Reduced hardball loads for 45 ACP ?

[Lavan]

I have a Colt Govt and a Colt Gold Cup. I load target stuff in the Gold Cup. And factory hardball in the Govt.
I'd like to make up some hardball reduced loads that would be as close as possible to the WC I use for target.

Reason? Just to get some mild loads that would function in the Govt.

The WC periodically jam up on the ramp and hardball wouldn't.

Anyone have any hardball pipsqueak loads for ACP?

Yes, I'd change the spring.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

https://www.shootingtimes.com/edito...-bullet-weight-gives-edge/99399#ixzz5D6mJdC7P

 

[CleanDean]

Thank you for the above article.

I have always handloaded target loads for my Colt Gold Cup N.M.
WW231. 4.6 gr. under a HG. #68 / 200 gr. ( Sometimes a 185 gr. )
Winchester 452AA 5.4 gr.

Changing to heavy spring for factory hardball.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

For IDPA I'm using the Berry's 185-grain hollow-base round-nose bullet with 5.3 grains on Winchester 231 -- the same recipe as one of those mentioned in the article. That load has VERY little felt recoil in an all-steel 1911. It just makes minor power factor, which puts me head-to-head with the 9mm shooters. That's fine by me -- there are virtually no competitors at the club my friend and I go to for matches that shoot full-power .45 ACP. Most of them shoot Glocks in 9mm.

 

[Unclenick]

Yes, that article covered it well. RN cast bullets and powder-coated bullets are also available. Missouri Bullet Co. makes their RN 200-grain Oddball bullet in both formats. Lots of places make RNFP profiles in 200 grains if your gun will feed those well.

 

[Nick_C_S]

Under a HG68 200gn LSWC, I load 3.0gn of N-310. (Missouri Bullet Co "Bullseye #1," OAL 1.240") https://missouribullet.com/details.php?prodId=56&category=5&secondary=13&keywords=

N-310 is the fastest and cleanest burning propellant I know, and with this low pressure load (I think QuickLoad guestimates it at about 5Kpsi), it's rather sooty.

Through a Colt 'Series 80' full-size 1911, it yields 650 f/s. I'm also running a 12lb recoil spring with this little pooper popper round. And yes, it's accurate.

Some background: I bought this Colt 1911 new in October '84. It was my first semi-auto and I was skeptical I'd even like shooting it. Boy, was I wrong. It was my most shot gun for a couple decades. I've got 10's of thousands of rounds though it. But I have since bought a couple other 1911's and so my Colt is in a well deserved state of semi-retirement, and the above-mentioned round is the only thing I feed it these days.

 

[44 AMP]

To be clear, the OP is asking about reduced loads for "hardball". TO me .45acp "hardball" is the 230gr FMJ RN military bullet.

So I don't think loads with other bullets is what he's looking for.

My standard hardball load for the past 40 years or so has been the "factory duplication load" from the old Lyman books, 6.5gr Unique under the 230gr FMJ bullet.

Lyman's starting load for that bullet is 5.0gr Unique, you might try that as your starting point for a "reduced" ball ammo load.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

Before I started loading Berry's hollow-base round nose bullets I used their 230-grain round nose plated bullets. With 5.3 grains of Winchester 231, muzzle velocity is in the mid-700s. That load could easily be dropped to 4.5 grains for reduced recoil.

 

[Jim Watson]

What powders do you have or can readily get? No point recommending something out of stock in the panicdemic.

I was 600 fps +/- depending on the gun, with a 230 FMJ and 3.5 gr Bullseye

 

[Unclenick]

To be clear, the OP is asking about reduced loads for "hardball"

That's certainly what the title of the post says. But the body of the text I am taking to mean he just wants something that will feed and cycle his hardball gun, with the added constraint that it won't feed anything but round nose bullets.

I have run one of my 1911's with a 20 lb spring and a square bottom firing pin stop with a 200-grain cast bullet over 4.8 grains of Universal, and it worked just fine. Running a standard 1911 with a 16 lb spring is even easier. I think you'll find that 4.2 grains of Bullseye behind a 200-grain bullet will also operate standard GI guns. The way to tell is if the recoil feels spongy. That's a sign the slide isn't going fully into counterbattery. If it feels like that, nudge the load up a couple of tenths and see how it behaves.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

To supplement what I posted in post #8, according to Hornady's on-line data 5.3 grains on Winchester 231 is a max load for a 230-grain projectile in .45 ACP. When I started handloading, I started out with the Berry's 230-grain plated bullet, and I started with Win 231 because it was on the shelf at my friendly local gun shop. I was looking for a mid-range load, so I started with 4.8 grains, expecting the muzzle velocity to be around 800 fps.

