1911's going for $18 bucks. Actually, they went for $17.50 and a lot of people got them and then immediately sold them to make a few bucks which is one reason why they were so plentiful and cheap back then. We had our own shooting range and we cast bullets and reloaded and shot a lot because it was all a bunch of redneck kids could do way out there in the boonies. None of us had any problems at all when we joined the military because we had dam near been raised in it.

The target sight you are referencing being on that 1911 you bought was most probably a Bomar. It was the go to sight and a huge improvement over the originals but it was expensive. I just put a modern copy of it on a Taurus gun I set up for IDPA shooting. I also replaced all the guts in the gun with Cylinder and Slide rockwell tested machined parts. The frames and slides on those guns are machined steel and very good, but the guts are all MIM parts. I can't get a good trigger that will stay a good trigger using them because they are too soft.





This is my IDPA gun with the mag well and 8 round magazines



This is my Clackamas, OR marked Kimber. Near as I can tell, there were only about 8000 of them made. This one has been shot very little.



This is one of those NRA/DCM $17.50 1911-A1's (made by Colt) that I added fancy grips to. It was made in August 1942 which is when I was born. It's been with me since 1962. All of my brothers have one or more of them also.



IDPA ammo

More IDPA ammo ( You shoot a lot in those matches and getting ready for them)



This is my IDPA rig and we are having a match starting at 10 AM tomorrow morning at the range and I'm gonna be there making loud noise to keep the knarly SOB's awake. HA!!
I made the Askins Avenger holster and the mag pouch.



Here is a better photo of that NRA/DCM 1911-A1 Colt. It has all matching numbers and had not been shot much. My dad said it had most likely been originally issued to an officer. The only thing I did was put those Colt Medallion ivory grip panels on it because it had the brown plastic grips on when I got it. I also made the mahogany case for it. Because it has the small original sights, I never shot it much because I had guns with better sights, better quality barrels and bushings, better triggers, and that are more accurate. Besides that, I like the 1911 style straight main spring housing anyway and I wanted to keep this gun original and not change it. Heck I had a dozen others to play with.

Is that the Lee 230gr TC bullet? That's a pretty good one; I like it better than most of the RN designs. It can be made even better but is pretty decent out of the box.

While it is similar to the lee bullet, it is actually a NEI bullet #302 which is 451-230-BB. It is a truncated cone bullet with a slight bevel base. Here are a bunch of'em loaded and ready to go:








A word to the uninitiated here: You can fill a GI metal military cartridge can fill of those loaded bullets and carry them off with the handle. But if you try that with the bigger plastic Cabela's Dry Boxes that will hold about a third more cartridges, then you come away with the handle in your hand while the box and the ammo stay on the floor. If you put any more in one than you see here, the handle is gonna come off in your hand when you pick it up, but don't ask me how I know.

Another thing I know is that it is getting summertime quick. It got up to 89 degrees at the range today and it was hot when shooting that IDPA match because although we had a nice breeze blowing, the range is enclosed on three sides with tall dirt banks, so the breeze couldn't get down in there. Several people who signed up for the shoot backed out because of the heat. Of course the humidity was running 90% to make it even worse because it tried to rain all day and did rain all around us, but never did at the range.

But any day at the shooting range is better than a day at work, so WTF??? Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances with tha weather.

For any of you that are new to bullet casting, you should know that some bullet molds that were of excellent quality and reputation in the past when old farts like me were buying them, are not the same quality today. Some have lost quality while other excellent mold makers like Hinsley and Gibbs have retired and the company is out of business. The above referenced NEI bullet is a good example. When Walt Melander ran NEI, the molds were of the highest quality and he was a man of principle. When he died, I don't know who took over making NEI molds, but in my opinion, they are not made today to the same quality as those Walt made.

So before you go putting a lot of money in a mold, make sure you know what you are buying. Check it out. Ask over on the Cast Bullet Forum. Ask here. Ask on the Shooters Forum. Ask if the molds being used are new or old. Ask who made them. Ask if they are cherry cut or lathe cut. Today good information is a mouse click away so use it and know what you are buying because all molds are not created equally.