45ACP Key holing target

[wind power]

Hi Folks first time poster.
I'm having a dilemma with a 45acp round I have worked up.
The bullet is 200 grain (actually weighs in at 215 grains) and is a LEE double cavity # 90234. (It is flat nose style bullet) after casting the bullets mic consistently at .451-452 and I'm using surplus wheel weights which I melted down....(I kept the temps low so as not to have any zinc wheel weights introduced into the mix)

At 10 yards about 50% of the loads will key hole the target.
I’m firing them from a Bersa Compact pro about a 3.5 inch barrel which has polygonal rifling. I feel the pistol is ok because it will shoot 230 grain FMJ's like a house a fire easily keeping them inside a 4 inch circle at ten yards...however the cast bullets open up to an area of about 6 inches and begin to keyhole

I first thought it was from not flaring the case mouth....I had about three bullets shave some lead off out of about ten rounds which I first thought was the key holing suspect but it was more than 3 rounds which key holed.

So I loaded up another 14 rounds but this time I flared the case mouth to rid myself of a round or three shaving some lead and gave them an ever so slight taper crimp after seating the bullets (I’m aware of 45 ACP head spacing off the case mouth so I kept the taper crimp to a minimum.) However after loading these 14 rounds without any lead being shaved at the case mouth... it still Key holed!

Here are some more things:
The barrel is not lead fouled
I lube the bullets well with Lee Alox
A mix of various brass
5.6 grains of Red Dot is what I'm pushing them with
Any Ideas?

[Lee W]

You are way over max for lead boolits.

http://www.alliantpowder.com/reloaders/RecipePrint.aspx?gtypeid=1&weight=200&shellid=35&bulletid=62&bdid=180

[wind power]

Hi Lee,
Thanks for your reply....I see it is a hot load...too hot in fact...I ahve a Lyman manual which lists it a bit close to my 5.6 load of red dot, but it is at 5.3 grains max...I will reduce the load and see what happens...but I have a funny feeling it wont stop the key holing....I've never had any round before to ever key hole on me like this one does...been firing thousands of rounds since the mid 70's and never had this to happen???? However this is my first Polygonal Bore rifiling.....I'm wondering if the rifing is my culprit?

Back to that hot load..... I propblay wont find 5.6 grain load of Red dot in any manual after the 1970's.....ahhhh the good ol days when companies didnt have to deal with lawyers

[RobS]

5.6 of Red dot is a bit on the warm side however key holing isn't necessarily this issue. I suspect that the boolits are too small for the bore. Have you slugged your bore? Also have you pulled a loaded boolit to ensure it is coming out of the case at .451-.452; it could be swaged down (squeezed down) in the reloading process of seating/crimping. With polygonal rifling it also helps to have a harder boolit so it doesn't skid the rifling. Maybe water quench those WW boolits as something to try.

[Iron Mike Golf]

+1 on what Rob said. Check your barrel for leading. What's your lube? What's the air temp where you shoot? Boolits are wobbling, so I'd wonder if they are spinning fast enough to be stable or out of balance.

And work up from min charge, not down from max.

[wind power]

Hi Thanks for the info, I will drop the powder charge and pull a bullet to see what I have on the OD.
I will also slug the bore and check what the dimensions are there too.
I will water quench the bullets as they come out of the mold.
Thanks for the ideas! It gives me a good starting point!

[Bret4207]

Start at square one- do one thing at a time. See what size they come out of the case. Good chance they're being swaged down. Your barrel may require a fatter boolit. Don't go harder till you figure out the fit issue- FIT IS KING in cast. Start with fit and use Bhn as the tool it is. Harder won't fix fit issues.

[subsonic]

[smilie=s:

Member of the "harder (tougher) is better" club checking in here.

If the brass is sizing the boolits down because they are soft, the answer seems obvious. Also, you want some neck tension if you can possibly get it. You can't (shouldn't) roll crimp a rimless case, and a firm taper crimp will make things worse. So you don't want to expand the brass more to reduce the sizing, if you can avoid it.
:popcorn:

[MtGun44]

Keyholing is almost always caused by inadequate spin, which is almost always (in pistols)
caused by undersized boolits. Might actually need a harder alloy (the rest the folks here
will note on their calendars the day that I suggested a harder alloy !! :bigsmyl2:) due to
the poly bore - never dealt with one before at all, let alone in .45 ACP although I have
loaded many hundreds of thousands of this cartridge over the last 3 decades +.

