1911 Loads and Tips

[yodogsandman]

Would anyone like to share some loads and tips to get me going with a 1911 45ACP. I'm a noob at this and not much of a pistol shooter but, it certainly seems like a fun past time. I picked up a used RIA 1911 tactical to play with and find myself not knowing much. I'm still trying to figure out how to get my cast to feed right. This pistol is supposed to be easy to feed! I tried "as cast" Lyman 452460's and lubed with BLL and had many, many FTF. I finally got all but one to fire. At home, the case mouth read .475". Thought I had them all taper crimped to .470".

I've picked up a bunch of molds too, in the last few months. A Lee 452-230 TC, Lyman 452460, 452374, 452474, NOE 453-200 (H&G 68) and NOE 454-230 RN. Both .451" and 452" sizing dies and top punches.

I have Bullseye, AA#5 and Unique. I can get others if I need to. I'd like to shoot a cleaner powder, if I can.

How do I bench rest test a pistol? I have no way to quantify my loads or my shooting!

Can I put the slide in a vise? I need to move the front sight back to the middle, the original owner has it off 1/8" to the right (he flinches?). I tried moving it setting on the bench and it won't move, I think it needs to be held more securely. Shooting at a paper plate, all shots (almost) are to the left side of the paper.

This is just the "tip O' the iceberg" for all my questions, I could sure use some help.

 

[Brad]

I shoot lots of the MP 200 swc. I was shooting it over 4 gr of Clays but I am now out of that powder. I am now work great to find a load of Red Dot that I like.
I haven't tried BLL.
Taper crimp to .470 or even a bit smaller. I would go smaller, see how they go and if it leads or shows other signs of trouble go a bit bigger.
Google for the "plunk test" to set proper OAL for your pistol.

I was in the same place a few years back. After 6 K rounds or more I am finally getting the hang of this pistol.

Have fun. It isn't bad to lead a barrel a time or twenty.

 

[yodogsandman]

I started with about 300 commercial bullets that I've had for twenty years or so. 185gr SWC sized at .451" with green lube. Fed every time! Taper crimp was at .469". Using mixed brass, too.

 

[RicinYakima]

Well, I have had a Lyman four cavity 452460 for over 40 years from when I shot NRA Bullseye. At 50 feet gallery, I used 4.0 grains of Bullseye powder, but at 25 yards and 50 yards I used 4.5 grains. With carefully cast bullets either will hold the X ring at their distance.

In my old age, I test seated with both wrist resting on sandbags and the pistol in both hands. With good position and technique, you get about 150% size groups as what you can get from a well setup Ransom Rest.

HTH, Ric

 

[yodogsandman]

So maybe go to the next step with the 452460...size them instead of using them "as cast" size. Taper crimp to .469" or below...

I shot the 185gr SWC with 4.2gr and 4.8gr of Bullseye. I couldn't see a difference with my offhand shots. I don't see a Ransom Rest in my future but, as long as I have a consistent way to test loads, I'm good.

You don't rest the frame on anything? Just support the wrists while seated? That's why there's a stool in the pistol range house! Thought it was so someone could sit and watch, LOL!

 

[fiver]

you should find a good load with all of your powders.
unique shoots pretty soft but it's a titch slow for my tastes but the accuracy was/is pretty hard to beat.
bullseye was the original powder used in the round [under 230gr fmj's] and it's still a good choice.
your no-2 is close to the red-dot burn rate area and runs through a powder measure like butter on a hot skillet, it's loads will be close to the bulls-eye data.
I'm using green-dot right now and when it's gone i'll switch over to some American select I have, if I manage to burn up 20 pounds of powder in the 45 in the next 20 years i'll try something else or go back to unique. [or retire the pistols]

 

[Ian]

Bill has been helping me dope out some rather unusual problems with some of my guns, there's a gold mine of information he put in a thread of Brad's here recently. It was in special projects, something about "lesson learned". Check it out, about the last 2/3 of the posts were us de-railing Brad's thread and me trying to learn about magazines and feeding problems.

 

[9.3X62AL]

Lyman #452460 has been a GREAT bullet for me in several 45 ACP pistols over the years. Cartridge overall length can be critical for feed reliability, follow Lyman recommendations for this spec......IIRC, 1.210" is the right setting, but this is from memory--don't take it to the bank. This setting gives a very short edge of the bullet's front drive band just clear of the case mouth, enabling a positive taper crimp after seating. I have used 5.0 grains of WW-231 as sort of a "softball" target loading, giving about 800 FPS to the 200 grain SWCs. These run my Series 80 Gold Cup delightfully. I also warm up with these before commencing CCW practice in the P-220 with 230 grainers @ 900 FPS that duplicate my WW 230 SXT carry stuff. (Lee 230 TC or Lyman #452374 atop 5.7 grains of WW-231).

