working up 45acp load

[Thinktwicez71]

i want to work up a 45acp load for my springfield trp 1911. I have been realoding for a few years now , but just recently wanted to try to get the most accurate load i can. I thought i was doing good , accuracy seemed ok ; i thought it was just my shooting , but i recently got a chronograph and i shot over it today. it seemed like every other shot was about 50-100fps different , wasn't very consistant. my setup i have is a lee classic turret press with the lee pro auto disk setup with the lee expander powder dies. i have clays , bullseye , wst for powders.

what steps do you guys do to try and get the most accurate and more so consistant load you can. maybee i am just going about this the wrong way. thanks alot - Art

i was shooting today , 200g lswc , 4.3g wst , cci lpp , and seated to 1.250 , crimped to .470

[sig2009]

i want to work up a 45acp load for my springfield trp 1911. I have been realoding for a few years now , but just recently wanted to try to get the most accurate load i can. I thought i was doing good , accuracy seemed ok ; i thought it was just my shooting , but i recently got a chronograph and i shot over it today. it seemed like every other shot was about 50-100fps different , wasn't very consistant. my setup i have is a lee classic turret press with the lee pro auto disk setup with the lee expander powder dies. i have clays , bullseye , wst for powders.

what steps do you guys do to try and get the most accurate and more so consistant load you can. maybee i am just going about this the wrong way. thanks alot - Art

i was shooting today , 200g lswc , 4.3g wst , cci lpp , and seated to 1.250 , crimped to .470

I just loaded some 200gn lswc tonight with 4.8gn wst. Your 4.3 gn seems to be a little on the lite side. In fact the starting load for that bullet according to Winchester is 4.4 gn. Don't know why you would load under the starting load. By the way wst is what I consider to be the best powder for 45 acp. Clays can easily spike and you have to be careful.

[runfiverun]

weigh about 15 consecutive powder drops.
50 fps isn't uncommon [but can be improved] but 100 fps in an 800 fps load is bad bad. [thats what? 12-14%]
you might need to up the powder to get it more consistent in it's pressure burn zone,swap to a faster powder,or a ball type powder that measures out more consistently.

[Thinktwicez71]

alright i think i figured it out , i measurred 15 drops and all 13 were exactly the same , 2 were .1 grain off but thats ok. I realized the ammo i shot was 2 different loads mixed together . I forgot about that because i could tell what 200glswc were the lee version and what ones were the saeco version. Plus some were alox lubed and then i got the star sizer and some were star sized. More results to come

[Grandpas50AE]

Every powder has a particular zone in which it wil be very consistent, and outside that zone you will see more noticable differences over the chronograph. I suspect since your velocity was low (and your charge weight of powder) that you were getting variations in ignition/burn rate. All powders will do this when outside thier optimum range of the load recipe. I cannot count all the different powders I have shot in my rifles and pistols, but my chronograph has showed this to be true with all of them. For example, I load SR4756 for .45ACP (and it is one of the msot consistent powders for this I have ever used), and at the lower end of the load map I will see variations in velocity of 70fps. If I go up in charge weight (from the starting weight) in .3 gr. increments, I will see that variation drop to 15 - 20 fps max at some point in the load recipe map, and as I approach the top end the spread again increases. Some powders exhibit optimum performance near the top end of the recipe, some in the middle of the recipe map, some on the lower end.

Depending what performance you want, make your powder selection accordingly. As always, the fit of the cast boolit to the chamber/bore size is critical to stabilizing the boolit and eliminating leading, and lube selection (especially in the higher pressure cartridges like .40S&W and 10MM, etc.) is also very important.

The small variations in your powder charges you indicated would not suggest a cause for the variations you saw, so try coming up a bit in the load map.