Poligonal bore needs to be slugged and then you need to verify (like Bret said) that you
are delivering a ~.001 larger than groove (if that is the correct term in a poly bore) diameter
boolit to the barrel, not resizing in the case.

Are you by any chance using a Lee Factory Crimp Die? If so - STOP IT, and try some without
this unit. We have had many situations where the Lee pistol FCD was the problem, sizing
down the boolit in the case. I am NOT a fan of this device.

You cannot taper crimp enough to cause any headspace issue, so remove the barrel and
set the LOA to keep the boolit shoulder from jamming into the rifling too much and the TC
to make the round drop freely into the chamber.

Try a more reasonable load, say 850 fps for that boolit and you may help things.

Bill

[wind power]

Ok I did a few things today.....
After slugging the clean barrel the slug measured .4505-.4510
I also used an inertia bullet puller (Hammer type) and mic a loaded crimped bullet, that bullet mic at .450

I drop the pweder charge down to five grains even of red dot and out of 7 rounds 1 key holed....eachy powder charge was individually weighed and was with a tenthy of a grain.

on the slugged polygonal barrel, it was.443 on the groove side

[subsonic]

There's your problem right there. Undersized boolits that are stripping the rifling, and not spinning up to stabilize properly.

[Forrest r]

I don’t know about your load being way over max. Hot, yes. Max no. I see people using reloading data for swc boolit instead of a RF bullet all the time. An RF boolit has more weight in the nose of the boolit than a swc boolit. That creates a small boolit shank on the RF boolit. A smaller shank =’s greater case capacity or more volume left in the case after the boolit is seated. A smaller shank =’s less resistance & less resistance =’s less pressure. Here’s a pic of a lee RF boolit next to a typical (452488) swc boolit.

http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t242/forrestr-photo/lee45rfcompare.jpg

As you can see a typical swc boolit seats allot deeper than an RF boolit.

I’m on the other side of the fence on this one with you needing a harder boolit. Right now you’re using a water quenched boolit made from straight ww to make them even harder & are then driving/shooting those at a whopping 750 to 800fps in that short bbl’d pistol.

I’m more inclined to say use a softer boolit so it can obulate in the bbl to seal it & use a boolit the right dia for your bbl & your key holing problems will go away.

[462]

. . . the slug measured .4505-.4510.
. . . that bullet mic at .450.

Your boolits are being swaged down and are too skinny. Dies are manufactured to jacketed bullet dimensions. When loading cast boolits, we need to do things a bit differently.

My remedy would be to use a Lyman expander die (M-die) to properly expand the case to accept a .452" boolit (cull any that are skinnier). A typical expanding die only "flares" the mouth, which may allow the rest of the case to swage down the boolit. Also, apply a light taper crimp (just enough to chamber the round) using a conventional crimp die.

With a properly expanded case, there will be no need to water quench. However, I will defer to those with polygonal experience as to boolit hardness.

[Bret4207]

[smilie=s:

Member of the "harder (tougher) is better" club checking in here.

If the brass is sizing the boolits down because they are soft, the answer seems obvious. Also, you want some neck tension if you can possibly get it. You can't (shouldn't) roll crimp a rimless case, and a firm taper crimp will make things worse. So you don't want to expand the brass more to reduce the sizing, if you can avoid it.
:popcorn:

With all due respect, if his seater is swaging the boolit down, the hardest alloy he can get will still get swaged down. Using the proper tool (M die, opened up seater, whatever) is the fix, not a different alloy. Hard or soft, FIT is still King.

[subsonic]

I don't think I agree that harder will swage down.

I can seat a .358" boolit cast of WDWW (20BNH on my LBT tester) in a .357 case that measures .350" ID and it comes out .358" when pulled.

Not wanting to argue, just sharing what I've done and seen.

