200gr SWC .45acp COL

[uncle.45]

unclenick,
I put in a little time, and found the sweet spot for COL in my SW1911s.
I backed out the seating die til I got 1.275", and turned it in 1/6th turn at a time until the case heads were absolutely flush with the barrel hood.
(I used the corners of the die hex against a mark on the press to ensure similar adjustments. Hence 1/6th)
I wound up with a COL of 1.268" instead of the previous 1.255". I know .013" isn't much, but it should make for more consistent, if not more accurate shooting.
The finished rounds feed in/out of the magazines, and hand-cycle through the pistols great.
Now I will load the same three batches as before,(3.8, 4.0, 4.2gr Clays) and see how they shoot. It should be better.
Thanks for the help!

[Northof50]

44amp

For the record, the 500gr FMJ .458 Win Mag load is a generic term to describe a cartridge of a specific caliber with a specific bullet weight. It is not a solid. The bullet may be a solid or may be jacketed. Hornady puts out both a monolithic and bonded version of the 500gr for dangerous game.

The intent of my original post is correct. Hard cast bullets are harder than most jacketed bullets. Are there some exception? Yes. But, the OP is about the 45acp. This thread has veered into the abyss :-)

[uncle.45]

Northof50,
You got that right! This thread took a hard left turn several posts back.
Thankfully, I was able to accomplish what I needed.
Now I just have to decide on the best powder drop again, and I'll be all set.
Thanks again, guys!

[USSR]

Yes, there are loading differences for lead, hard cast, and jacketed bullets...

Northof50,

You are woefully misinformed. There is no separate loading data for lead and hard cast. How would that be done, since there is no defined definition for what is hard cast and what is not? When I cast bullets with a BHN of 10, 11, 12, and 13, at what point does the term "hard cast" kick in? Sorry, but I have cast bullets for nearly 40 years, and I put the term "hard cast" in the same category as the term "tactical". Nothing but a sales term to hopefully increase sales with no science behind it.

Don

[Northof50]

USSR - respectfully, this thread is full of people taking single lines out of context and running with them to prove their point.

Yes - you can find information on jacketed bullets - check any loading manual
Yes - you can find information on swaged lead bullets [i.e. 38cal wadcutters]
Yes - you can find information on hard cast bullets [i.e. 454 Casull chambering]

No, your years of experience in casting bullets is not germane to the thread.

I mean absolutely no disrespect by this reply. It is simply that, as stated, the thread is simply being beaten to death by trivial off-topic information. Welcome to forum life.

[uncle.45]

Hi, Guys!
Since 1.268" is the absolute maximum COL for my 1911s as determined by unclenick's drawings, I chose to reduce the COL by just a couple thousandths to compensate for variations in COL.
I went to 1.266", and measured every one of the test rounds I loaded.
They vary from 1.2655" to 1.2665'. That should keep me at least one or two thousandths below maximum, and promote reliable function without sacrificing accuracy/consistency.
I will post results tomorrow(Monday)afternoon.
Shalom!

[uncle.45]

The test batches I made ran 100% in my 1911s!
There were no failures in either gun.
Both function and accuracy were great. The guns cycled fully, and locked-up properly, too!
Both shot to just over the front sight with 3.8 or 4.0gr of Clays.
Listed minimum is 3.6gr, and function was so good at 3.8 that I am going to load a few at 3.6, 3.4, 3.2 and 3.0 grains to see how/if it will run on lower charges. I'm thinking of going lower til it malfunctions, and then going up .2 or .3 grains, and calling that my pet 200gr Clays load.
My revolver shot nicely also, so after I choose a final powder charge I will have a good-to-go Clays Target Load.

[Unclenick]

Good deal! Not unexpected, through. I've been preaching this loading method for years and never heard any feedback other than improvement. Continued good luck and happy experimenting.


Northof50,

Jacketed bullets are actually hard enough to require around two to three times the pressure to engrave with the rifling that cast bullets do. This may be counter-intuitive, but once the gilding metal (actually a form of brass, called low brass or red brass because of its low zinc content of only about 5% as compared to yellow brasses with 20-40%) is drawn, it's hardness is around BHN 70, compared to hard cast bullets of usually around 12-21, and its shear modulus is over 6300 kpsi, compared to 700-1500 kpsi. So engraving it with the rifling takes about six times more effort than engraving lead to the same depth. That the jacket is thin is why the effort isn't six times higher until you get to a gilding metal solid, but it is around 2 to 3 times higher with most jackets.

