.45 ACP Target bullet

[richhodg66]

Dad was a serious Bullseye pistol shooter and my younger brother has taken it up again, he shot competitively in college, and is shooting Dad's Gold Cup. His gun club I seriously talking about getting a team to Camp Perry next year

Dad always favored the 452488 and I have his old four cavity mold, plus a single cavity of it. I have found it to be a great bulle in light revolver loads in the .45 Colt, I'm not much of an auto pistol guy. He also tended to cast bullets a lot harder than I do, and this is probably going to be necessary to make sure they feed 100% and no nose deformations(????) I remember his standard loading for this was 3.5 grains of Bullseye if I remember right.

I'd like to cast up a few thousand of these for my brother to practice and shoot in competition this year. He's been buying some off the shelf SWCs he's been pretty well satisfied with, but I bet I can do better. What alloy would be best for this? Lyman #2? Harder? Softer?

I also tend to use standard NRA formula lube for everything, but is there something better for this? All his shooting is on outdoor ranges, so smoke shouldn't be a concern, but I don't know.

Thoughts on how to go about this endeavor or am I over thinking it? The majority of my shooting anymore seems to be rifles and virtually all the hand gun shooting I do is revolvers. Some of the dynamics have got to be different.

[LenH]

That bullet looks a whole lot like the H & G 130 swc. I used to shoot a 200 gr SWC pushed with 3.8 GR of Bullseye. As of the last 10 or 12 years I have acquired a
H&G S242 160 Gr SWC. I push that bullet with 4.5 GR of Bullseye. It has less felt recoil than the 200 gr bullet.

I usually try to use 92-6-2 (Hardball for these bullets) the H&G was to use Linotype but that is too precious for the amount of bullets I shoot. With hardball the bullet comes out
at about 170 grains and I use Tac-1 for lube. I use 4.5 Grains of Bullseye so the gun will cycle with an ultradot on the slide.

That bullet should be a good one, but I would ask him his opinion of switching bullets. Sometimes changing bullets is a hard thing to do.
The guy that built my wadgun suggested me switching to the 160 and it took me a while to switch. He would buy the Valiant 160's by
the pallet load and had guys lined up to buy them. I bought from him until I found an 8 cavity H & G from a guy on the S&S page.

Not sure I answered your question.

[Mr_Sheesh]

I haven't seen much problem with swaged .45 ACP boolets (i.e. rather soft ones) getting more than a tiny bit of scratching/scarring on feeding, that I can remember; I usually use reasonably hard cast ones though. Mine aren't set up for SWCs though, that might change things a little but I doubt it.

[richhodg66]

The 452488 is nominally a little lighter than the H&G design and the little button nose is more rounded, Dad always felt like it fed better.

The 160 grain bullet idea is intriguing. I do know that there is one course of fire he'll have to do that shoots at 50 yards(?), sorry, not up on what all is involved in the sport. I just wonder if a bullet that light will hold up accuracy wise at 50.

[Char-Gar]

I was deep into Bulleye pistol shooting in the early 60's. It was dictum then that 45 ACP bullets had to be very hard to take and hold the shallow rifling of the barrels. This was asserted by some super respected authorities and I still read it repeated from time to time.

Well, Speer brought out their soft swaged 200 grain 45 SWC for target shooting and I thought they must be crazy, had then not read the authorities on the subject. On a whim, I bought a box of 100 and loaded them over my favorite Bullseye target load and of all things, my scores were a smidge better. I then started buying them by the thousands.

The long and short of it all, is that rather soft bullets do just fine in the 1911 pistol.

[tazman]

In my experience, you don't need hard lead for a 45ACP boolit in any reasonably modern pistol. Most of them are expected to have lead boolits used in them.
I water drop my boolits from the mold for convenience sake. Any extra hardness is a by product. I use mostly range scrap which isn't very hard.
I have the mold you mention and it shoots very accurately in my 1911 pistols loading it over 4.0 grains of Bullseye or just about anything else that gives a similar velocity.

[LenH]

[QUOTE=richhodg66;4422090]The 452488 is nominally a little lighter than the H&G design and the little button nose is more rounded, Dad always felt like it fed better.

The 160 grain bullet idea is intriguing. I do know that there is one course of fire he'll have to do that shoots at 50 yards(?), sorry, not up on what all is involved in the sport. I just wonder if a bullet that light will hold up accuracy wise at 50.[/QUOTE


Slow fire(10 shots in 10 minutes) is at 50 yards and it is quite humbling. That Valiant or the S242 work quite well at 50 yards. I am not the greatest shot in the world but scores of 85 (my best) &
better are possible.


Most of the guys I know use a swaged 185 gr. SWCHP by Zero and some still have the old Star of the same design.

[Beau Cassidy]

Shoot the 160 and dont look back. I have done a lot of testing. My main .45 bullet is now the 160 SWC.

[David2011]

Would you consider powder coating the boolit you decide to use? It would keep the feed ramp area much cleaner than conventional lube. I’ve started powder coating all of my auto loader boolits for that reason.

[DonH]

That powder/bullet was much favored by a lot of older shooters when I got into bullseye comp 40 years ago. There were many tho who felt the bullet you mentioned was affected more by wind at 50 yds and they preferred a heavier (200gr) bullet like the H&G 68.
If a 1911 was going to misfeed it would be more likely to do so with the stubby Lyman/H&G 185gr bullets. It sounds like the gun in question fed it ok tho.
The H&G 68 and clones feed like greasebif the gun is in proper working order. After I acquired a 4 cavity H&G 68 mold my load was 3.8gr Bullseye. When I couldn't see iron sights anymore I mounted a red dot sight on the slide and bumped the charge to 4.3gr Bullseye.
If a guy just likes to tinker then go ahead and experiment. If not, what always worked still works. No alloy harder than WW is necessary tho some swaged bullets are quite soft. No powder coating, etc is needed. Lube is not critical tho too soft means messy ammo. Way too many championships have been won using 185/200 grain bullets to tinker very much. Learning to shoot the 1911 accurately one-handed is way harder than managing the recoil difference between the bullet weights in question.
My loads and gun will shoot clean targets at 50 yds. My best is 97 with the shot(s) out of the 10 ring called.

[243winxb]

He's been buying some off the shelf SWCs he's been pretty well satisfied with And he should continue for competitions.

Bro can use yours for practice ,while you learn what combination works.

45 acp Starline brass , 200 gr lswc bb, 3.8 bullseye powder, WLP. Alloy 92-6-2

http://www.bullseyeforum.net

[wv109323]

The most popular bullet for bullseye is the 200 gn. H&G 68 or 69. Most commercial casters cast a hard bullet but it is not necessary for the .45 ACP at target velocities. Many swagged bullets will perform excellent so hardness is not a factor. Bulleto at .452 should be fine in a Colt barrel.
The 200 gn. Bullet nose is designed to have the same path into the chamber as the 230 gn. RN.
A load of 3.5 gns. of Bullseye is a standard load for a 45 with no optics mounted to the slide. Precautions in loading for the 45 is not to reduce bullet diameter because the neck sizer did not expand the case mouth enough. Thus seating the bullet reduces diameter. Also a taper crimp to .470 helps in accuracy.