[subsonic]

I also worry about boolits being seated deeper in an auto when they slam into the feed ramp, which can cause pressures to climb. We all agree that taper crimping can cause trouble, so all you have to depend on to fight this problem is case neck tension.

[MtGun44]

"We all agree that taper crimping can cause trouble"

No. IMO, the only trouble I have ever seen from taper crimping is a LOT of it
from inadequate taper crimp or no taper crimp.

Never, ever have seen a case of any problem from using a taper crimp.

Bill

[subsonic]

I guess we don't all agree.:lol:

[MtGun44]

we agree on a lot, just (apparently) not TC.

Doesn't mean we can't be friends! ;-)

Bill

[Bret4207]

I don't think I agree that harder will swage down.

I can seat a .358" boolit cast of WDWW (20BNH on my LBT tester) in a .357 case that measures .350" ID and it comes out .358" when pulled.

Not wanting to argue, just sharing what I've done and seen.

That can happen, yeah. But we've seen way too many people using rock hard boolits that still get swaged down. Done it myself with boolits that approach 30 Bhn. The guy on the handle of the press makes a big difference that no Bhn reading will fix. Heck, there are people out there swaging jacketed boolits in FCD's!

[RobS]

Well, I figured back when I posted up about water quenching that it would come to a hard or not a hard boolit thread. Let the OP fix the boolit diameter issues and then if he finds that the boolits are not accurate and/or leading the barrel he can try to utilize a tougher/harder boolit. I've loaded for glocks (polygonal rifling) and yes, in my experience it does help to have a properly fitted boolit as it does in any bore and in my experience it also helped with accuracy to have a tougher/harder boolit for better grip of the rifling or if one prefers to see it, not skidding the rifling.

[Franklin Zeman]

I have a friend that has a poly barrel that WILL NOT shoot lead. Works like a champ on J bullets. It also tends to lead up very quickly. Seems like the boolit skids down the barrel and at close range puts out targets like an open bore shotgun.

[Char-Gar]

"We all agree that taper crimping can cause trouble"

No. IMO, the only trouble I have ever seen from taper crimping is a LOT of it
from inadequate taper crimp or no taper crimp.

Never, ever have seen a case of any problem from using a taper crimp.

Bill

Amen... +1..and all that stuff!

The poor guy has a series of bad boo-boos..

1. That bullet does not have a good reputation to start with.
2. Polygonal rifling is a problem child to deal with
3. Loads to hot
4. Whatever he is crimping with is swaging down his bullets

With those things going one keyhole bullets should not be a surprise. Rather it should be expected.

[44man]

Fit is so important to be sure. I have never shot that kind of rifling so I will not make much of a statement.
But it seems as if it will not have the "BITE" on the boolit that regular rifling has. It has to deform the boolit more. That will make it more prone to skid and not spinning up.
How to fix? Softer or harder? Darn I will not say and it is something to experiment with.
Once you keep the boolit the right diameter, then play with alloys but diameter is going to be first.
A primary rule is to never do any harm to a boolit when loading.

[Old Caster]

I will always use a soft bullet if I can but this leaves open a lot of avenues. In a 45 acp I and many others have used pure lead Star bullets for years, but a typical 45 case won't size a soft bullet down to less than .451. The match barrels we all used, like a .451 bullet, but it is quite likely that the polygonal barrel talked about doesn't like it that small for whatever reason. If a bullet tips at close range the culprit is almost if not always because it is too small when leaving the brass. In 9 mm it is just about impossible to make a case as large inside with an expander that I would like so I have no choice but to go to harder bullets or be faced with sideways bullets. For some people with match chambers, when everything is as large as desired, chambering becomes an issue because the hard bullet is swaging the brass out instead of the brass swaging the bullet in. If an FCD die is involved it is for sure the problem as they only cover some other problem and don't really fix anything. I think your next step is to go to a store that sells commercially cast bullets that are hard and buy a hundred or so and go back and prove or disprove the too small bullet idea. Make sure you just shove the bullets in the case with a bullet seater and don't size it down further in another step. -- Bill --

[Bret4207]

Once again we have the issue of how to approach fixing a problem. To me, it's obvious that a boolit being swaged down on seating need a change in the seater die! A "harder" boolit isn't going to "fix the problem", in fact it doesn't even address the problem. Every time we hear of an issue like this the first thing offered for advice is to go to a harder alloy. As I've noted before, "harder" is a completely ambiguous term that means almost nothing other than a BHN reading was higher. Why was it higher? What changed? I can take the same alloy and give you 3 different Bhn readings or get the same reading from 3 different alloys with widley differing qualities. This Bhn/harder is better thing is like a boil that just won't go away.