You do find more intact hard cast bullets at the range, but when a bullet is stopped suddenly, you get a lot of force applied, and that can exceed the yield of a jacket, rupturing it. However, there is also the statistical fact that more jacketed bullets are fired having hollow points and at higher velocities than many hard cast bullets, so that biases the examples we see.

I've seen an intact 500-grain FMJ (Hornady) pulled from a cape buffalo that had hit its skull and bent the bullet at a right angle. That's the soft core allowing the bend. This was fired from a 460 G&A and at just tens of yards. The jacket was intact, however, despite the immense forces at work.

[Jim Watson]

1.268" is awful long for a .45 SWC, that is common for hardball.
Is your bullet the usual HG #68 copy or Something Else?

[USSR]

1.268" is awful long for a .45 SWC, that is common for hardball.
Is your bullet the usual HG #68 copy or Something Else?

I agree. I load my H&G #68 clones to 1.250".

Don

[uncle.45]

Thanks unclenick! I will let you know the results, and try to include some target photos.

Jim,
Yes. These are coated cast lead H&G #68 SWCs. They function and shoot great at this col, and there is absolutely no leading.

[uncle.45]

Jim and USSR,
If you read unclenick's posts about head spacing on the bullet in 1911s, and my post about how I arrived at this COL, you will see why this works in MY pistols.
This length may not work in YOUR pistols, but this method of determining the optimum COL will work for you, too! ENJOY!

PS-- 1.266" - 1.250" = 0.011".
That isn't very much, but can be the difference between head spacing on the case mouth, or on the bullet shoulder.

[Northof50]

Unclenick, with respect, the Brinell hardness of brass [or any other exterior jacket] is almost irrelevant without stating the thickness of the jacket. Standard aluminum foil can have a brinell hardness between 30-90, yet it folds effortlessly.

Once again, the topic at hand is the .45ACP round. My statement was that [generally speaking] hard cast bullets [those purchased, boxed, as "hard cast"] are harder than jacketed bullets [those jacketed bullets within the context of the discussion].

Yes, can you get a jacketed bullet with an extremely thick jacket or even solid? Yes. Will these be harder than cast? Perhaps. But, this is not indicative of 95%+ of the jacketed bullets available-nor are they indicative of most jacketed bullets.

With a typical jacketed bullet, "engraving" is not taking place as much as "molding" is. A typical jacketed bullet is either .001 or .0005 larger than the bore. The bullet is not "engraved" to the correct size - it is "molded" [compressed and folded] more appropriately.

[USSR]

Jim and USSR,
If you read unclenick's posts about head spacing on the bullet in 1911s, and my post about how I arrived at this COL, you will see why this works in MY pistols.
This length may not work in YOUR pistols, but this method of determining the optimum COL will work for you, too! ENJOY!

PS-- 1.266" - 1.250" = 0.011".
That isn't very much, but can be the difference between head spacing on the case mouth, or on the bullet shoulder.

uncle.45,

The proper OAL for a H&G #68 bullet was determined eons ago by the very best Bullseye shooters of this country, and it involves having the shoulder of the bullet protruding 1/16" above the case mouth. In my case, that translates to a 1.250" OAL. Thanks.

Don

[Jim Watson]

Uncle,
I learned to headspace Lyman 452460 on the shoulder about 40 years ago. When I lost my source of those, I went to #68 types seated the same way. I have no idea what the OAL was. Accuracy was excellent.

I now seat #68 types shorter because I have more than one .45 and am more concerned with feeding than optimum headspace control. I took my present adjustments off of Black Hills commercial reload semiwadcutters. They have to work in any customer's gun so they have a shorter OAL and more crimp than is usually recommended on the Internet.

[Unclenick]

The hitch is often the feed ramp of the gun or the magazine. A round nose bullet is difficult to headspace on the bullet in many longer 1911 chambers because it either makes the cartridge too long to fit the magazine or too long to turn the corner smoothly at the top of the feed. I've never had a problem with either H&G 68 shape SWC's nor with the shorter SWC shapes like the Lee molds have, nor with the 185-grain RCBS mold I have for a near wadcutter with a small bump of a round nose, though I did have to radius my feed ramp for that one, as it's about like feeding an empty case (which that gun will do after the ramp mod).