 

[yodogsandman]

Thanks, I'd like to find one powder that's great along with one great bullet to get in lots of practice. I still only have about 500 brass. I'll stock up on powder when I figure out which one to get. I've cast about 200-300 of each bullet flavor to try them out. For now, I'd like to keep everything as simple as possible. So, if I can seat and taper crimp in the same operation with the RCBS die, that's what I want to do.

Note that the Lyman #4 manual says to seat the 452460 to 1.161" so, I did.

The posts on "lessons learned" were way over my head. I haven't even taken the gun apart yet to clean it. I did run a brush and some patches from the breach for a quicky barrel clean once, though. I had just a little leading that easily cleaned up. As far as magazines go, I just have the one factory and a (Chip McCormick?) that came with it.

Will I need any special tools to disassemble (field strip) it for cleaning? I'll need to watch the you tube video again...

Have you guys figured out just how ignorant I am about these 1911's yet? (and with my dad an old Army armorer, too) If I ask him anything, I'll be there for hours and hours, though! Didn't even tell him I have one! Still, I wish I could shoot it like him, my 10 yard targets are probably like his 100 yard targets.

 

[yodogsandman]

Edit: muzzle for breach...

 

[Dale53]

yodogsandman;
First, you need a plan.
A good start is to get a "manual" so you can properly assemble and disassemble without harm. Here's an example:
http://www.amazon.com/Colt-1911-Eve...443587060&sr=8-3&keywords=1911+.45+acp+manual

I was into the 1911 BEFORE I entered the U.S. Army. During my five years competing with IPSC (as an "A" class shooter) I cast, shot, and reloaded 75,000 rounds through my custom 1911. I also cast most of the bullets for my two sons and did some custom casting. My choice of bullet is the H&G #68 (now, with Mihec moulds), a 200 gr SWC. The difference between the #68 and the other "pretenders" is the #68 was engineered to have the same "strike" into the chamber as issue hardball. It will work in nearly all 1911's (even issue military). Some must be throated to be 100% reliable. However, the modern 1911's seem to be MUCH better than the old commercial Colts that I cut my teeth on. I still have my Harold Johnson custom and it is still shooting extremely well after 100,000 rounds of mostly full charge (power factor of 180,000 as required by IPSC in my day).

At any rate, for proper functioning, that Lee mould you have for the 230 gr. TC should flat work in about any 1911. Use a standard LP primer in those cases that came with a large primer (or SP in those that were made for those). Military cases will need to have the primer pockets reamed or swaged to get rid of the crimp that will prevent you from properly seating a primer. I use the RCBS primer pocket swaging tool kit. The Dillon is MUCH faster but a bit pricey. Most commercial cases do not need primer pocket reamed or swaged.

I taper crimp my case mouths on the loaded round to .470". I size my bullets to .452". I recommend the Lee Factory Crimp die. Here is a picture of how to properly seat a cast bullet using the barrel removed from the handgun as a gage:


Experiment with your loads before you do ANY alteration to your gun. That should be the last resort for you. Bullet seating depth is critical to reliability and the picture should help you visualize what needs to be done. This is the so-called "Plunk Test".

Get your loads from a good loading manual. Most any of the faster (Bullseye or Titegroup as an example) or medium burning (Unique or Power Pistol) powders should work well for you. The original hardball load was a 230 gr. RN jacketed bullet ahead of 5.0 grs. of Bullseye. That will work with the Lee TC bullet but if you don't need a "full" load, then 4.0-4.5 grs. will reduce the recoil and should also work well in your auto pistol. Most use the slowest load that will reliably operate your handgun for range use.

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress.
Dale53

 

[DougGuy]

As per the above "plunk" test, if you can't seat your bullets to the specified COA in the load data, and you have to seat them deeper in the case to get loads to feed, you may need to have the barrel throated so it will "plunk" your chosen loads at the COA you want to load them to. It is quite common for the 1911 to have not enough freebore, or what little freebore it has would measure .4515" and not be quite big enough to accept a .452" bullet. I offer this service on the other forum, on the cylinderhone.net facebook page, send a PM if this sounds like something you may be interested in.

