What Sort Of Accuracy Can You Expect From a Webley MKI .45ACP

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gord1986

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Thinking of getting into the antique world and going the MKI route.

A friend said he had one and it was VERY inaccurate, like you'd be lucky to hit a door at 25 feet. Is this true?

Also, if you have any reloading recipes that seem to shoot well in the MK1, I would be very interested in hearing and trying them,(If i do decide to follow through with buying said firearm).

To the people who have experience with this antique, would you recommend purchasing one?

Thanks!
 
Hope this is can be of some use. Mine is a Webley Mk.VI in .455 it shoots better than I can. I don't shoot as much as I should, read as excuse for being a lousy shot, but the .455 made a reasonable 5" grouping a eight meters. I know that won't win any medals.

A Public Service Announcement: Webley's carry the Surgeon General's warning as being extremely addictive and continued exposure can lead to poverty.
 
It depends a lot on a bunch of factors like the condition of the Webley's bore and rifling (they have very fine rifling that is often worn out with jacketed bullet use), the sloppiness of the hinge joint (often found very sloppy and wobbly) and tightness of the top strap locking point and very importantly the correct load and use of the correct sized to bore soft lead bullets.

I have had a few military issue models that shot very poorly (mainly because of excessive wear), a couple that were not so bad but still not great and found that all the WG models seem to shoot very well.
 
Accuracy depends on condition, ammo, and the person holding it. Informal shooting at a 75 yard 10" gong produced a satisfying percentage of hits once the shooter gets a feel for it. If someone were shooting at me with a webley revolver, I would be looking for cover.

In my experience, a soft lead bullet in front of a "stout" loading may shoot 3"-4" at 10 yds if the revolver is tight and in good mechanical condition. Some will shoot better than that, some not.

Accuracy is a relative thing. These revolvers were never designed for precision target shooting. The sights are rudimentary. The throats being tighter than the bore is not good for accuracy.
I can't say that being chambered for 45acp or 455 webley makes any difference to accuracy in my experience. OTOH 45acp brass is much easier to find than any 455 brass.

I've found that soft, flat based bullets will often shoot better than the famous webley Hollow Base bullet - which will likely upset the purists but it is what it is. The long nosed, hollow base "webley" bullet is not a good design for accuracy - because it has almost no solid core or bands, the skirt will expand with less than 100% uniformity which causes bullet/bore alignment to be extremely variable (maybe that's what they meant by a "wobbly webley"). The HB bullet is useful in a different way however - it allows larger powder capacity and can therefore in theory attain higher velocity without higher pressures than a flat based bullet.
 
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With .45ACP bullets, there is no reason to expect any great degree of accuracy. The bullet design is wrong. Handloaded rounds with correct bullets should shoot as well as the revolver is capable of shooting.
 
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