Some of the old-time Bullseye shooters also used a roll crimp into a bullet, especially with swaged bullets, for which it could dig in. Theory says that such a crimp is dangerous because it could wind up trying to open while wedged in the case mouth. But if the bullet is out far enough to headspace on the bullet, then that's no issue because the case mouth can't go that far into the chamber. They claimed the added start pressure plus the start into the bore produced by far the most accurate loads they could get from those bullets.

USSR, the problem with any fixed value of lead protrusion from the seated round (I've always read 0.020", or a thumbnail thickness forward of the case mouth, but the same principle) is it assumes all guns have the same headspace. They don't, especially not a bull's eye gun that has had a throating reamer applied after initial fitting to steepen the taper angle onto the lands. If you cut your own chamber to headspace at SAAMI minimum with the barrel locked up in your slide, then what you describe will work because it will pretty much guarantee the bullet has at least started into the throat even if it isn't headspacing on the bullet. That's the thing that brings about the accuracy improvement. But once you've got some cases that have seen twenty reloads and are now shorter than SAAMI minimum, you hit a point where you either headspace the extractor hook or on the bullet before the case mouth gets to the end of the chamber. I decided long ago just to start out headspacing on the bullet and stay that way through the life of the case.

I once ran a batch of 1000 Winchester cases with target loads until they reached 50 reloads. By that time only about 300 hadn't either split or been sacrificed to the range gods. The headstamp markings were getting slowly hammered into barely visible condition. All of them were about 0.025" shorter than when they were new. About half a thousandth lost per load cycle. That's because the .45 Auto doesn't have enough pressure to stick the case to the chamber wall, which is a prerequisite to stretching during firing. By that time, if I weren't headspacing on the bullet, the extractor hook would be shouldering the whole burden and accuracy from the bullets heading down the tube slightly off-axis would open the groups up about 40%.

Originally Posted by Northof50

With a typical jacketed bullet, "engraving" is not taking place as much as "molding" is. A typical jacketed bullet is either .001 or .0005 larger than the bore. The bullet is not "engraved" to the correct size - it is "molded" [compressed and folded] more appropriately.

Engraving is what is called a term of art in the firearms industry, and is standard nomenclature. You can look it up in the SAAMI glossary of industry terminology under "Bullet Engraving". It is not a good physical description, as you observe, but neither is molding, as that implies melting the metal and pouring or injecting it into a mold. A better technical description of the actual action is swaging, with the throat and bore and rifling acting as the swaging die.

The hardness issue is something you simply have wrong because what your imagination is telling you about it does not match the magnitudes of what is actually happening. That's common. It's why they taught us analysis at engineering school; to unfool ourselves.

To get a sense of the difference, QuickLOAD uses 1160 psi as starting pressure for cast or swaged lead bullets, rifle or pistol. For jacketed pistol bullets, it is 2175 psi. They are wide enough and the jackets thin enough that they are easier to swage than rifle bullets, for which it uses 3625 psi, nor for solid (not banded) copper and for jacketed bullets over hard cores, it uses 6525 psi, and for jacket bullets jammed into the lands, it is 10,825 psi. Those are the start pressures that cause the powder burning model to match what you see with a pressure measuring instrument. I have made the same measurements by the strain gauge method and verified these numbers are in the ballpark, though thin jacketed match bullets and heavily jacketed hunting bullets can be tweaked to have their own numbers. In all cases, swaged or cast lead bullet alloys have the lowest values.

But, don't take my word for it or the word of QuickLOAD's author. Anybody can be proved wrong. Just do the following experiment to see for yourself:

Take your pistol barrel out of your gun. Run a patch oiled with Mobile 1 0W-20 or STP down the bore so it isn't dry. Hold the muzzle against a wood block while you drive a cast bullet into its throat with a brass dowel and a hammer. Get a good feel for how much effort it takes to get it through and out of the muzzle. Now run the oily patch through again try to do the same thing with a jacketed bullet. Don't do the jacketed bullet first as it is possible to stick a jacketed bullet in a barrel and spoil the comparison. You may decide from the early feel of the jacketed bullet that you want to stop and knock it out from the front before you get it fully into the lands. The lubricant should prevent it sticking badly, but do the cast bullet first, just in case. Sometimes stuck jacketed bullets have to be bored out with guided drills. Harold Vaughn measured about 1200 lbs of force required to push a .270 bullet through a rifle barrel with a hydraulic press. But even assuming it goes through, you will find it takes significantly more effort.

[USSR]

USSR, the problem with any fixed value of lead protrusion from the seated round (I've always read 0.020", or a thumbnail thickness forward of the case mouth, but the same principle) is it assumes all guns have the same headspace. They don't, especially not a bull's eye gun that has had a throating reamer applied after initial fitting to steepen the taper angle onto the lands.

