Garrison Joe

There are 2 springs that resist the slide in recoil - the recoil spring and the mainspring. Recoil spring you see up at the muzzle every time you take the gun down for cleaning. The mainspring is down in the mainspring housing at the back of the grip, right behind the magazine well opening. Both contribute to difficulty in racking the slide. The mainspring does not bear directly on the slide, of course, it is the spring that drives the hammer, but the slide starts cocking the hammer almost immediately during recoil, so "both springs are being compressed during recoil." And, be careful to keep the two springs "in balance," as they work together. Drastically changing one without considering the other can lead to some strange behavior. For a 165 power factor load, I can drop to a 15 pound recoil spring without much difference in function. The factory spring is 16 pounds. I get nice ejection, about 5 feet to 10 feet from where I stand, so that is also a good indication that the spring setup is not "too light". To balance the little-bit-lighter recoil spring, I also have a lighter mainspring in my gun, at 19 pounds. This gives you less resistance when you cock the hammer. If the gun is easy for her to rack with the hammer already cocked, but difficult when the hammer is down, the mainspring is responsible for the extra force required. The factory mainspring is a 23 pound spring. When putting in a lighter mainspring, it is worth it to have the mainspring housing bore where the spring sits honed out - typically that area is very rough and needs to be smoothed to still drive the hammer to fall fast enough to get good primer strikes with a lighter mainspring. So, loading to the lower end of the PF range, smoothing the gun, and dropping a little spring weight to match the lighter loads will help quite a bit. Second is just the physical motion she uses to rack the slide. It is easier for folks without much upper body strength to rack with the gun close to the chest. Push the grip forward with the strong hand and resist the slide with the other hand - that will let the shooter rack easier. Trying to rack conventionally, with the gun out away from the body and the strong arm almost fully extended, means you are only using muscles from the weak arm. One fairly accurate way to monitor if the 1911 is sprung incorrectly, so as to lead to either damage to the gun or to failure to fully eject is to watch how far the empties get thrown. If dribbling out of the ejection port and falling at your feet, too much spring resistance for your load. If throwing 15 feet or more, not enough spring resistance for the load. Bullseye target shooter firing loads with about 130 PF can drop down closer to 12 pound recoil springs. "Heavy hardball" shooters are well served with 18 pound recoil springs. Folks shooting heavier loads than that ought to get a Desert Eagle or something built for that kind of service. Good luck, GJ

Since you have a micrometer/caliper available to measure (good deal - all loaders should have something!), measure a couple of the rounds that don't go into the case gage. I agree that all rounds should pass a standard loaded-round gage! What causes me problems is the BASE of the case, just above the extraction groove. Especially with "range brass" that came from who-knows-where. There are several guns commonly in use, chambered in.45 auto, that allow the base to swell when fired. A standard sizer die cannot remove that bulge. When you measure, if you get ANY diameter above 0.473 inch, except for the "rim" itself, you have a badly bulged case. Not to mention any names, but G*&^K and grease guns and other sub guns all have unsupported or very sloppy chambers that allow the base area to swell on firing. It is hard to bulge a 45 auto case up at the mouth with just a taper crimp that tightens down to 0.472. That is just barely crimping. If you are seating and crimping in a single die, back off the die body to just seat, but not crimp at all, a few cases. If those will not chamber, then you are not causing your problem just by adding the crimp! Most of the 45 auto 230 grain LRN are made to crimp right at the leading edge of the "driving band". Shorten your OAL until you can get the mouth to slip up over the band and crimp right where it starts the nose ogive curve. Then, look down from the top of the loaded round and see that you can still see part of the thickness of the case mouth that has not been buried into the lead of the slug. Just a little of the thickness should be crimped into the lead, most should be left free of the lead so that proper headspacing (on the mouth of the case) is not lost. You are probably trying to jam the leading edge of the lead driving band of the slug into the beginning of the throat of the barrel Make sure you do not get any bulging of the exposed part of the slug just above the crimp when you crimp, either. That is a problem some folks have with the 200 grain SWC (cast much softer usually), not normally with the 230 gr LRN. Most commercially cast 45 auto slugs are cast REALLY hard, like 14-16 Brinnell hardness. Sometimes it take a firmer hand on the seating step to make the crimp - sorta like seating jacketed slugs. If all else fails, then I would get a separate crimp die to apply the taper crimp after you have seated to the desired length. I favor the Redding profile crimp die, but the Lee Factory Crimp Die is very good, and has an extra use.......It can be used to remove those nasty bulges that the sizing die cannot reach by getting the "add on" parts in the "Lee Bulge Buster." Those extra parts allow you to size the ENTIRE case (even the rim, which is OK, if not actually "factory spec"). If you do have bulges down by the base, the Bulge Buster is the only cheap way to get them out. I found I went from having 5-10 rounds per hundred not fit the loaded round gage to less than one per hundred when I started "busting the bulges" off of all my 45 auto cases. And, finally, there are a few designs of the 230 grain lead round nose molds that make a slug which does not taper quickly through the ogive. The fat nose can hit the throat and rifling and prevent the round going in the chamber the last 1/10 of an inch. Compare the slugs you are using to those that known-successsful 45 auto shooters are using. Personally, I dislike the LRN so much that if I shoot a 230 grain bullet in the 1911, I use a 230 grain Truncated Cone bullet, which NEVER hits the rifling if seated at the correct OAL. Good luck, GJ PS - the "bulge" you see in the case mid-height at the base of the seated slug is normal. A 45 auto sizer die takes the brass down to a little less than 0.473 inch. Inserting the slug counts on having neck tension from that tight case help hold the slug in place. All this works right when you figure out your other problems. It is ALMOST NEVER solved right by dropping down to a .451 bullet diameter, and besides, you will have a hard time convincing a commercial caster to size small just for you. You have a different problem than the bullet diameter. If you doubt this part, measure the case right where the bullet bulge is the most visible. I'll bet you are not over 0.473 inch - the magic diameter for a well-formed loaded round. GJ

