Found Source of Ruger 1911 Leading

[leadman]

A friend recently bought a new Ruger 1911 and had been shooting it with no issues with jacketed bullets. He wanted to try some of my Hi-Tek coated boolits as the jacketed was breaking his wallet. He called sometime later and said he was getting leading so I advised him to check the crimp, etc. He did this and made a couple of adustments but still was getting leading.
He brought the barrel over to my house so I could slug it. It was at .4515" or so which is fine. He had a couple of his reloads with my boolits in them so in looking at them I noticed the ogive had a cut line around one of the boolits. The oal was too long causing the boolit to hit the rifling before the action was completely closed. My boolits are sized to .452".
The oal was not the leading problem but the end of the barrel at the front of the chamber is. I took a loose coated boolit and tapped it in the end of the rifling from the chamber and the coating and some lead was cut off the boolit. The end of the chamber is very abrupt and very sharp. He is going to take it to a gunsmith to see if he can get it beveled some to eleminate this problem. Oh, and I took a jacketed bullet and tapped in in the chamber end of the rifling and it also cut some copper from the bullet!

[bhn22]

My Springfield XD was like that. The rifling began rather abruptly. It hated cast bullets.

[cbrick]

Kinda like this? This photo taken through my borescope is the start of the rifling in my Winchester 94 30-30 before using a throating reamer. It shoots great now but it was the worse leading gun I've ever had.

Rick

93508

[bobthenailer]

What you need is a 45 acp finishing reamer, I have run into short throats with cast in the past

[prs]

I suffered though that with my two S1911s. The reamer grabbed the stainless steel so aggressively that I did not use it. Instead, I reshaped fine carberundum Dremel stones and lubed the stone with jeweller's rouge to gently lap the edge of the leade with a pin vice and T handle. I just gently took the sharp end edges off of the lands. Successful with lead boolits and 50:50 NRA allox, no idea if enough relief to handle coated bullets.

prs

[tomme boy]

It needs to be throated for cast. It is set up for jacketed. Or just shoot about 2K rounds of jacketed in it and it should lengthen the throat a little.

[jonp]

It needs to be throated for cast. It is set up for jacketed. Or just shoot about 2K rounds of jacketed in it and it should lengthen the throat a little.

If you can afford to do that just to shoot cast I need to shop where you shop for jacketed.

[blackpowder man]

I like the new Ruger sr 1911, but those bores looks pretty rough. Like sandpaper. My sigs, springfields, and even rock islands had much smoother finishes on the inside of the barrel. Not that I would turn down a Ruger 1911, they just need a little help getting smoothed out.

[mainiac]

Dont think all rugers are this way,my 1911 has had over 2000 cast boolits threw it,and has never gave me a leading problem,never had a jacketed bullet threw it,either.

[Clay M]

Just looked at the throat of my SR 1911 Ruger,and mine has a visable tapered leed. It is short,but tapered or broken.The real test will be shooting it with cast.I have load some and try it.I agree that the Ruger 1911 barrels aren't the smoothest I have seen.Will report my findings soon.I have some 200 gr semiwadcutters cast with Lyman #2 .

[jrayborn]

My SR1911 Commander had a very short throat that would not accept a .452 cast slug, so I bought the throating reamer and took a bit of time getting it to chamber. Now it works fine.