[Old Caster]

The seating die isn't what swages a bullet down when seating. There is plenty of room around the bullet and brass. It is the brass itself that is doing the swaging which is why we use different size expanders. Brass isn't strong enough to swage down harder lead which is why sometimes we use harder lead. It doesn't matter how inaccurate your BHN tester is because harder is harder and softer can swage down from the brass being too tight. It doesn't go away because it is quite pertinent in certain situations. -- Bill --

[Char-Gar]

To be certain that are circumstances where the expanding plug is WAY undersize and the bullet is WAY to soft, that it can be damaged in seating.

But those WAY circumstances are more extreme that folks think. Like Bret, I hold the belief, based on experience that this "harder is better" while a commonly held notion is most often destructive to good shooting and loading.

If you had to set up a list of possible culprits for the problems of the OP, bad seating and crimping is the most likely cause. Insufficient neck expansion is way down the list of suspect.

I hesitate to write this as there are a few true believers in super hard bullets as they only way to go, that will pounce on this. But things are what they and I think I have them all on my Ignore List anyhow. ,

[subsonic]

Many ways to skin a cat here, but it seems like his problem is stripping the rifling, so the "effective" twist rate is too slow to stabilize the boolit.

Harder/tougher would resists sizing down more (try sizing some soft and hard boolits in your lubrisizer if you don't beleive me) and also help grab the poly rifling.

[44man]

Many ways to skin a cat here, but it seems like his problem is stripping the rifling, so the "effective" twist rate is too slow to stabilize the boolit.

Harder/tougher would resists sizing down more (try sizing some soft and hard boolits in your lubrisizer if you don't beleive me) and also help grab the poly rifling.
I believe in "hard enough" and that might toss some into a frenzy. Hard does work or it would be better to say "tough enough."
Only way to see is to test. The gun might want 3X harder then another.
Now once I get to what my guns do well with, I have gone harder and harder and many times accuracy gets better but once a point is reached where alloy is too expensive, I never seen a decline.
As I soften I see more and more fliers.
I will always be where the boolit takes the rifling, nothing less.

[Bret4207]

Many ways to skin a cat here, but it seems like his problem is stripping the rifling, so the "effective" twist rate is too slow to stabilize the boolit.

Harder/tougher would resists sizing down more (try sizing some soft and hard boolits in your lubrisizer if you don't beleive me) and also help grab the poly rifling.

You can make the boolit out of the hardest lead alloy you want, it's still going to swage down if the seating or crimping die is undersized for what he needs. Run a .360 boolit out of super hard lead alloy through a .358 die and see if it comes back out at .360 if you don't believe me.

[Old Caster]

A seating die only seats the bullet. How can it make anything smaller. -- Bill --

[462]

A seating die only seats the bullet. How can it make anything smaller. -- Bill --

I quit using Lee seating dies, because they were swaging down my fat-for-caliber boolits. Too, there was an RCBS .38/.357 seater that wouldn't accept a .358" boolit.

At least, with dies that use a sliding sleeve, like Lyman's Precision Alignment and Hornady's New Dimension, the sleeve can easily be enlarged to accommodate fat boolits.

[Bret4207]

A seating die only seats the bullet. How can it make anything smaller. -- Bill --

You've never had a seater or crimper that's cut for jacketed that squeezes down the boolit? You're a lucky guy. Very, very common issue with our "fat" boolits that are often .003-.004 over their jacketed counterparts.

