Options for loading your 45 ACP

Reloading your 45ACP

                With the prices of today’s ammo, reloading is becoming more and more popular. With that there are many different styles of reloads. There are different styles of bullets, powders, and primers you can use. There are a lot of good manuals to help you get started if you are new to reloading. The one that helped me the most was Modern Reloading Second Edition by Richard Lee, because it goes in-depth on how to reload, the different presses that you can reload with, and gives you a comprehensive reloading chart.  You always start a new load with a primer, and then you have to choose a bullet. After you figure those two out than you choose your powder, and how much to use in your load.  

figure 1 large pistol primers(top), small pistol primers(bottom)

            It all starts with your clean brass. After making sure it is sized and deprimed you have to pick out your primer. There are a few companies that make primers, and there are options for what kind of primer you use. To pick out a primer you have to figure out if your casings takes a large pistol primer, or a small pistol primer. Usually you can tell what kind of primer you need by looking at, the difference is quite a bit as you can tell from figure 1.   After that you can get into magnum or regular primers. The one thing to be careful of when using magnum primers is that it can cause a plus P load. A plus P load is cartridge that will be slightly over charged, and if not using the correct firearm could end badly. When choosing what company to go with there are the big ones like Winchester CCI and Federal, but there are also some smaller companies getting in on the reloading boom, no pun intended.

figure 2 semi wad cutter(left), flat nose( center), round nose(left)

            The next thing to do is to figure out what type of bullet you want to use. There is a lot to consider when choosing your bullet. Are you using it just for target plinking, or for self-protection?  For target shooting you would normally go with a lead bullet either as a semi wad cutters or a round nose. Semi wad cutters (SWC) are known for putting nice neat holes in paper targets, but you have to be careful not all hand guns will cycle them. Flat nose bullets are a good all-around bullet for target practice.  Round nose (RN) will normally cycle in all hand guns, but you won’t get the clean hole in the target.  You can see the difference in the three by figure 2. When buying lead bullets there are many companies that manufacture them. For self-protection you would normally go with a jacketed bullet, which means that it has a copper or brass plating around the lead. You can get jacketed bullets in a RN or hollow points. The RN, or round nose, is just like the lead round nose but with better ballistics, and less deviation in your bullet pattern. With a Hollow Point (HP) you have a wide variety in what kind to get (figure 3), but pretty much all do the same thing. Companies that manufacture good hollow points are Hornady and Nosler.

Figure 3 Different types of Hollow points

            Finally you have to decide which powder to use. Now here is where it gets interesting, because there are so many different manufactures of powder. There are also many different types of speeds at which the powder burns. There are a lot of common powders that reloaders use such as Bullseye, Unique, AA, Hogdon, and Longshot. They are all good powders but they all have different burn rates, which is how explosive the powder is.  I have used both Hogdon and Bullseye myself, and would recommend either of them. When John Browning First made the 45 ACP they used Bullseye. The one rule of thumb I was taught when I started reloading was to choose a powder that would fill the cartridge the most, because leaving to much open space in the cartridge can cause some of the powder not to burn. This leads to variances in the loads and target variances in the end. Once again I would send you to the Richard Lee’s reloading book there is a great chart with all the possible powder choices in it for any load you would like.

            The Final thing I would have to say on reloading is that you should always be careful not to over load a cartridge, which is called a hot load. It is not good for your firearm, or potentially your body and face. But you should have fun and experiment, and find what kind of load you like. Safety is a huge concern when you are reloading especially when just starting out. If you ask any experienced, and responsible, reloader they will tell you to load on the light side for safety. Once again this is just an outline to reloading, and if you are serious about getting into it, I would suggest getting Modern Reloading 2. It is one of the many books I read when I was getting my start into reloading, and was probably the one that helped me the most.