Are these rounds safe

R

Roland Thunder

New member
I loaded some 45 acp rounds last night. I usually use 4.0 gr of Bullseye and COL= 1.235. I noticed about halway through that some of the rounds looked a bit short, so I measured them and they were measuring about 1.20. Here is a picture. As you can see the shoulder of the bullet is below the tip of the case.

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I know 1.20 is a little short and would produce greater pressure than 1.235 but since they are only loaded with 4.0gr Bullseye, I am wondering if it's that much of a problem. Are these safe to shoot?
 
There's probably going to be an increase in pressure, due to the bullet being so deep into the case.
But it depends on the amount of powder and pressure of your loads.
With the bullet loaded as it is, you are kind of dealing with an unknown.
It shouldn't be too hard to use an impact bullet puller to reposition the bullets where they belong.
A light whack or two should do it.
 
You don't mention the bullet weight (200 gr?), but with 4.0 gr of Bullseye it's hard to imagine that the seating depth shown would lead to problems. I'd be more concerned with the rounds feeding properly with the case rims exposed as they are. My .45 ACP target guns will feed empty brass just fine, but it took a good bit of feed ramp polishing to get there, and with SWCs I like to leave just a bit of lead outside of the case so it's the bullet shoulder that contacts the ramp and not the case, just to make sure.

That said, as g.willikers points out, a couple of light bumps in an intertial bullet puller should move the bullet out enough so you can then re-seat them to the proper depth with a re-adjusted seating die.
 
Go the inertial puller route, then re-crimp it. As it sits, the pressure should still be acceptable, but when it feeds in a self-loader, that bullet could be pushed in a lot deeper, and that can cause dangerous pressure.
 
4.0 of Bullseye is a little short too. Only by .1, assuming it's a 200 grain bullet, though. 4.1 is the start load for a cast 200.
I'd be whacking 'em a bit too, but Alliant says 1.19" is the OAL for a 200. Nothing horrible will happen if you pull those via Mr. Colt though. You might run into feeding issues though.
 
Inertia puller, impact puller, hammer puller, "whack-a-mole puller" all the same thing.

Me? I would not pull them. At that powder charge weight... no way they show even a hint of high pressure. I would make them better next time around but nope, I definitely would not pull those.

Indeed, they may not feed well... "unsafe" they are not.
 
4.0 of Bullseye is a little short too. Only by .1, assuming it's a 200 grain bullet, though. 4.1 is the start load for a cast 200.
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Most of the serious Bullseye (the competition, not the powder) shooters I know load 4.0 gr of Bullseye (the powder, not the competition) under a 200 gr SWC. Most of the others use a bit less. Admittedly, that's with a lower power recoil spring, but the loads themselves shoot just fine. The top shooter on our team used the 4.0 gr load to shoot a 91 slow fire score from the 50-yd line this past week - he was shooting at a 25-yd target. :eek:
 
The risk isn't with the rounds as shown, and in a revolver they'd be fine. But I've run into some tired cases (R-P in particular) that, after resizing, just didn't grip the bullet firmly by friction alone any longer. Too springy to size down enough. I could push the bullets in deeper with my thumb rather easily, so having them shoved deeper into the case by self-loader feeding was a real possibility. That's the concern here.
 
The risk isn't with the rounds as shown, and in a revolver they'd be fine. But I've run into some tired cases (R-P in particular) that, after resizing, just didn't grip the bullet firmly by friction alone any longer. Too springy to size down enough. I could push the bullets in deeper with my thumb rather easily, so having them shoved deeper into the case by self-loader feeding was a real possibility. That's the concern here.
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Well...
I agree with what you said in the quoted text, but that's an always kind of thing, and I don't see how it necessarily applies any more here than it ever does.

I have come across MANY different combinations where unintended and unnoticed bullet setback cause by insufficient case mouth tension... exacerbated by the (naturally) violent feed cycle of any/every semi-auto pistol is a risk.

To give specific examples...
Nickel plated R-P headstamp 10mm brass and any weight Nosler jacketed bullet. The brass is too springy and thin in the neck, the bullets are on the "minimum" size dimensionally and the net result is that far too many simply won't pass the sniff test. In my experience, those components together is asking for trouble. I also have seen similar issues with 100gr Berry's plated in R-P headstamp .380 Auto brass.

