Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns 250gr hard cast in .45 acp

I just started loading for the first time. 45acp hard cast. I have a Lyman gage and when loading they drop into the gage no problem. I tried dropping them into the barrel and they seemed to drop in no problem.
When dropping the slide on a loaded magazine they don't want to extract easily.

What am I missing? The lead is 250gr. Acme hard cast, .452"

After you eject the loaded round are there marks on the bullet from the rifling?

Ran into a tight throat on a Dan Wesson 1911 that gagged at loads my Kimber happily digested.

Likely a .451 throat instead of .452, plus maybe a bit on the shallow side.

I sent the DW barrel off to Cylinderhone and it’s happier, though still tighter than the Kimber.

Screwy thing is, though the DW is a better gun in every way, I still can’t make it out-group the Kimber!

Check all of your specs against an SAAMI schematic. I think the case mouth of loaded rounds should be .457 IIRC..

It's .473

Do your plunk test again. This time, listen for the sound of brass hitting the chamber mouth. Check that the plunked round can spin freely. If not, then you need to seat the bullet deeper.

I sent him a barrel to use in a 1911 .45 Super build and he did a magnificent job.

I highly recommend his work, especially if one wants to use cast in a tightish chamber.

Thanks to all. I was wondering if the .452 cast was the issue. I may get a separate barrel honed specifically for the cast bullet loads.

Thanks for the plunk test and deeper seating comments. I'll try it again.
How do you decide when the taper crimp is enough? I just made small adjustments until the loaded round dropped cleanly into the gage. How much is too much?

All my loading experience has been rifle.

Just enough to remove the flare and then a hair more so that the edge of the casemouth feels rounded. That's my personal 45acp taper crimp.
Neck tension is what holds your bullet - the taper crimp just removes the flare.
Do a drop test on a finished round to see if the bullet gets pushed back as sometimes guys over do the taper crimp. Bullet setback is a big deal - especially if you are using TiteGroup.

.470-.471" at the casemouth if I remember correctly.

Have been messing with a 250 grain NOE and the RCBS 270 SAA. The 250 is running 925 from my five inch. I don’t know what the 270 SAA is yet. Both function perfectly. Beginning to wonder why I have a 10mm

So not really better in every way, is it? I fixed it for you

Mine is a Kimber Custom II, so did the plunk test with the barrel out, and I think the lead is in the throat. I seated the bullet a couple thousandth deeper but the don't spin freely.
Might be to tight of a chamber for what I'm doing.

Even after Cylinderhone was done with mine, I still have to seat .452” H&G 68’s about .010” deeper than with my (‘07 model) Kimber to get them to plunk/spin in the DW barrel.
This does (believe it or not), make about 50fps difference in speed/pressure, so adjust your load accordingly.

The easiest way to find the COL for your pistol/bullet combo is to take a fired case, slide your bullet in, plunk it into the barrel and push it until it stops. It should stop on the end of the chamber. Measure the COL, subtract .010" for brass variation and you should have your new COL. Make a real bullet with the new COL and it should plunk just fine.

If a .452" bullet in the case won't chamber, then you've got an out of spec barrel.

The key here is that .053" from the casemouth the bullet dia has to be .447". So certain profiles are not going to be able to meet that unless they are seated deeper.

Reloading manuals give COLs for the bullets they tested with - if your bullet is different then the fastest way is to plunk with a bullet that can move.

This is a super common reloading problem with 45acp and 9mm.

Chamber -> throat -> leade -> rifling.
Neither SAAMI nor CIP breakout throat from leade, but instead give a length and angle. SAAMI does spec that the "throat" diameter is .447" about .053" from the start of the throat, which is .452" minimum.

I would love to see what these reamers are opening up to. I would think they are increasing the length of the throat and recutting the leade.

Some of these barrels seem to have a very steep lead into the rifling. Some bullets that are full caliber just in front of the case mouth like the WFN and Semi-wadcutters, engage the rifling with the case seated against the end of the chamber even with OAL within limits. You may see the rifling marks or maybe not, but if the cartridge won't spin freely, it's in the rifling. You can buy the throating reamer from Brownell's and do it yourself, or send it to someone. I have several .45's so it made fiscal sense for me to buy the reamer and do them myself. Now I can seat the Lee 252gr WFN bullet in my 45 super cases out to where I have a little more case powder capacity and they feed better from the mag at the upper end of the OAL tolerance. The S&W Shield 45 was especially bad. It wouldn't accept semi-wadcutters with much more than .030" of bullet out from the case mouth and still close the slide reliably.

How much freebore is too much with the 45acp? I would imagine folks have played with this over the last 50 years. It seems silly to have the short throats and steep leades nowadays - given WFN bullet availability.

When you used the finish reamer, how long did you make the throat?

Another barrel on the way to Doug. Seems "modern" production barrels aren't expecting heavy lead bullets.

Didn't really measure precisely, just cut and tried little by little until the sample round I made would plunk and rotate freely. I don't think it moved the actual start position of the lead much more than .010-.020" but it laid the angle back on the land, which gave me the clearance I needed with the big bullets.