[Old Caster]

I checked a Lee 32 long seating die, Lee 9mm, Pacific 38, Lee 40, a Lyman 44 mag, and a Lee 45 ACP with a fired and unsized case and the tightest was the 44 magnum which probably only had about .010 play. The loosest was the 40 which probably had .040 play. If they were sized there would be way more room. I can't imagine what you guys are doing, but you should think about cleaning the die or check the caliber. There would be no reason to ever make a seating die so tight that it would even come close to sizing the brass. -- Bill --

[subsonic]

The Hornady dies have a sliding sleeve that fits tight to the boolit or bullet. Think benchrest in-line seater. These CAN size the boolit or cause them to hang up and yank the guts out of the die. I also found that if you have the seating stem above the crimp ring by a significant margin and the boolit has a long front driving band, the crimp ring can size the boolit. And then there is the Lee pistol style factory crimp die that is basically just another sizer die that mashes everything to hell once assembled.

[462]

"There would be no reason to ever make a seating die so tight that it would even come close to sizing the brass."

I agree, however, reality says otherwise. The worst Lee instance was a .44 Special seating die swaging a .433" boolit down to .430".

There are many cast boolit problems that some people have not experienced, but that doesn't mean that they aren't real. I only speak from my experience.

[Bret4207]

I checked a Lee 32 long seating die, Lee 9mm, Pacific 38, Lee 40, a Lyman 44 mag, and a Lee 45 ACP with a fired and unsized case and the tightest was the 44 magnum which probably only had about .010 play. The loosest was the 40 which probably had .040 play. If they were sized there would be way more room. I can't imagine what you guys are doing, but you should think about cleaning the die or check the caliber. There would be no reason to ever make a seating die so tight that it would even come close to sizing the brass. -- Bill --

Bill, it happens with some seaters or crimpers. Look though some of the archives here and you'll find many people with this issue. Also many people finding their dies cut so that they cannot properly seat a "fat" cast boolit. Everything is cut for jacketed now.

[44man]

Bill, it happens with some seaters or crimpers. Look though some of the archives here and you'll find many people with this issue. Also many people finding their dies cut so that they cannot properly seat a "fat" cast boolit. Everything is cut for jacketed now.
That is hitting the nail! [smilie=s:
A guy wants to load cast so a Lee set is cheap. But RCBS and Redding costs a lot more but are supposed to be good. Lyman is reasonable.
So one is chosen. The big problem is you do not know what they are doing when you load. You buy special seat dies and crimp dies but still do not know what they do to cast. Just so much out there and tons of money to spend.
You must learn your tools, change them or buy others. I will tell you your choice is limited. Hornady makes my best revolver loads but if you use such a large boolit the seat die sizes it, fix the seat die.
Profile crimp dies can RUIN loads. "M" dies can RUIN loads. FCD's can RUIN loads. But each will work for somebody so don't push them on another. Some shoot a Bisley and others hate it.
Will you please sit and stare at your loading bench, days if it takes it, and imagine things. The answer will come from you.
If you can't tighten a wing nut, nobody can help! :bigsmyl2:

[Char-Gar]

Seating dies can be a real problem, swaging down cast bullets, particularly with bottle neck rounds. I use a Starret hole guage and micrometer to measure the bullet seating area of the die. You will find many of them smaller than the bullet you want to use. Bad things happen then.

Pistol and revolver dies give less problems in this area, but often the expanders are too small for use with soft handgun bullets.

I will second the old Lyman Precision Alignment (PA) seating dies. The seating sleeves will be several thousand over nominal jacketed bullet size and most often will do just fine with cast bullets. But you still need to measure the ID if the sleeves,

I also have oversize sleeves made for my Vickerman seater so cast bullet will work.

I also buy and make special Wilson type chamber seaters with oversize seating holes.

I don't use the Lee FCD, but awful things are written about them with cast bullets, so I have cross them off my list of things to use with cast bullets.

If you are a cast bullet shooter, you just can't grab a set of dies off the store shelf and start to load ammo. As you said above, you really need to know your tools.

