El Chapo

what was with the 5 shot mags?

So a limit was there before and after that. A 170 grain bullet has never been legal in WBAS since I have been a SASS member.

It's been there the whole time with the min bullet weight over many iterations of the rule changes. Back to the original question, the military used Bullseye to load .45 Auto in WWII. The load for a 230 grain bullet was 5 grains, which is probably a bit hot by today's standards. I would start there and work up with a 170 grain bullet. According to quickload, 5 grains will push a 200 grain LSWC to 165 pf, 5.2-5.3 will probably get you there with your lighter bullet. No sense in overthinking this, even with a 200, 6 grains is within pressure limits and 192 pf, you have plenty of headroom to work up if needed. FWIW I have not personally loaded Alliant Bullseye in anything, mostly because I started with Clays and I've yet to find anything better for 45 Auto. It was unobtainium for a few years so I tried some other stuff, and if Bullseye was available, I might have tried that, but I had other stuff that worked. There is nothing wrong with bullseye, I just wanted to share that I have not personally used it, I am sharing information based on inference from that the military used it and playing with Quickload a bit. As with all load data you find on the internet, you should cross reference it against a published source. If you can't find data for a 170 grain bullet, use 185 grain or 200 grain lead bullet data and work your way up.

I know when I see AI edited nonsense and so does everyone else. Boggus was banned for this forum or he probably would be saying the same thing I am, that AI edited nonsense with no bearing on the question presented here is not helpful.

What I'd really like for you to do is stop posting AI-edited nonsense instead of sharing your actual experience, you know, kinda like everyone else who posted in this thread, including me.

The slide is supposed to impact the frame (guide rod actually) when the gun cycles. The recoil spring is not there to prevent this, it is there to store energy to push the slide forward. I'm not sure where you got the idea that the slide magically stops before its cycle with the right springs, but that is not the case.

The reason I'm asking is primarily to identify the feed lip design and dimensions, and if they're made by someone else, if they're similar to those. The brand on the bottom doesn't make them feed or determine when they release. FWIW I have a suspicion that Wilson Combat doesn't make their GI style mags either, but I have zero to back that up. It would be interesting to see a comparison though, because not too many people are buying GI style mags these days, so I wouldn't be surprised if there are much fewer manufacturers and designs than there are brands.

Does Colt even make magazines? I'm not a Colt fan so I honestly have no idea.

Yep, let's keep it an exclusive game that nobody from anywhere else wants to join for as long as possible. I'm sure that'll fix the problem.

I don't really care for stainless but the mags I'm using now are stainless because that's what was available. It's really just a vanity thing, I don't think either material is superior or works better; stainless is perhaps easier to keep clean because you can see when it's dirty. I don't think you'll see a difference in the feed lips holding up on stainless vs. regular steel, the heat treat probably matters more with regard to that. I have never really had a problem with my 1911 mags holding up, I did wear out a set of 9mm mags over a 10+ year period but I shot many thousands of rounds through them in that time. 45 mags have generally been good for me although after about 2012, I stopped shooting 45 completely except for wild bunch now. I have a set of Wilson Combat mags for WB and a set of Tripps. Both work in my gun, but I like that the Tripps have feed lips that hold the round for longer as the slide cycles, which is why I switched to them. I know some prefer other mags and I hope to try some others eventually. In USPSA, I used Chip McCormick mags from about 2004-2008, then I switched to Tripp Research mags and I have been using those since. When I started WB I bought a set of Wilsons because they were on sale and this year, after comparing them to my USPSA 45 mags that I have had forever, I got a set of GI style Tripps for WB and shot two matches with them over the last two months. My gun feeds with both but I think my gun feeds better with the Tripps because they release further forward. I loaned my gun and mags to another shooter last month and he shot the Wilsons and I shot the Tripps just so we didn't have to trade mags back and forth; neither of us had any gun related issues. I have not had a whole lot of problems with feed lip tuning in 1911s nor having them go out of spec, contrast that with 2011 mags that have a lot of problems feeding and mag tuning is required. Because of that, I don't know the feed lip dimensions that are ideal for 45 Auto, I haven't moved mine. In your case I'd measure all your mags at the front and back of the feed lips and set the dimensions, to start, at the smallest numbers you see among your mags as long as that one fed reliably. I bet you find that a few of your mags are a little wider at the front and release earlier, which in my experience, all my Wilson mags release earlier than I'd like, not because they are bent but because it's part of their design to have shorter feed lips than my other mags. If your tightest mag feeds reliably, just set them all to that number. You'll know right away if they are too tight because the round will hit the feed ramp too low and it may cause feeding issues. That's why I don't recommend going any tighter than that, just set them to exactly 1x your tightest mag and test fire. Tripp calls the situation you're experiencing "mag squirt" and some very minor adjustment to your mags will likely restore normal functioning for a long time. Write down the numbers that work and check them once a year and you'll be good.

Why should it be? Because that's the only way we're going to save Wild Bunch from dying. Considering SASS was born out of IPSC and founded by IPSC shooters, I think "disingenuous" is a bit of a stretch. That's a pretty despicable way to refer to someone who simply has a different preference than you. There is nothing fundamentally dishonest about preferring something other than what you prefer. There were no beavertails, bomar sights, ambidextrous thumb safeties, dovetail sights, frontstrap checkering, and a laundry list of other permitted modern 1911 features in 1913 nor in the Wild Bunch film. To suggest that is the standard, is, in a word, disingenuous. We have a modern category that is obviously not limited to what is in the film or what existed in 1913. This one small rule difference isn't going to be made different by that. Until you dig up an example of a 1911 with any of these features in the movie, I'll regard your opinion as simply uninformed about what we're doing at Wild Bunch matches, because plenty goes on there that is not in the film. I really hope someday we can apply some common sense for the rules for this game. We are doing ourselves a massive disservice by not trying to compete with other shooting sports, especially because the number of people who want to compete with any iron sight pistol drops more and more every day. The Single Stack division is, at present, about 5% of USPSA. If we can't all get along, we might find ourselves with a world that has neither one. A lot of CAS shooters don't care for wild bunch and a lot of match directors won't give us equal recognition. If we can't ally with other SASS shooters nor other shooters from other 1911 shooting sports, what do we have left? I think I know the answer to that.

What does "floating around in the breach" mean? It is not uncommon for 1911s to lock back with one round in the magazine, and for that, you may have to adjust the fit of your slide stop to the magazines you're using if that's happening. If your feed lips are out of spec, it's also not uncommon for a round to "squirt" out of the top of the magazine sometimes, although that is more common with 9mm magazines than 45. What exactly is it doing? If I understand your symptom correctly, it sounds like a feed lip problem to me. The easiest way to diagnose is to identify the problem magazines and compare feed lip dimensions.

They are removable and after you remove them, the spring will spew right out of the bottom of the magazine. They are also not standard GI length or there'd be no way to attach the basepad. Those are the magazines I use for other sports and they are NOT SASS legal.

The requirement is "magazines must be standard length" and other references to a "baseplate." Magazines that use slide on basepads are longer than normal magazines. Magazines that use screw on basepads are welded baseplate magazines and would be WBAS without the pads. The magazines I'm talking about, which are commonplace in ALL other types of shooting that use 1911s, do not have any kind of baseplate. If there was any rational reading of portion of the rules that let me use my Tripps with Dawson basepads, this whole thread wouldn't need to exist.

If they let me have a magazine with a slide off basepad, I'll make it out of bamboo if they want.