I've been reloading handgun ammo for a year or two and have recently got into casting and have been having some issues with jams. I'm loading 230gr rn boolits cast with my lee 452 mold, sized to 452 and tumble lubed with the lee kit. I loaded the rounds with my hornady lock n load progressive, hornady 45 acp dies, 5gr unique and 1.230 oal.
At first I was getting jams with ever shot, where the slide wouldn't drop down all the way and then wouldn't rack back. I'd have to smack the back of the slide with my hand until it dropped the rest of the way and then fire the round. After a little bit of research I discovered I might have still had a little bit too much flare on the case(I had increased the flare because I was getting shavings). I also tested dropping some rounds into the barrel and it turned out that a lot of them didnt want to fall in there so easy and need to be jammed into the barrel to fit. So I adjusted my seater/crimp die to take more of the flare out. This seemed to help a lot but I'm still getting jams every so often, maybe 1 out of 10 in my xd and 1 out of 5 in my 1911. I've also compared how a factory jacketed bullet falls in the barrel compared to one of my boolits and I've noticed the factory rounds fit in there a lot more smoothly and sit more flush than my rounds. I've taken my barrels out of my guns a played around with different amounts of crimp/flare and differnt overall lengths and can't find that sweet spot where the round just drops in there as smoothly as the factory round.
Anyone have any thoughts?