So, early this morning the UPS Harbinger of Joy dropped by the house and reunited me with my Para Gun Blog .45. Much happiness ensued. Everything clicks and whirs, trigger works, safety safetifies, magazines go in and out. I'm dying to hit the range to make sure all goes well (and to practice shooting at 25 yards more).
Now, I'm almost out of the wonderful ammo supplied by International Cartridge Corporation, and while I'd love nothing more than to plow away using their wonderful composite bullets, unfortunately they're not something I can reload at home. So I've been looking online for bulk lead bullets since the .45 can shoot lead just fine (unlike my Glock). Para, of course, indicated that only factory loaded ammunition be used, but that's lawyer speak.
I'm not sure what weights / shapes I wanted to go with so I went around to a few dealers and asked if any of them had samples I could purchase. See, I bought 500 lead bullets for the .357 Magnum, but for whatever reason, they leaded so bad it took a week to get the barrel cleaned again. I didn't bother checking the hardness or the manufacturer, I just picked them up real cheap from my local bullet supply place.
I sent a few emails to several manufactures, but only one responded - Mastercast Bullet Company. They were nice enough to send me 50 rounds of several of their bullets so I can test them out before I buy them by the thousands. Being so nice, I will definitely keep everyone abreast of how they work for me.
Tonight, I put the new .45ACP dies on my press and got them all aligned. I remember trying to get the 10mm working right and crushing cases left and right before I got it set correctly. Now, it took minutes to do being that I'm somewhat familiar with how to set them up. I smooshed in a couple of 185gr. SWC into some cases and nailed the OAL in two tries (1.225"). SWC's look funny, but they should work just fine. I'm planning on pushing them with TiteGroup since it's a good all around powder and is also what I use for the 10mm. I have 50 each SWC in 185 grain & 200 grain as well as 225 grain FP to try and see which ones I like the best (I'm betting either the 185 or 200 since they'll kick less).
With the dummy rounds I loaded, I cycled the ammo by hand to see if there were any problems. None at all. In fact, the SWC's went in better than the ICC round nose ammo did. They were effortless. I can only hope they work the same during firing.
Can't wait to load a bunch up and try them out!