It wasn't. It was actually around 660 fps. So I went up, in increments, until I hit 5.3 grains, which the Hodgdon site says is the maximum. And my muzzle velocity still wasn't even up to 800 fps.

Discussion of this curious (to me, at that time) phenomenon with a fellow member of the M1911.org forum -- a long-time bullseye shooter who has been reloading for decades -- led to a project on that forum to measure bullets and tabulate the results, to help newbies (like me) figure out appropriate load data for bullets that aren't listed in published data.

What we found was that, despite the weight being the same, Berry's 230-grain bullets are significantly shorter than Winchster's FMJ bullets. I had established my C.O.A.L. by the highly unscientific method of measuring five factory Winchester rounds, and averaging the results. So, load a shorter bullet to the same C.O.A.L. and the result is more residual volume under the bullet. Thus -- lower pressure, and lower velocity.

If anyone wants to compare bullet dimensional data, the project results are posted for anyone to look at:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...uItM0glf7wjhd8/edit?hl=en&hl=en#gid=519572970

"Bullet body" refers to the base, the straight portion of the projectile, below the start of the ogive. "Nose" refers to the curved portion, the ogive.

Here's the link to the full discussion, if anyone is interested:
https://forum.m1911.org/showthread.php?77249-Collecting-Dimensions-Bullet-Data

 

[Don P]

I have success with 230 grain RN coated bullets and 3.6 grains of titegroup and chrono at 600 fps out of a 4" S&W 625

 

[Unclenick]

Don,

The OP is asking for a load that will feed and cycle in a 1911 government model with the standard 16 lb recoil spring. Do you know if your 625 loads will do that?

AB,

Do you know if they shortened the lengths of the HB bullets to compensate for the volume of the hollow in those tables?

 

[RickB]

Practical pistol competitors have been shooting "reduced hardball" loads - 230grs@740fps - for years. There are no end of proven loads.
I've been shooting plated 230s over 3.8 grains of Hodgdon Clays, for many years.
Prior to that, I used Bullseye, 231, N320, Zip, WST; anything in that burn-rate range will get it done.

 

[Aguila Blanca]

AB,

Do you know if they shortened the lengths of the HB bullets to compensate for the volume of the hollow in those tables?

Yes, indeed, I do know. And I submitted the data to the M1911.org bullet dimension project, so here's the tale of the tape:

• As a baseline, somebody submitted a bullet overall length for a Winchester USA 230-gr FMJ -- but they didn't measure the body (base) length. Bullet overall length = .640"
• Three people submitted data for the Berry's 230-gr RN plated bullet. Naturally, they didn't agree. One submitted a bullet length of .636" with a base length of .260". One submitted a bullet length of .637" with a base length of .270". The third submitted a bullet length of .640" with a base length of .240".
• Three people also submitted data for the Berry's 185-gr RN hollow-base plated bullet. One did not submit base length, and his bullet length was rather far off from the other two, so I won't include that, The first of the other two had a bullet length of .583" and a base length of .204". The other had a bullet length of .587" and a base length of .236".

Measuring the base length is not an extremely precise process. As postulated by the guy who set up the project, his method (which I think everyone followed) is to either blacken a bullet with a match or candle, or mark a black stripe with a fat Sharpie pen. Then lay a single-edge razor blade on the bullet base, holding it so it doesn't rock up into the arc of the ogive, and scrape a clear strip. Then use a caliper or optical comparator to measure the length of the base strip you just cleared. The typical issue MK IV Mod 2 hairy eyeball can probably read that to a precision of maybe a hundredth of an inch, but probably not really to a thousandth.

But the overall bullet length numbers should be "hard" numbers.

 

[Don P]

Yes, the load I stated cycles my 1911's,my Glocks and my xd. So hence the load cycles every 45 acp semi auto I own

 

[Unclenick]

Don,

Excellent! I've had enough Bullseye to last me decades and never played with Tightgroup.


AB,

To find the start of the bullet shoulder (where the ogive starts to depart the top end of the bearing surface), another method is to grasp the bullet in a pair of tongs and smoke one side of it with a sight smoker or a candle flame. You touch the bullet heel-first against a surface plate or a scrap of plate glass and tilt the bearing surface gently down into contact with it. You then drag the smoked side across the flat. It very neatly rubs the smoke off and shows quite clearly where contact ends. If you have a surface plate and height gauge, using a magnifying glass, you can set the gauge so its knife tip makes a scratch at the same height as the end of the cleaned-off smoke mark to get the reading. Next-best is doing it with a caliper. It's a fiddley approach, but works.