Hey Hayday, the Army did not force JMB to abandon his (as it turned out) anemic 38ACP cartridge. The Army RFP was for a 45 caliber round. The Army requested a minimum of 45 caliber ( like the 45 Colt) and the cartridge was adopted into the 1910 pistol.
JMB did not invent the 45acp cartridge, but adapted it to his design.
Here’s a friendly tip for any of you good folks out there who haven’t tried power coating (“PC”) their cast boolits yet. Be a cheap guy (like me) don’t overspend on your PC work.
I had a PMer message me as follows
”recently found a convection toaster oven that I will use for pc in the future. Plan on hooking it up to a pid temperature controller for the best consistency possible.” I mentioned to him that I use an otherwise unloved big toaster oven - that I got at Value Village for 10 or 15 bucks. Same story for a friend of mine. Works great and my wife can’t rag at me for spending 10 buck (or if she does, I can ignore her, without issues).
PC powders (like what you buy CHEAP from my second home - Princess Auto), REALLLY, REALLY, REALLY don’t care about such niceties. Just cook the PC boolits at 450F or so until they get shiny (say 6-8 minutes).
Less is more baby. Why spend big money when $10 bucks will do the same job. Just give me the difference for that tip.
BTW to that other guy who said
“JMB did not invent the 45acp cartridge, but adapted it to his design.” Hey help me out here. Where the heck did you get the idea that I said that JMB invented 45 ACP? You might want to bone up on your reading skills a bit there. Actually, there is a piece on the web that tell the story about who
“invented” 45 ACP and why (sort of) -
see this LINK.
IF JMB had invented 45 ACP, I doubt it would be
such a poor design.
Instead, however, some military procurement lackies, in 1904-06, set the bar really low for this new round by specifying that it should match (but, notably, not exceed) the ballistic
"performance" of a cartridge which was already technologically out-of-date (in 1904); the black powder-era round 45 Long Colt and its immediate relatives (“
available .45 caliber revolver rounds of good fame”).
The efforts of Frankford Arsenal - as well as the civilian Industry (notably Winchester) - resulted in the creation of 45 ACP (
see LINK) and JMB and other firearms designers were forced to rework existing pistol designs to accommodate this obese, low pressure round.
Low pressure you say? Yup. Since all the military procurement guys specified was that this “
new” round match 45 long Colt “performance”, the round was designed to operate at a lousy 19,900 – 22,000 Copper units of pressure (CUP). In contrast, current day cartridges using modern nitrocellulose powders generating higher pressure can produce a CUP in the 28,000 – 39,000 range.
Given these low-pressure specs, people cheaped-out and correspondingly under-designed 45 ACP brass - so that the case wall is thin, and there is hardly any “web” where the cases wall meets the case base.
Making JMB’s earlier pistol designed feed this fatso, required that the feed ramp be modified to allow the fatter round to get into the chamber in the same length of stroke as was otherwise used for the former intended round - 38 ACP. Too bad.
The combination of thin case walls near the case base and the 1911’s necessary unsupported feed ramp (in its common 45 ACP configuration) meant that feed ramp blow-outs come about easily even with really low operating pressures – a problem which persists to today
No, JMB didn’t design 45 ACP. Others deserve the blame for that. He just had to incorporate it into his existing designs to accommodate US military procurement guys who were living in the past (in 1906). This, I believe, is something we agree on.
