.45 ACP Reload Questions - Seating&Crimp + COL

[NiteQwill]

You can probably up your charges a little bit on the next run, you will be shooting pretty soft at 5.1 and will usually be in the 700-750 FPS pushing a 230.

I run 200 gr RN and HP at 5.4 for power factor and 5.9 for SD rounds, respectively. Both setups shoot amazingly accurate groups, 1.5-2.0 from my match barrel and I'm a crappie shot IMHO with pistols. Hornady factory loads are 900 fps at the muzzle. My OAL is 1.225 also. This is from a 5" 1911.

[XDRoX]

If you're having to apply more crimp in order to get rounds to function, you're covering up another issue.

That's like saying, "My engine was making an awful noise so I turned up my radio. The noise is gone now."


For straight walled pistol rounds (and in 9mm) the reason for crimping is not to hold a bullet in place. Neck tension does that. Crimping removes the bell. That's it. Crimp is really the wrong term because people think you have to crimp the case into the bullet. Not true.

For the majority of us, crimping hard enough to mark or dent the bullet won't create accuracy problems enough to be noticed. But if you are crimping enough to curve the top of the case into the bullet remember this. Depending on the length of the case, this crimp is going to be different from case to case. If every piece of brass is exactly the same length then accuracy won't suffer, but that's not the case usually.

The reason I don't over crimp is simply this. There's no need to, so IMO it's bad form.

[ExtremeX]

You can probably up your charges a little bit on the next run, you will be shooting pretty soft at 5.1 and will usually be in the 700-750 FPS pushing a 230.

I run 200 gr RN and HP at 5.4 for power factor and 5.9 for SD rounds, respectively. Both setups shoot amazingly accurate groups, 1.5-2.0 from my match barrel and I'm a crappie shot IMHO with pistols. Hornady factory loads are 900 fps at the muzzle. My OAL is 1.225 also. This is from a 5" 1911.

[NiteQwill]

I believe Hornady lists their XTP rounds with 6.1 of W231, CCI 300 or Remington primers, trim of. 888, 1.19 OAL (seems short), 200 gr. Haven't tried it though. Waiting for some +p cases to come in. I'll post up the ballistics chart from Hornady themselves in a short bit.

Just for information purposes, this is my SD load:
200 gr XTP, 1.225 OAL, 5.9 W231, crimp .471, CCI300, Remington or Federal nickel brass.