Handloading Hornady XTP

T

TheLastGoodFight

New member
I bought a 100rnd box of Hornady .451" .45 CAL XTP 200grn bullets hoping to lad them up for my Ruger Redhawk .45 Colt. Little did I realize these were made for .45 acp. Am I up the creek or can I still salvage these for a Colt round?

P.S.- I bought some Hodgdon TightGroup with it; also partial to Unique.
 
Modern 45 Colts are made with a .451" groove diameter barrel, so you can shoot them in one. Only an old 45 Colt one would have the old .454" groove diameter, and that would likely cause accuracy issues with the undersized bullets.
 
Seat deep, crimp on the nose, reduce the load a bit.

I shoot .45 auto bullets in .45 Colt more often than not. SWC, RN, conical. I seat the bullet to the point where the nose just enters the case mouth, measuring around .445" right at the mouth. Then crimp on the nose. (or just over the shoulder of a SWC)

Because of the huge capacity of the .45 Colt I reduce the loads only slightly, maybe 5% compared to a similar weight revolver bullet.
 
Last edited:
The crimp is probably the issue, as NoSecondBest suggests. Seating deep and rolling the case mouth over the bullet will work, but probably not as well as a crimp groove or a cannelure because of the shallow angle from the bullet ogive to its bearing surface, which acts as a wedge driving forward. For that reason, I would just not load them very warm. The other reason is, being designed for 45 Auto, the capacity of the 45 Colt case would let you drive these too fast to hold together well at impact. All expanding bullets have a nominal terminal velocity range. Email Hornady to learn what it is for this bullet.
 
You shouldn't have any trouble swapping these with someone. There are lots of ACP shooters out there. If you post them you can ship them in a USPS small flat rate box for six bucks. Yeah, you lost a couple of bucks but it's not a big deal. You're usually better off getting back on the right track than trying to "make do" with these issues. We've all had something similar over the course of our loading history. At least you learned something. Good luck.
 
I think you will be fine with mild loads. They would be no different than many plated bullets made for .45 colt(no cannelure) and I would load them as such, keeping flare to a minimum and using only enough crimp to take it out. Over crimping can actually lessen neck tension, which is all you have to hold the bullets from jumping under recoil. With mild loads there should be little recoil, thus little chance of the bullets jumping. Better 100 than 1000 or more.
 
No big deal. Load 'em and crimp over the ogive, then shoot 'em. Avoid using them in a tubular magazine rifle as the recoil can progressively hammer the bullets in the magazine deeper into the cases with each shot, thus raising the pressure.
If you like XTP bullets, they make them in 240 and 250 grain versions with crimp grooves for 45 Colt and 454 Casull.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top