Rock island 3 point jam

[350skylark]

Ive been reloading 45 for a little while now and normally use a 230 grain bullet, but the last loads ive done have been 200 grain bear creak molly coated swc as its the only thing i could find. I had a tone of ftf with this ammo with a 3 point jam, most of the time i could hit the magazine and it would seat into battery, im using 2 chip McCormick mags (1 shooting star and one 10 rounder) and the factory act mag. I didnt have any troubles with round nose ammo so im pretty sure its the bullets. Ive tried seating them at different oal and changed nothing, is there anything i can do to help it feed these bullets more reliably?

[NorCal Einstein]

How many different lengths did you try loading?

[350skylark]

How many different lengths did you try loading?

3 different, 1.20, 1.25 and 1.26

[redcliff]

Does a loaded round drop easily and fully into the chamber when the barrel is out of the gun?

[350skylark]

yeah it drops in fine, it didnt seem to do it more less or less with any magazine, it must have happened about 1 in 10 rounds or so.

[limitdown]

I've had issues with feeding SWC's into unramped barrels.
For me, those barrels would only take round noses reliably.

[redcliff]

Back in the day I used to run a lot of 200gr swc through my competition Colt 1911, but it had a throated unramped barrel.

Have you changed recoil springs to shoot this load?

[350skylark]

i actually put in a wolf 18.5# spring before i went to the range, could this cause the problem?

[redcliff]

i actually put in a wolf 18.5# spring before i went to the range, could this cause the problem?

I would think a lighter spring may cause your problem more than a heavier one for a feeding issue, but we may as well eliminate a couple potential problems from the discussion.

With no offense intended, did you put the small end of the recoil spring on the spring guide rod? Having it reversed can cause cycling issues.

Also, how far does your brass eject away from the pistol? Is it dribbling out or do you have good ejection where the brass lands 3 to 6 feet away? (I personally think 3 feet is a bit weak, but Wolff says 3-6 is ok).

You haven't mentioned that you had any issues with FMJ so I wouldn't think extractor tension is an issue, but have you checked your extractor tension to see if it's too tight?

One thing sometimes mentioned is to try loading your swc to a length where the upper corner of the swc bullet matches a contour line of a 230gr FMJ bullet but obviously there are limits to o.a.l. I'll leave the reloading idea suggestions to those with more current experience than me since I haven't reloaded for a number of years.

[350skylark]

I would think a lighter spring may cause your problem more than a heavier one for a feeding issue, but we may as well eliminate a couple potential problems from the discussion.

With no offense intended, did you put the small end of the recoil spring on the spring guide rod? Having it reversed can cause cycling issues.

Also, how far does your brass eject away from the pistol? Is it dribbling out or do you have good ejection where the brass lands 3 to 6 feet away? (I personally think 3 feet is a bit weak, but Wolff says 3-6 is ok).

You haven't mentioned that you had any issues with FMJ so I wouldn't think extractor tension is an issue, but have you checked your extractor tension to see if it's too tight?

One thing sometimes mentioned is to try loading your swc to a length where the upper corner of the swc bullet matches a contour line of a 230gr FMJ bullet but obviously there are limits to o.a.l. I'll leave the reloading idea suggestions to those with more current experience than me since I haven't reloaded for a number of years.

yeah i put the spring on the correct way with the closed end around the plug, ide say its kicking the shells at around 3 feet, the loads i made were on the lighter end of the spectrum also. I do remember having very few malfunctions of the same thing with 230 lead round nose that i made but it was maybe 2/500 so i didnt think to much of it because they were my reloads. how do you check if the tension is to tight?

[redcliff]

yeah i put the spring on the correct way with the closed end around the plug, ide say its kicking the shells at around 3 feet, the loads i made were on the lighter end of the spectrum also. I do remember having very few malfunctions of the same thing with 230 lead round nose that i made but it was maybe 2/500 so i didnt think to much of it because they were my reloads. how do you check if the tension is to tight?

In regard to the recoil spring weight question, do your loaded swc rounds feed when you insert a loaded magazine and release the slide stop?

To check extractor tension field strip and take a loaded 230gr round and slide it up the breach face of the slide with the rim under the extractor and in the normal position a case would be in when fired. Light shaking/inverting of the slide should have the loaded round stay in place. More vigorous shaking must cause the round to drop. If yours doesn't drop, withdraw the extractor half way out of its channel and give it a bend to reduce tension and retest. Extractor tension too tight=failure to feed. Extractor tension too loose=failure to extract/stovepipe. Keep those ideas in mind as you learn to get a feel for whats "right". Naturally you also want to make sure the extractor channel is clean and isn't loaded up with crud as that will affect extractor tension too

Theres some further refinements to extractor tension you can do when you're in the ballpark by single loading rounds from the magazine into the chamber, removing the magazine and firing the round to see if the empty drops down the magwell or if it ejects properly. Ideally you could run two magazines through it single loading/removing the magazine each time and still get proper ejection/no stovepiping.

[Fishslayer]

3 different, 1.20, 1.25 and 1.26

Off the top of my head I believe I usually run the Bear Creek SWC at 1.22"-ish.

Did they plunk at 1.25" & 1.26"? That's awfully long. Did they drop back out freely?

Is your seating die shaving lead? I had exactly the problem you have & found the chamber was getting chunks of shaved lead in it. I backed off the seating die a bit so it quit shaving.

I read once that setting up the seating punch with a 1.25" RN round & then using the same setting for the SWC will give that "window" Redcliff spoke of. Haven't actually tried it myself.