Jim Taylor
Follow-Up on "Day of the .45"
Thursday, February 24, 2022, 10:12

I cleaned the .45 Colt cases I had fired on the "Day of the .45" .. let it run all night and they were bright and shiny by morning. I sized and de-primed them, the ran them through belling the case mouth. Years ago when we were experimenting with heavy bullets in the .45 Colt I ran into the problem of "bullet pull." Heavy recoiling loads would cause the 4th and 5th bullets in the cylinder to break the crimp and pull forward, protruding out of the cylinder and locking it from rotating. To prevent bullet pull I took the RCBS expander and turned the expander ball off ... then turned the straight shaft into a tapered shaft. With it I can just "bellmouth" the case enough to start a bullet without shaving it. The sized case helps hold the bullet from "jumping the crimp."

I found this works well with the 454 Casull also and used it all the years I shot the 454. Some people worried that leaving the case tight would squeeze the bullet diameter down undersize. Quite frankly, it does not matter if it does. With the high pressure loads the bullet is instantly expanded out to the chamber mouth diameter and what you sized it to does not even enter into the equation. With low velocity low pressure target loads it may make a difference in some guns, though my guess is it won't be enough to quantify. At least I never found it to be so.

The cases are all primed now and ready to load. It has been some time since I have reloaded .45 Colts and I found it pleasure to be working with a cartridge that is easy to hang on to. I reloaded a jillion 380's and 9 em ems and found the little cartridges a pain in the ascend to handle. And you get used to them after a few thousand! They start feeling "normal" and that is just wrong! I had primed about 750 9 em ems and when I was putting things away I spotted this HUGE cartridge laying next to some of my dies. I couldn't figure out where I got such a huge empty from! I picked it up and it turned out to be a 30-30! That's what messing with little bitty cartridges can do to your head!

People have been telling me that the 9 em em is more efficient now with the new techo-advanced bullets. That may be though I personally doubt it. Drop a couple empty 9's into an empty .45 Colt case and tell me again how they work just as well.