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Old October 23, 2001, 12:33 AM   #9
taco
Senior Member
 
Join Date: April 28, 2000
Location: USA
Posts: 936
Bill:

Welcome to the world of shooting and reloading... where nothing is easy



I been shooting and reloading for few years now (15 yrs) and have learned some things about both. In my opinion, most quality handguns like your Kimber are usually a lot more accurate than 95% of shooters are able to shoot. The handgun's accuracy is usually the last thing I worry about.

To set a baseline accuracy goal for a particular pistol I shoot few different factory ammos which are known for their accuracy. For me, in 45ACP, this means 230gr Gold Dot, 230gr Hydrashok and 185gr Federal Target ammo. With each ammo I shoot 10 groups of 5 rounds each at 25 yards using sandbags as rest on a stable table. Use several different size sandbags and support your whole hand and always hold the pistol consistantly for each shot. I then calculate the accuracy for each ammo by deleting the best and the worst group in each ammo and averaging the size of 8 groups. The ammo with best groups size become the goal to beat with my reload.

When reloading the most important thing to remember is consistancy. I usually load about 100 rounds of new load to test and everything is done exactly same way loading these 100 rounds. This means I do not adjust the dies or powder drop and use same components for all rounds. I usually shoot about 25 rounds to make sure they function in my gun then shoot another 25 rounds in a informal target shooting. If everything looks good at this point I'll shoot 10 groups of 5 rounds each at 25 yards. Sometimes the reload will be accurate and sometimes... not so accurate.

As you gain experience reloading you'll see that there are some patters to accurate loads. Personally I find that my 45ACP pistols are usually most accurate with 200-230gr cast bullets or 230gr FMJ bullets (yes, there are exceptions). Also, velocity should be kept around 750-800fps with cast bullets while FMJ bullets will work better slightly faster. When loading these cast bullets faster buring powders such as Bullseye or Win231 will usually give better accuracy than slower burning powders such as Unique. Finally, I have yet to find a particular brand of brass, powder, primer, bullet, press, etc that will give consistantly better accuracy than another. They all will give good accuracy at times when used in a particular combination. This all will just come with time and experience.

In past 5 years my eyesight has been getting worse very quickly and now I have a lot of trouble shooting 25 yards with iron sight. One thing that has helped me to improve my group was to change the target from the standard "circle/bullseye" to what I call "inverted T" type. Basically I draw a horizontal line across the middle of paper and then another line is drawn vertically above this horizontal line. The vertical line should be wide enough to just fill accross the front sight at 25 yards while the horizontal line should be just thick enough to line accross the top of your front sight.

Here is a pic of the target I use


I hope this helps a little in your search for the "ultimate" reload for your Kimber.

btw Kimber rocks.
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