Back to the OP's particular situation. He's running cast lead bullets, and that is at least one (slight, possible?) hedge against the problem you describe. Cast lead slugs are typically sized one-thousandth larger than jacketed... generally speaking. That one-thousandth certainly defends against setback.

The fact that he's already seated them a tick lower than he had intended doesn't necessarily make the chance of MORE setback more likely or prevalent -- unless we are making the argument that the very edge of the case mouth should be rolled inward to grip that slug.

I'd like to think we agree that we aren't making .45 ACP ammo that way.
 
I'm going to go along with the building consensus . . .

The rounds as they are, would probably shoot okay with minimal increase in pressure.

But like the others, my concern would be with feeding and/or additional setback.

If it was me, I'd tap them out a bit with my inertia puller, re-seat to 1.235 (which is where I seat my 200 LSWC's, btw), then re-crimp them; and fairly firm at that.
 
1) did you establish a COL or do you believe the manual knows the chamber dimensions of your gun and can give you a good COL? In reality, SAAMI test protocol requires a minimum COL, below what the manufacturer will use for real production, and most manuals seem to follow this same rule.
2) Next, SWCs range from H&G #68s with long noses to button-nose SWCs (H&G #131??), where COL changes quite a bit. In fact, for SWCs, COL is the wrong measurement--you measure from case head to bullet shoulder and ALL SWCs will use the same measurement.
3) if you push down on each bullet with thumb or finger in an attempt to seat the bullet deeper (which used to be a RULE for all reloading immediately after bullet seating) and the bullets don't move, they are OK.
4) However, no one can really tell you anything is safe since there might be other issues. Thus, if someone asks if something is safe despite an obvious problem, the answer has to be "NO--fix the problem."
 
In a moment so rare that I have to point out how rare it is :p, I will totally disagree with Nick_C_S.
If it was me, I'd tap them out a bit with my inertia puller, re-seat to 1.235 (which is where I seat my 200 LSWC's, btw), then re-crimp them; and fairly firm at that.
Click to expand...
I would definitely not to this for a few reasons.

First is that cast lead bullets sometimes (not always) have a tendency to squeeze down/alter their shape when stuffed in to brass. They don't spring or hold their shape as a jacketed bullet is more likely to do. If the case in question was sized down to minimum dimensions... the lead slug has been "squeezed" in to place and it is now snug-fit. If you tap it out or just a bit forward, you may lose that snug fit.

I would also never "re-crimp" a semi-auto pistol round designed to hold a bullet in place not at all by crimp but by properly sized brass and case mouth tension. To "re-crimp firmly" also suggests that we are using some manner of crimp to make that bullet stay in the cartridge case. In .45 ACP in a semi-auto pistol, this is a bad idea! Save a crimp in .45 for a .45 Auto Rim or a .45 Colt. Not for a pistol that is designed to headspace on the case mouth.

It's my opinion that doing the above gives the round EVERY possible chance to do what so many have said is the biggest threat -- the bullet unintentionally seating itself deeper in the case... resulting in unintended higher pressure.

In a related idea... I think the handloading pioneers dropped the ball a bit when they started abusing the term "crimp" and it leads some down a wrong path. We use two basic kinds of crimp, but the kind in question (the taper crimp, on a semi-auto pistol round designed to headspace on the case mouth) should have been blessed with a different name than "taper crimp." We use a taper crimp to smooth out the case mouth that we had previously belled/flared in an earlier step to assist us with inserting a bullet. Our taper crimp is meant to prepare the case end of the mouth for smooth feeding and proper fit in the chamber.

A taper crimp is NOT a roll crimp.
A roll crimp is what we use in revolver rounds when we force the case mouth to roll inward and physically grip that bullet as if it were fingers. The bullet often/typically has a crimp groove or a cannelure specifically there for us to do exactly that -- and we most often never have such a crimp groove or cannelure on a semi-auto pistol bullet.

Too much "taper crimp" on a semi-auto pistol round will not only distort the loaded round... it usually succeeds in less grip on the bullet. Take some junk brass and extra bullets and experiment at your own bench to see this in action.

Now! Is this too much discussion on a seemingly very small problem and a little handful of ammo? NO! These discussions are intended to open up relevant conversation and share knowledge. I post the things I post so that typically a greater mind who might find a detail in my post can counter it, correct it or expand on it... and I can learn more about it myself. :D
 
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