Zero Swaged

[attrapereves]

I'm thinking about buying some Zero 200gr SWC swaged 45 cal bullets to shoot in my Beretta PX4. I've shot plenty of cast bullets, but am not that familiar with swaged bullets. What's a good velocity to keep them at to avoid leading? Has anyone used these bullets before? What about lead bullets in the PX4?

[Trey45]

I have fired a metric ton of cast bullets in my PX4's without a problem. With 45acp you're going to be safe with any of the standard listed loadings. Use data from your reload manuals for standard, not +p. Unless they're using a dead soft lead for their swaging you're not going to have to worry about leading in a low pressure/low velocity caliber such as 45ACP.

[attrapereves]

I have fired a metric ton of cast bullets in my PX4's without a problem. With 45acp you're going to be safe with any of the standard listed loadings. Use data from your reload manuals for standard, not +p. Unless they're using a dead soft lead for their swaging you're not going to have to worry about leading in a low pressure/low velocity caliber such as 45ACP.

Have you slugged your bore? I have not, but I believe most 9mm Berettas are around .357". Not sure about the 45ACP PX4.

[Old Caster]

You will not have trouble with 45ACP's being too soft because for years the go to bullet was the 185 grain Star which was pure lead without grease grooves and covered with a thin waxy film. They never caused any problems and were sized .451. The Zero bullets are near 9 BHN and are fine for anything you want to do with them. If you get your bullets too hard, watch out for leading especially if they are even a tiny bit undersized. If a hard bullet is too much oversized it will be quite inaccurate. A soft bullet with soft lube is the most forgiving thing you can find for this caliber.

[MtGun44]

First:

SOFT BOOLITS IS ***NOT*** A PRIMARY CAUSE OF LEADING.

This old wives tale needs to be dropped in the toilet permanently. This is baloney.
Leading is primarily caused by too small, and then a host of other issues, like poor
lube. Fit is the biggest issue in leading - too small is bad.

Now, I never saw a .45 ACP boolit, "too soft" for any semi auto. Some report that there
is unusually shallow rifling in some revolvers so they get better accuracy with harder
allioys - BUT THIS IS NOT RELATED TO LEADING. I haven't run into this with air
cooled wwts, at about 11 BHN.

Bill

[onehousecat]

Before I started casting, I shot 45 acp Zero swaged bullets. I had no problems with leading or accuracy. My only problem was strictly gun related. My brand new out of the box Colt 1911 would not feed them. Apparently their nose was a little to short. A quick trip to the gunsmith fixed that. I am definitely not knocking Zero bullets. My Colt would not feed any kind of hollow point jacketed bullets either.