Saturday I took a pistol course at a local shooting school. Knowing the class will go through a bunch of ammo over several levels of classes i wanted to shoot cast SWCs to save some dough. It turned out to be an exercise in embarrassment. Nothing says "I'm serious about shooting" like ammo that you made that doesn't work!!
I was shooting some 45 cal 200gr SWC I cast from a Lee 6 banger. Bullets were pan lubed and sized at .452 with a Lee push through die. I tested the loads several weeks ago, and had no issues with function or accuracy--I could easily keep all rounds in the A zone of the man-sized silhouette.
At the shooting class, though, the very first round from the mag failed to feed. The next round fed and shot, but the slide only closed half way on the third round from the mag. At that point the instructor asked if I was using handloads. I admitted such, and at the next break in training he had me switch to factory ammo, which I brought just in case. The rest of the training was uneventful. But before the break, the cast loads continued to confound my training.
I think the problem is too much crimp causing the case to bulge just behind the case mouth. Perhaps I applied slightly more crimp on this ammo than I did on the test ammo from several weeks ago?
The biggest issue I face now is how to fix these loads. I have 250-300 of these loaded up. I can go to the range and shoot the ones that will go bang, but the ones that won't feed are another issue. I can't pull these with a collett puller because there isn't enough of the bullet shoulder available to grab onto. I don't think an inertia puller will pull the bullets with such a firm crimp.
I wish I could swage out the bulge in the case by running the ammo partially through a die--maybe the sizing die with the decapping stem removed?
Advice?