45 ACP cast bullet problems

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kferguson

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I am having problems with my R1 1911 and cast bullet reloads. I have a LEE six cavity 230 gr round nose mould, the resulting bullets were sized .451 in my Lyman lube-sizer and a suitable cast bullet load selected from a reloading manual and reloaded using Hornady dies. The resulting rounds are causing feeding problems, ie. the slide not returning to battery after picking up a round from the magazine. Sometimes a push with my thumb corrects it, sometimes not. I bought a LEE factory crimp die, ran all my reloads through it and it definitely helped but still not 100%. If you have experience with this problem I want to hear from you! Kevin
 
whats your OAL? have you tried seating them deeper? Do the rounds drop in and out of the chamber easily by hand?
 
I used a factory round to set the seating depth and checked they were the same OAL. Reloads don't all drop in the chamber, most but not all. Can't figure out the anomaly.
 
Chamber a round, push it shut if you have to.

Eject the round, and have a look to see where it's hanging up. Six equidistant nicks around the sides of the bullet would be the rifling touching it: seat bullet deeper.

Maybe the wax is built up near the case mouth. If you can close the action the brass isn't too long, at least.

Two cents right there
 
My R1 looked like it had been machined with a fireman's axe. Chances are you need to do some polishing to get rid of edges. My gun was putting a smiley face on the brass where the frame was damaging it and causing all sorts of issues with chambering (factory and reloaded ammo).
 
Having used the Lee 6 cavity mold the same issue was found, you need to seat the lead deeper, the lee mold casts a slug that when sized and seated as per the book the lead will not chamber as it hangs up on the rifling, plunk test will reveal the issue, seat the lead deeper and issues will go away
 
As stated above, use your barrel as a guide, if it needs to be shorter then it needs to be shorter, i have had this issue lee cast bullets in 9mm which had to be shorter than in the book/factory. I use the same bullet and size to .452 and in my p320 45 barrel it can get away with 1.230 so each barrel is different.

This all assumes your not messing up the crimp.
 
Last edited:
kferguson said:
I used a factory round to set the seating depth and checked they were the same OAL. Reloads don't all drop in the chamber, most but not all. Can't figure out the anomaly.
Click to expand...

That's the problem, they need to be deeper so they all drop in and out easily. Start low with the powder and work up with the deeper bullet.
 
get a micrometer and measure the case mouth. make sure to take a few readings around the case, the crimp die may be out of round or out of spec. likewise, your bullet sizing die may also be out of spec, measure your bullets at several points. eliminate these two possibilities before you look elsewhere.
 
I had similiar problems, it was the brass. I needed to put them all through my hornady carbide dies. Once I ran them through again and squeezed the casing a oil they cycled fine.
 
45 problems

i had similar issues. the problem is that for one reason or another there are variations in bullet diameter,the ones that come out over size causing problems chambering. solution every thing goes through lee sizing die with any 45 auto bullet,with correct oal they all feed perfectly.
 
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