.45 ACP in Today's Semi-Auto World

[Alex]

Okay you mashers, here's your Valentines day treat!

I put about 92 rounds through two guns:

Timberwolf subcompact w/ gen 4 G21 Glock slide & barrel

Timberwolf large w/ AlphaWolf G41 slide and Bar-Sto barrel.

My testing routine is to shoot this target at 5, 10, 15, 20 & 25 yards off a sandbag, starting in the lower right square then moving clockwise and finishing at 25 on the large center square. Five rounds at each distance, each respective group is circled with black Sharpie.

The D&L semi wadcutter does make a nicer hole than the 230 grain ball ammo I usually shoot out of these guns.

The chronograph data:

I experienced 5 failures to feed out of tonight's batch, they looked like this:

...and one light primer strike. It fired normally when I put it back in the gun and tried over. There's also a couple of fired bullets recovered from the berm.

My initial impression: This ammo seems like it is slightly more accurate than the 230 grain ball ammo. But I never have FTFs with ball. Both of these guns are range toys and I have enough ammo left to do 3 or so action pistol matches so I will do so and see what happens.

The price is decent for semi wadcutter ammo. Yes, I did save the empty brass. Shipping is fast although there was a large label on both sides of the box saying, "Cartridges, Small Arms". I do not plan to use it as defensive ammo as I have 10mm versions of both of these guns which would suit that purpose. I'll keep my 10mm > 45acp rant to myself. The 45s are easy for me to shoot one handed with this 200 grain ammo. 10mm, not so much.

I would be interested to see what this ammo could do in a 1911. Who is next to try it?

 

[One Ping Only]

I’m hoping to navigate a few firearms sales so I can get a .45ACP back in the stable, and also add a 10mm. Both are fantastic for what they are. Thanks for the report!

But my guess is someone who already has a 1911 may beat me to the test.

 

[CECannonJr]

Very nice range report.

 

[bkbrno]

Odd that you had 5 failures to feed. The whole idea of the bullet shape was to enhance feeding.

 

[Alex]

Five more failures to feed in today's match. I'll shoot up all this ammo and call it quits with semi wadcutters in semi autos. The stakes are pretty low as nobody else shoots this category although someone threatened to give me a procedural due to the enormous holes I left in the targets.

It is giving me an opportunity to learn to deal with stoppages. A couple of my attempts to tap-rack-bang my way out turned into double feeds necessitating dumping of the mag and some juggling. It also helped me with eyeballing my work as post-jam I had to figure out where I left off.

 

[no4mk1t]

Five more failures to feed in today's match. I'll shoot up all this ammo and call it quits with semi wadcutters in semi autos. The stakes are pretty low as nobody else shoots this category although someone threatened to give me a procedural due to the enormous holes I left in the targets.

It is giving me an opportunity to learn to deal with stoppages. A couple of my attempts to tap-rack-bang my way out turned into double feeds necessitating dumping of the mag and some juggling. It also helped me with eyeballing my work as post-jam I had to figure out where I left off.
View attachment 17977

Have you polished the feed ramp on the barrel and broke the sharp edge between ramp and chamber?

 

[One Ping Only]

IT would be interesting to hear of any with 1911's weigh-in with their results with this ammo.

Yeah, I'd check the feed ramp and area as no4mk1t suggests.

 

[Alex]

Good idea! Yes, I did that when first putting this gun together.

But I rounded it off a little more and polished the ramp and chamber. There's a little more than 200 rounds left for further testing.

 

[no4mk1t]

The polish job on the ramp looks good.
Hard to tell from the pics, but it looks like there is still an edge that could stand some rounding.

 

[One Ping Only]

Thank for your experiment and sharing the results. May your last tweak be what unlocks success.

 

[Bongo Lewi]

I like reading about trying different things to determine if there is a better way to improve a gun, accuracy, marksmanship, etc.

So far, it looks like the downside to this custom ammo is it doesn't feed reliably. Is it the bullet shape? I presume so. The ballistics (velocity) and accuracy dont appear to be vastly different from decent factory ammo. Assuming you shoot just as well with good quality factory ammo.

Was your expectation the new ammo will perform better than off the shelf? What's your current thinking after a few hundred rounds?

I have a theory. If you have to modify a gun to make certain ammo run reliably, your modifications could impact how all other ammo runs in that gun. For me... I want to be able to pick up any ammo I find laying on the ground and be confident it will go bang.

 

[One Ping Only]

The whole point of this ammo was that it fed reliably in 1911’s… go figure

 

[Bongo Lewi]

I've tried some new and different ammo, sometimes from small shops like the one Alex did. It's interesting and there's nothing wrong with experimenting. Keeps your brain sharp. You always learn something.

However... the big players in the ammo biz spend a lot of money designing their product. There's always some small ammo maker or reloader who thinks he has found some magical solution that has eluded the smart guys at Federal or Hornady or whatever. I have never found that to be true.

I admit to not having the patience or time for doing hand loads. Reloading is like watching paint dry to me. I'd rather be shooting. I did a little bit on a small scale back in the earlier days of benchrest shooting. Over time, factory match ammo (and sub MOA factory rifles) became so good I stopped doing hand loads. It was no longer necessary.

I'm happy as a clam buying good quality factory ammo. They are all very good. The major brand I have found to be most consistent in all calibers? Sig. Go figure. Highest quality least cost? Norma. I shoot a lot of Federal, Hornady, Remington, many others. I rarely have any FTF/FTE issues.

 

[bkbrno]

Believe it or not, there are people that think the only .45ACP in existence is a 1911. The ammo from this company may run flawlessly in a 1911 pattern pistol. They never thought to test it in anything else because anything else doesn't exist in their world or they don't have the time and money.