Someone has mistaken the RO Handbook section: with the other-person-moves-a-shooter's-gun situation. By extrapolation from the penalty above,which would be incurred by the shooter - the penalty for moving another shooter's gun has to be a Minor Safety as well. But, common sense tells you that for move-a-gun, the penalty goes to the person who moved the gun! You sure cannot penalize the shooter for someone moving his gun - he may be 50 feet away at the time! Perhaps this is the case of someone not paying attention during class, or the instructor being confused. Either case, someone needs better instruction! Good luck, GJ

JB, yep, I cast every bullet my wife and I shoot. One shooter WB and both shooting Cowboy. And load it all, including shotgun. Keeps me busy, since that is all hand casting, highest end machines are a pair of Star sizers and a 650 Dillon. Some bullets of my own design that few others have bought molds for. So, yeah, soup to nuts. Except I don't drop my own shot.

UM - Glad to hear. Those are my favorites. Or, pure Tripp, but that is twice the price.

There is some extra fouling due to the bullet lube that you don't see with jacketed loads. Cleans out easily with any solvent. There is LESS damage to barrels with lead bullets than with jacketed rounds. Who has told you a lie that lead bullets damage conventionally rifled barrels? What do you think was used for bullets up until about 1900? :D Now, some types of porting that has been done on barrels, and some strange new polygonal rifling attempts, are not well suited to using lead bullets. Neither of which are likely to show up at a WB match.

From what I've read, the GI style mag lips are great at feeding FMJ at full OAL (about 1.266 inch). That may mean they would be great feeders of 230 gr LRNs, too. The Parallel lip magazines that Colt normally makes, and the hybrid lip mag design that Tripp and CMC produce are designed to feed shorter rounds, semi wadcutter and hollow point style bullets, as well as handling Ball with good success. So, you might just get great feeding from those GI mags, if you are shooting LRNs. Possibly significant feeding problems with rounds loaded to shorter OALs. Here's a couple of articles that provide some good reading: http://how-i-did-it.org/magazines2/read-my-lips.html http://forum.m1911.org/showthread.php?t=9178 Some of our WB shooters are using USGI mags with good luck. As you can see from the numbers, though, more like the CMC or Tripp or Colt mags. Good luck, GJ

Shoot 500 rounds out of each new GI mag. Toss any with even one failure to feed or eject. After that, perhaps you have proven to yourself that a mag designed to feed FMJ will shoot your load in your pistol. Or, get a good Tripp or CMC mag, designed for a positive feed with many more bullet designs than just FMJ, keep it clean and well sprung, and never have to do a prove-it test. I think I like the second. The hard part is that you never really know which manufacturer made the mags, how many years ago, whether you got taken with cheap foreign knockoffs, etc. All you really know is ........... you did not get a top of the line magazine. Maybe it's good enough to shoot flawlessly in your gun. Maybe not. Want to bet a first place buckle on it? Good luck, GJ

Have now finished getting enough Tripp internals and springs that I can post with complete accuracy - Tripp internals in CMCs or Colt factory mag bodies. :D GJ And, no more borrowed PINK magazines, I hope. Not that they didn't work well, not that I wasn't extremely grateful, but that they just did not go with my outfit. :o

I've gotten Shooting Star mags before that had the plastic bumpers on them. Two screws in the bumper were removed, and voila, a naked steel base plate reveals itself! Good luck, GJ