Hensley & Gibbs molds/ 45 ACP

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garryc

New member
A friend of mine gave me two Hensley & Gibbs molds in near perfect condition. The one I want to ask about is a 45 cal 215 grain four cavity. This mold has a crimp grove.


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I compare it to the one they made in the same weight for 45 acp:

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I want to shoot this in both 45 acp and 45 colt. When I load it in the 45 acp I taper crimp. Should I just ignore the crimping grove? What would be the starting and top loads for Bulseye?
 
Revolver recoil can pull bullets, so you usually use a roll crimp with them. I would do that with your .45 Colt Loads.

In the .45 ACP how low you can load will depend on the recoil springs in your gun. If you have target springs you can probably load down to 3.8 grains. If not, I'd start at 4.4 grains. That crimp groove appears from the photo to be about .37" from the base of the bullet. QuickLOAD suggests that's deep enough that you'd want to limit yourself to 5.0 grains for a normal pressure profile.

In the larger 45 Colt case, I think for target plinking you start at about 5 grains. You can probably squeak up higher, but personally I'd limit it to about 7.0 grains just so as not to encourage too much leading. See what shoots well for you between those two limits.

Congrats on getting hold of a nice mold. I'm going to move your thread to the cast bullet forum.
 
Looking at my Lyman manual, it lists 5 grains of Bulseye with every lead bullet from 195 grains to 230. Seems strange to me.

My old tried and true load in the 45 Colt is 10 grains of Unique. That worked very well with a 225, I see no reason it wouldn't work well with a 215 gr.
 
Garry,

The lighter ones often are shorter shapes that seat deeper using up more of the powder space. That raises pressure, so just when you'd think charge should need to be increased due to lighter bullet weight, the loss of space keeps that from being safe.

5.0 grains of Bullseye was one of the early military match loads for 230 grain hardball. About 825 fps from a 5" tube. Browning used early Bullseye in developing the cartridge, but he intended it to use a 200 grain bullet originally. I don't know what his powder charge was, but the powder changed some in its early years, so it probably isn't a relevant question, now.
 
Running tests. The 230 grain Lee .452 RN/TL runs at 5 grains of bullseye easily. No issues there.

The Lee .452 TC/TL was stopped at 4.7 grains. It has a longer shank. I didn't push it beyond that.

The H+G .454 215 grain has a shank exactly the same length as the Lee .452 TC/TL. It is a regular design but will also be tumble lubed with the 50/50 mixture. (Liquid alox and Johnson floor wax.) I ran a few through the .452 sizer with no issues. I use that mix in my 40 S+W and regular lube grove bullets with no problems.
 
The results are in

I shot all loads with 5 grains of bullseye

The 230 grain Lee RN/TL Shot very well in the 1911, and just OK in the Witness.

The 230 grain Lee TC/TL shot OK in the 1911, and very well in the Witness.

The H+G 215 grain shot extremely well in the 1911, and shotgunned in the Witness. I remeber trying 200 grain Semi Wadcutters in it and having equally bad results. It just doesn't like that style I guess.

Here's the kicker. I loaded up 50 rounds of the H+G 215's in Blaser brass with the small primer pocket. After 10 rounds I had one big hole about the size of the center of my palm. Really amazing.
 
I use Bazer and Federal small primer brass with 200gr swc (H&G#68) in my 1911 for competition. The small primer brass shoots consistanly smaller groups than any large primer brass I've tried. Othe loads I've tried had similar results,though not allways as apparent. I don't kow why, but thats why I now am trying to change over to mostly spp brass.
I also am using mag primers after testing and having them reduce the 200gr swc group even more, it's now down to as you said" a sigle big hole" if I do my part.
 
Thanks to Jeff and Gary for those posts. In another thread we were speculating on whether the smaller primer might not mitigate to propensity for primers to unseat bullets partially and irregularly before powder gets fully burning in the .45 ACP. Seems like you have some empirical evidence that it does.

If either of you has a chronograph and the time to try it, I'd be interested in what the velocity standard deviations look like with your ammo when using large and small primers in the same guns with the same bullets and powders.
 
If either of you has a chronograph and the time to try it
Click to expand...

I haven't, put the center of the group seems really close to the same on LP and SP primers. From what I've seen I'd say the ES and SD is much better.

My buddy has a 1911 that fires the primers off center. It is near the edge of a SP primer. Beyond that I see no need for a LP in a 45acp. Such small powder charges.
 
Niether have I yet ,but I am interested in it also. As far as the bullet being unseated early, I believe it does have that tendancy, when I first started using them several powders(like silhouette)have given me a lot of unburnt granuals in the gun and down the barrel with the small primers but not nearly as much with the large. I now make sure to have a little better crimp(not the correct way in the acp)with those small primers.
I also use magnums quite a bit also because they seemed to help even more,but I haven't taken them to the chrono yet.
 
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