It could be the powder they use causes a recoil impulse that the Glock pattern pistol doesn't like. It could be just under the threshold of power needed to cycle a Glock. The slide may need to come back just a fraction more to get a good run at feeding. That bullet looks like it should feed in anything.

As BL said, the big ammo companies are aware of ALL of the .45ACPs out there and have the $$ to test for all of them. It could be a slight powder adjustment or seating depth that makes the ammo work in everything but they do the development. I suspect the ammo here is targeted to a small specialized group, shooting one kind of pistol. They love the ammo but shoot it in something different and all bets are off.

 

[Bongo Lewi]

I have a takedown survival rifle in 45, an MPA, a couple of polymer pistols, a few 1911s. The only 45 ACP ammo I've had repeatable trouble with was remanufactured/reloaded. Someone recommended it to me and I bought 500 rounds without testing it first. I was sorry. I eventually used it up at the range where clearing a jam is no big deal. But it was a real pain in the ass.

For years, I have been mystified by certain big bore folks insistence on hardcast. There is zero science around it being better at knocking down a bear or other large beast. Some studies, which are no more right than others, suggest a hardcast round is more likely to glance off the skull of a large bear than penetrate. If you study the geometry of a grizzly bear skull, it looks like an Abrams tank. Very thick and lots of shallow angles. Perfect for deflecting a projectile. As with all defensive shooting, it's always about shot placement.

 

[Alex]

Looking at the D&L 200 gr SWC next to a Blazer Brass 230 gr FMJ it seems like the narrower, pointier SWC should feed better but my testing showed the opposite.

As an aside, maybe I need Racer88 to come and do an inventory & organize my gun parts before I can order anything else. So don't judge me for finding 5 45acp barrels to compare as looking at them side-by-side might help shed some light.

Here's 4 of them. From top to bottom:
1) Glock OEM gen 4 G21 - feeds fine with FMJ, occasional jams with SWC.
2 & 3) Two identical AlphaWolf G41 barrels. Feeds fine with FMJ, not tested with SWC. Notice the considerable difference in the feed ramp shape and amount of chamber support!?!
4) Bar-Sto G41 barrel - feeds fine with FMJ, jams with SWC.

Of the 2 barrels I used with the D&L ammo, note that the OEM G21 barrel has a shallower, broader feed ramp with the least support of all these barrels. The Bar-Sto has the steepest feed ramp with the most chamber support of these examples. Both of them suffered identical types of jam.

My conclusion is that reworking the feed ramp of the Bar-Sto barrel so it looks like the Glock version to work with SWC bullets is going to be fruitless.

Question for you peeps with 1911s: Do they use a feed ramp to guide the cartridge into the chamber or does the extractor do that job?

 

[Bongo Lewi]

Principally, the ramp. But it would be inaccurate to say the extractor has no role at all.

There are several feed ramp variations among 1911s. I know of 4-5. Also internal vs. external extractor. The original browning design was internal. External extractors over time became more common. One reason is that it's cheaper to manufacture the slide for an external extractor.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

View: https://youtu.be/EjQrhDKDWFk?feature=shared

Kimber shit the bed when they went with external extractors. It was one of the issues that earned them a bad rep for reliability.

 

[Bongo Lewi]

The edge around the crimp area bugs me. My guess is that's what is catching on the ramp/chamber. Why did they do that?

 

[bkbrno]

If you have any of those rounds left and a micrometer, I would measure them and see if they conform to specs. I reloaded in the past and, if the crimp or overall length was off, the rounds gave me problems. A bad crimp can bulge the case mouth or leave too much rim exposed which can snag.

Different pistols have different sequences for when the feed lips, ramp and extractor engage. I had a CZ pistol where the barrel ramp was basically irrelevant. The cartridge fed straight in. I saw no marks of the ramp so I got curious. That pistol could feed resized cases with no bullet. I cycled a whole mag of empty cases through it.

 

[Alex]

The edge around the crimp area bugs me. My guess is that's what is catching on the ramp/chamber. Why did they do that?

To answer that as well as your earlier question about what I want to get out of this ammo: the shoulder is there to cut a neat hole in a paper target.

The designers of the ammo also asserted that this design would be more lethal than either ball or JHP 45acp cartridges.

From the article One Ping Only linked:

I do not have use for JHP/SP bullets in handguns. At typical handgun velocities bullet expansion is inconsistent at best, and sometimes completely non-existent. Sometimes the penetration of JHP/SP bullets is very limited, and so is the effect of the wound. Worse is the functional unreliability that they can cause. Shooting into gelatin is not the same as living tissue because there are more things involved than just consistent physical resistance. Bones also have to be considered. The semi wadcutter is a very good bullet shape. If you take a .45 ACP and load it with a SWC bullet you are going to take a radical jump in stopping power. In my personal view, what causes the increase in stopping power is the 'cookie cutter' effect. When SWC bullets are driving through tissue they are not bending muscle and nerve tissue out of the way, they are chopping it like a cookie cutter. We see this effect in the wounding when using a sharp shoulder on the bullet. A cookie cutter bullet plows its way through, chops its way through. It is a very good wounding effect." - Col. Jeff Cooper

That article sounds like the only firearm they had in mind for this bullet design was the 1911, which they tested extensively so I can't fault them for it not working in a Glock pattern gun. Heck, I don't think the Glock was even invented when they did this. It does kinda seem like the shoulder does not play well with the Glock feed ramp.

Thanks for posting the 1911 animation, BL. It really gives me an appreciation of how simple the Glock design is!