Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Need info on the 400 corbon

I know its a 45 necked down to 40 and its pretty close to a 10 performance wise.
My question is, can the brass be necked down using a regular sizing die, or is there more to it than that?
Is this caliber worth getting into, or is it more trouble than its worth?

More trouble than it's worth - is the short answer!

The most valuable atrribute is it makes it fairly easy and inexpensive to develop reduced recoil loads, in a .45 cal 1911 pistol - IMO.

It is NOT a simple cartridge to handload.

Sometimes I get stuck on foolish ideas, i should take the hint that its not very popular for a reason and move on. Thanks for saving me the trouble.

its fans would squawk at me for saying it, but well, it is a lot of trouble. I fitted a Safari Arms barrel to a Colt 1991.

If you subscribe to the idea that velocity is king, and 155's at 1350 fps are better than 230's at 900 fps, then by all means grab a barrel and start filing.

Here's an old thread at 1911 forum - which I posted on a couple times, that details some of the headaches:

http://forums.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=143607

Corbon has (or had) some fairly good notes about handloading the cartridge. They also explain that you want to start with factory .400 CB brass, made by Starline, which has a small primer and correct neck thickness.

The real challenge comes in trying to handload it, as it is very difficult to get the bullets tight enough to stop them setting back in feeding, which of course is potentially dangerous for pressures. Factory ammo comes with channellured bullets, and the case mouth is crimped in the channellure to prevent setback. It is not easy to find aftermarket 10mm bullets with such channellures. In the end I was successful when I turned down the case expander ball to .392 dia, tumbled brass after sizing to remove lube from inside the case neck, and then strongly taper crimped the bullets. It did shoot well, with those caveats.

I have a couple different 10mm's, which are far less fussy to load and shoot.

It is true, though, that the gun ran very well with light, subsonic loads of 135 gr bullets, which is a reasonable way to reduce the recoil of your .45 cal 1911. A barrel & dies allows one to duplicate 9mm ballistics, at less cost than buying a complete 9mm pistol, or a 9mm 1911 top end.

I've been handloading the 400 CB since it was introduced at the SHOT Show in 1997. I use Starline brass instead of converting 45acp stuff. Just makes more sense to me. I also use a Corbin cannalure tool and a roll crimp die.

Never have played with subsonic loads as tex here alludes to. Rather mine are the close matches to 10mm (within 100 fps) at weights of 165gr and less.

I have a Colt MKIV set up with BarSto 45acp and an Accu-Match 400 CB barrels, as well as a C.Daly EFS Field with factory 45acp and Storm Lake 400CB barrels.



If you're looking for a good starting point to garner info, Wilkpedia has a decent summary https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/.400_Corbon