And, very few if any cases have a length of .898" (most are quite a bit shorter). I had a Kart barrel installed on my Gold Cup a few months ago, and did not have the throat reamed. My 1.250" H&G 68 load feeds and functions fine. In the Spring I will put it in my Ransom Rest and we will see what we see. As for me, when the Bullseye guys speak, I tend to listen.

Don

[Unclenick]

I was one of the Bullseye guys for a couple of decades. Shot High Master scores a few times and earned some EIC points before service rifle competition took over my time.

0.898" is almost never seen because it is a maximum value. It has a -0.010" tolerance, so most makers target the middle of the tolerance range, or 0.893". With fired cases it is also because, as I mentioned, the cases don't grow with firing and cycling, instead getting shorter by about half a thousandth each time.

[Jim Watson]

Most of the old time bullseye shooters used HG 130 as I recall the chart in an old NRA Handloading book. OAL numbers mean nothing unless the bullet is identified. One bullseye shooter got around the bullet shape and case length variability by calling out the head to SWC shoulder measurement. .936" I think, at least as a starting point.

I have read of serious target shooters buying a large supply of same lot brass and having their barrel chambered to match. And throated for the bullet to be used.

[Unclenick]

Yes, I always use a #130 clone for gallery loads and for 25 yard timed and rapid. But the #68 always grouped better for me, so for 50 and 25 yard SF, that was my go-to bullet shape. The 130's stubbier nose meant much shorter COL, closer to that of the 185 grain commercial match ammunition of JSWC form.

The 0.936" number lands between my 0.020" and USSR's 0.0625". I've also heard 0.050" mentioned in the past. I suspect that, like rifle shooters trying to find an optimal amount of bullet jump for all chambers, you will find these values have wandered around some over the years, never settling completely because different guns don't all agree 100% on what they best like to digest. But it's worth looking at them all while you try to figure out what that is.

Out of curiosity, I pulled several cases from a thus-far-untapped box of 1000 Starline cases I have in the basement. Every one of them was 0.892" on the caliper. So I can see the temptation to customize the chamber to them, and for minimizing diameters, you can do that and maybe improve alignment with the chamber a little by going to one of the Redding two-ring carbide dies. But for length, they will still lose about half a thousandth per load cycle, so there's no way to keep headspace clearance constant for them over the long haul.

[uncle.45]

Hi Guys!
All this is why I emphasized that 1.266" proved to be ideal in MY two SW1911s.
You can find the optimum col for YOUR guns the same way, but if you want to make ammo to function in a variety of guns, you should stick with the shorter col you have been using.
Shalom, my Brothers!!

[Jim Watson]

Seems a lot of target shooters have gone to JHPs.
No casting, sorting, lubrisizing, just open the box of Noslers or Zeroes.

Kind of like the old cowhand upon the introduction of canned condensed milk ca 1885.
"No tits to pull, no manure to pitch, just punch a hole in the son of a bixx."

[USSR]

Seems a lot of target shooters have gone to JHPs.
No casting, sorting, lubrisizing, just open the box of Noslers or Zeroes.

Great, if money is no object. As for me, I could never afford enough Noslers and Zeroes to practice like I do on a weekly basis.

Don

[Jim Watson]

Do you cast your own?
I chanced upon one brand of commercial bulk cast bullets that was accurate enough to hold the ten ring. (From a Ransom Rest, I am not a precision shooter.)
Of course they folded before I had a chance to buy a lifetime supply.

[Unclenick]

That's another excuse for casting your own. I've grown fond of the Lee 6-cavity molds of the Tumble-Lube variety. I shot them as-cast in both my K-38 and DW revolvers and cut group sizes in half over what commercial wadcutters would do. In the .45 they have kept up with or exceeded any commercial cast bullets I've acquired. I haven't tried powder-coating them yet, though I got the powder and intend to do so.

I had Lee make one custom T-L mold for me (an experimental 300 grain 45 Auto bullet with five degree boattail so I could seat it without the thicker part of the case interfering with it). My nose shaping was optimistic, so it never fed 100 percent even in the 1911 that feeds empty cases, but it makes a great paperpatch target and hunting bullet in the 45-70 and would work in a Ruger .45 Colt or any other with chamber throats sized for the modern .451 bullets. My next foray into this will be an H&G 68 shape for both the 1911 and 25-2.