Lee 200 gr 45 cal flat nose

[RU shooter]

I'm thinking about trying this mould out as it looks like a real close copy shape wise as my normal jacketed carry bullet the speer 200 gr hollow point aka the flying ashtray as some called it . Anyone have any shooting experience with it in the 45 auto ?

Thanks, Tim

[Shootn]

I have shot a lot of them through my Springfield 1911. Off the top of my head I think it was in front of 5.5 grains of Unique.
I really like that bullet in an ACP.

[Larry Gibson]

I have had that mould and have tried it in numerous 45 Auto's. It has to be seated to a very short OAL to chamber. Thus with some feed ramps problems (as in jamming) do occur. It feeds fine in most throated M1911s with standard feed ramp. In those with integral feed ramp to barrel (my Para-14 for example) I've never got 100% reliable feeding. Recently a friend with a Remington M1911 and 2 Kimbers tried the bullet; worked fine in the Remington and the standard model Kimber. The smaller Kimber would not reliably feed even with other magazines.

Thus I quit loading them in 45 ACP as I want the loaded ammo to be usable in all my 45 ACPs. The lee 452-190-SWC feeds reliably in all my 45 ACPs.

Larry Gibson

[spfd1903]

Loaded some for <$500 American Tactical (Phillipines) 1911. Really have to obtain the correct OAL to insure feeding. After that determination, the Lee 452-200RF has functioned 100%, and is very accurate at 60'.

[Garyshome]

Is this the one?

[dubber123]

I never used it much, but it is what my brother prefers and carries in 2 of his 1911's. As noted, they make for a short round, and not all guns like them. It can be very accurate, in my 625 revolver, they shot right at 3" at 50 yds. with no load work. My copy casts at 215 grains from WW alloy.

[roverboy]

That looks like it would be a good bullet. I like'em with wide flat noses.

[DougGuy]

That boolit has a long flat side and the ojive is "prouder" on the sides than a LRN would be, so it is a fact the throat must be at least a few tenths of a thousandth in diameter larger than the boolit, and the throat must be long enough so that the boolit isn't crammed into the rifling when it is chambered. Other than that, it ought to feed in a majority of 1911s, and yes your feed ramp would need to be polished and radiused where the breakover is leading to the chamber.

Seating these deeper can become the cause of a second problem, created as a workaround for the first problem, a short/tight throat. The correct remedy for this is to "throat" the barrel so it will feed and chamber reliably.

Here is a photo of a Springfield Range Officer that I throated today, this is a good example of what the throat would need to look like to handle these wide meplat/flat nose boolits in a 1911. There is .145" of .4525" throat in front of the headspace ledge before the leade in to the rifling. Hard to see here but the feed ramp is also polished and radiused as well.

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03632crop_zpswxlphffv.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03632crop_zpswxlphffv.jpg.html)

Another photo, same barrel. These are hard to get good photos of but I think you can get a good idea of what "throating" a barrel does for it.

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03634crop_zpsqcw8wqkp.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03634crop_zpsqcw8wqkp.jpg.html)

Here is a barrel from a Kimber Stainless II that has a proprietary throat in which the rifling leade in is done on a radius, instead of an angle leade in, this radius allows the rifling to be shallower in the leade in and it will accept a 200gr H&G style boolit sized .452" and THEN powdercoated, with the shoulder sitting .070" out of the case mouth. Pretty impressive. I declined to throat this barrel, instead decided it did not need any work to function in the manner the designer of the throat intended:

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03637crop_zpsh0qzbc78.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03637crop_zpsh0qzbc78.jpg.html)

The Kimber barrel with the radiused throat easily plunked all the dummies in this collection, -except- the jacketed XTP and the full wadcutter (I did not try this boolit as it was a loaded round and I do not commonly keep them with my go/no-go dummies), you can visibly see the red colored 200gr LSWC that this Kimber had no problems with chambering. By contrast the barrel in the two uppermost photos above will plunk ALL of these dummies:

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03146_zps7d63b486.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03146_zps7d63b486.jpg.html)

Here is another photo of the same Kimber barrel, I have drawn red arrows to the 10:00 o'clock and the 2:00 o'clock areas of the feed ramp, these areas are normally squared off, but I extended the beveled and polished area all the way up the sides and blended them in to ease feeding, and a wide ojive boolit like the Lee RF in discussion here would benefit from this extra bit of metal being removed. Also, the yellow area at the bottom shows the radius at the breakover point also to ease feeding. Not that it matters, but this barrel would feed empty cases, so it should have even less issues feeding cast boolits. THIS is the kind of feed ramp you would need to get this Lee 200gr RF to feed reliably.

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03641crop_zps90fvxhme.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03641crop_zps90fvxhme.jpg.html)
__________________________________________________ _

Totally unrelated to this 200gr RF boolit, but in the same discussion, this is a TC Encore barrel in .45 Winchester Magnum that I throated for a customer who wanted to shoot the fine Lee C452-300-RF boolit. This booilt has the same long sided bearing surface, it requires a loner than normal throat, and we decided to give it about .080" worth of .4525" "freebore" in front of the chambered round so the boolit would have some "freejump" that will allow it to pull crimp and gain a bit of momentum before engaging the rifling. This will lower pressures, increase velocity slightly, and may very well improve groups, am still waiting on the field report from the owner when the snow melts where he lives.

The boolit on the left, is seated out .080" longer than the boolit in the center, this I used as a gauge to know when the boolit is firm into the rifling, and you can see the rifling has engraved the boolit, this shows the amount of freebore in the barrel, the boolit in the center is assembled to his chosen COA.

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03487-768_zpsc4b55341.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03487-768_zpsc4b55341.jpg.html)

And of course, a photo of the throated barrel:

http://i1202.photobucket.com/albums/bb374/DougGuy/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03491-768_zps129e3fa2.jpg (http://s1202.photobucket.com/user/DougGuy/media/Cylinder%20Services/DSC03491-768_zps129e3fa2.jpg.html)

Sorry for photobombing the thread, but this is the correct approach to setting up a barrel for a given COA or boolit style, so you can choose whatever COA is in the published load data, and don't haver to compromise the data by seating deeper in the case. Yes people do it, but it's not the correct approach, as all seating deeper does is create a second problem in an attempt to provide a workaround for the first problem..