Having a 40 caliber mold and an itch to have a 10mm the story begins. Where as I am a 45 ACP fan for life I do appreciate the range the 10mm brings with it and being a person who cast and load my own......... Anyway this round has the ability to deliver light 135 grain boolits at high velocities while also running the other spectrum of 200+ grain bullets above a 45 auto with ease. The RIA 10mm that I received has come from the factory already with a 20 pound recoil spring and a 25 pound mainspring unlike the first ones out from the factory some years ago. The only issue I had was the extractor not being tuned tight enough which presented issues with the brass being mangled. A quick tune of the extractor and all was well. The only modification was fitting a flat bottom firing pin stop to help slow the slide for the high end loads. Fit and finish on mine is very well done and to be honest the slide to frame fit is as good as higher end 1911s. I don't know if other 10mm pistols from RIA are fitted this well or not but I am quite happy with the firearm. Trigger is pretty good but I will pull it down and do some polishing to the internals as I do with most all my firearms.
As for reloading, I started out with the Lee 401-175-TC mold I already had and it proved to be a nice, accurate working design. The ramped barrel does provide full case support for top end loads and in my opinion it also helps with feeding of wider meplat boolits. I had Enforcer powder in the reloading room from upper end revolver work so I started there. Reading a lot about 10mm loading, I knew it was on the slow side however having nearly 10 pounds I tried it out. I also didn't have any of other powders which are often used for upper end handloads. None the less I ended at 15 grains of Enforcer running out of case capacity and this produced 1280 fps with the 180 grain Lee TC boolit. A drawback, there was quite a bit of unburnt powder in the barrel. End story, this powder is a touch too slow. This became glaringly evident during a longer range session as enough buildup of unburnt powder created issues chambering i.e. going full battery on later rounds.
I have moved on to a heavier boolit design and had a mold drawn up to my specification. I've always been a person to work on the heavier side of boolit selection for caliber. So off to Tom at Accurate Arms to cut me my envisioned 40-190R mold. It has proven to be a nice WFN style boolit with a secant nose profile. Designed to be seated at 1.240" for my magazines, I have had no issues feeding the boolit in my RIA. I Hi-Tek now-a-days for handgunning and with straight WW alloy this design has done very well. Again Enforcer was a bit too slow and there simply is not enough case capacity to increase past 14 to 14.5 grains which yielded too much unburnt powder etc.
Recently, I turned to running 8.2 grains of Longshot and also worked up 8.3 grains of Power Pistol for the 192 grain WFN boolit. Both loads were MOA of a shotgun shell at around 15-16 yards off a bench when I did my part. The Power Pistol rounds ran in at 1,218 - 1,244 fps while the Longshot rounds yielded 1,238 - 1,247 fps. Both burned well with the Power Pistol burning slightly cleaner however the Longshot loads seemed to have less felt recoil. All in all two very nice handloads. I do lean toward the Longshot load due to less felt recoil and I will need to return to the Lee TC design since I have these different powders to work.
|
   
   
|
|
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Any Cal.