[Old Caster]

If a person pushes a bullet too far through a combination seating crimping die, obviously the crimping part will squish everythng smaller as far as the crimp portion touches it. If you have bore size lead in front of the crimping groove, everything in front of the crimp will be the same diameter that the crimp was because the crimper has to pass over the lead front. If the diameter of a seating die (not talking about crimp) is so small that the sides would squeeze the brass and bullet down, you could never even get it in there because the flare would catch because it is a lot larger than the rest of the case. As I was writing this, I wondered if it could be tapered so it could at least start but Lee, Lyman, Pacific and Redding pistol seating dies do not have a taper but the sides are parallel. Actually the tighest by just a bit was the bottom first few thousandths and I think that is just a burr. I then pushed unsized bullets into some unsized but flared cases without using a seating die to see if they would still fit into the seating part of a die. They all go in with no problem and don't touch until going in far enough to touch the crimping area of the die. The 45 wouldn't chamber in a Barstow or Kart barrel but would almost go into a military barrel. The 38 wouldn't chamber in a Python, model 14 or 27 smith.

[Bret4207]

Okay, so we'll just put you down in the "it can't possibly ever happen" category. Thanks. The rest of us who have been so unfortunate as to have owned seating or crimping dies that have given us "boolit squish" will go on checking if we have issues and changing or opening dies if needed.

[Old Caster]

Bret, It is real simple, how can you get the flare to go past a point where even the bullet is going to get sized down. It would peel the flare back.-- Bill --

[Char-Gar]

Bret, It is real simple, how can you get the flare to go past a point where even the bullet is going to get sized down. It would peel the flare back.-- Bill --

Old Caster..that statement maketh no sense.

1. The flare is on the case mouth, right?

2. The case mouth never enters the bullet chamber of the seating die under any circumstances, right?

3. Therefore, only the bullet enters the bullet chamber, right

4. IF the bullet is larger than the bullet chamber and IF the alloy is soft enought and IF inside diameter of the case neck is small enough, the bullet can be forced into the too small seating chamber by the pressure of seating.

5. If in No. 4 above the alloy is to hard to swage down or the neck ID to big, the bullet won't enter the to small bullet chamber and just be shoved way down in the case in the attemp to seat in that die.

"I think what we have here is a failure to communicate."...

[462]

I have two questions:
1. Why is it that when someone mentions an experience they've had, someone else has to question the truth of it?

2. What happened to Wind Power, the new member who started this thread? Did he get fed up with the non-believers and move on?

[Old Caster]

Char-Gar, Of course the case goes all the way up into a seating die. If it is a full wadcutter and you are using the crimp part also it goes all the way to the crimp. If it is a semiwadcutter 45 acp with a long nose and you aren't pushing it in far enough to crimp and only using it for a seating die, it goes in about 2/3 of the length of the case. Like I said above, the inside of a seating die is parallel all the way to the crimp section where it gets smaller. The case has to go in or it wouldn't ever reach the crimp and if the flare is larger than this section it won't go in at all. -- Bill --

[Bret4207]

OC, go back and re-read #4 in Chargars post. It's what Chargar calls the "bullet chamber" that is often the issue. That chamber is cut to support the bullet straight into the case. It's fairly snug on a jacketed round. Take a boolit that's +.002 or .003 larger than the jacketed norm and you can have issues. The boolit gets swaged down or won't go into the chamber area at all.

With a crimp die if the boolit is large enough the OD of the neck will be too large for the way the die is cut and it can swage the boolit down.

Honestly Bill, it's happened to me- you measure the boolit before it goes in the seater and pull the boolit after it comes out and it's 2-3 thou smaller! Lap or hone the seater out and the problem disappears.

[Char-Gar]

Old Caster...What Bret said is what I was trying to say. I guess there is no standard nomenclature on the inside of a seating die.

[44man]

Once again we have the issue of how to approach fixing a problem. To me, it's obvious that a boolit being swaged down on seating need a change in the seater die! A "harder" boolit isn't going to "fix the problem", in fact it doesn't even address the problem. Every time we hear of an issue like this the first thing offered for advice is to go to a harder alloy. As I've noted before, "harder" is a completely ambiguous term that means almost nothing other than a BHN reading was higher. Why was it higher? What changed? I can take the same alloy and give you 3 different Bhn readings or get the same reading from 3 different alloys with widley differing qualities. This Bhn/harder is better thing is like a boil that just won't go away.
So true. I have crimp dies my boolit will not enter. Hardness will never correct that.
Very good post