Here is a Springfield RO barrel, before throating (left) and after throating (right):

 

[Ian]

SOOOOOO much better.

 

[fiver]

since we started.
how come you don't just cut the lands down into an angle?

 

[DougGuy]

They are on a 3° angle you just can't see it very good because the digital camera is being an a$$ at what it chooses to focus on. See if this photo shows it any better. The lands still look like they are sharply angled in this photo but they are not.

 

[DougGuy]

This is a photo of a throating reamer. You will notice that the 3° tapered part starts at a diameter of .426" which is considerably smaller than the .4425" ~ .443" diameter of the lands, so the cutter just tapers out to nothing when it runs out of metal, and the lands get cut on a 3° angle back to the smooth part of the throat which is .4525" ~ .4527" so the angle the lands are on, is the same angle and long smooth taper that is on the nose of this throating reamer.

 

[yodogsandman]

I've made some progress! Stripped the pistol down after watching a video, cleaned it up and performed a plunk test with a fresh dummy round. The dummy wouldn't go so, measured the mouth and it was .474". Reset my seating die crimp for .469", checked the C.O.A.L. (1.161") with the Lyman 452460 sized to .452" and it plunked right in! Loaded another dummy round, the mouth was now at .470", did the plunk and it still fit. Success!! Lubed up the parts and put it back together, performed the functionality tests and done! Will load up a bunch to try them out at the range, now. Time to work on my new bench resting skills!

 

[fiver]

I hope a bunch of guy's see this and take note of that 4527 diameter on the back of the reamer.
see where it hits in that chamber?
anybody wanna take a stab at why the newer pistols don't shoot cast well?
the first photo is a super huge clue.
take a soft [okay super hard] chunk of square shouldered lead and push it forward against those square flat scraping edges,,,,,, any guesses as to what will happen next?
now picture a slightly tapered smooth surface of lead going through there.
yeah the same thing is gonna happen eventually now.... move where it happens to the boolit and control that flow into two separate places and you'd have a winning boolit design for the newer throats.

unfortunately nobody makes a design that will work properly with that type of throat, and loading it properly would be quite a chore if they did. [never mind getting it [the round] to headspace properly]
this is where design and function clash.
sometimes it's just a lot easier to re-work the gun and be able to shoot it well than to fight with everything at the bench.

 

[Pistolero]

H&G 68, dead reliable feeder in 99% of the guns, no matter what Ian says...... (he has a 1% gun, prob bad slide)
LOA 1.250-1.270 depending on the particular throat in the barrel. Older Colts are happy with 1.270 or even longer for
some, many newer guns have very tight match chambers and throats and need 1.250 to fully seat without engaging the
rifling. 4.8 of TG or BE are great, 5.6-5.7 of W231 is also excellent. Unique is too slow, has large velocity variations, very dirty,
BUT still quite accurate, surprisingly enough.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, and I am not kidding here, is to taper crimp as a separate operation, and IMO, taper crimp
to about .466-465 at the extreme case mouth. I am always accused of the horrible crime of "overcrimping"....... which has no
punishment, but UNDERCRIMPING makes unreliable ammo. IME helping a club full of IPSC shooters sort out there loads over
30 year of competition, about 85% of the problems with feeding were lack of or inadequate taper crimp. LOA was a close second.

Mags can be important, WHOLE 'nother topic. Short version is that there are three kinds of feed lips, original tapered, designed by
John Browning, tapered with an early release added (usually called hybrid lips) and parallel lips with early release. IMO, hybrid are
the most likely to feed reliably in any gun, although a huge fraction of 1911s do not care which kind they get, will feed perfectly with
any kind.

Bill

 

[yodogsandman]

Shot today but, not much. Bench resting showed the group shoots to the left 3" and down 1". The load was 4.2gr Bullseye with the Lyman 452460 sized at .452" and lubed with BLL. 4 shots were touching with the remaining 4 from the magazine strung vertically 3" at target on the 25 ft backer. All on me! I'd say it's a very accurate load and it worked the action good. Recoil was very manageable. Time will tell as far as ultimate reliability.

Commenced to start blasting away to get rid of the rest of the commercial 185gr SWC BB bullets I'd reloaded with 4.8gr Bullseye. Had one failure to feed into the chamber after 3 magazines full. Once cleared, decided to leave. Getting too crowded in the range shack by then (noon time).

Any suggestions for a good lube. I have no gun lubes, just rust preventatives. I decided to just use a little STP last time.