".45 Short Colt" bullets in ACP

[Drakejake]

I heard last night that a friend of mine had successfully loaded and shot .45 Long Colt bullets in .45 ACP cases out of a 1911. My friend is active in cowboy shooting and loads .45 Colt. To save money in reloading .45 ACP, he worked up a load which would allow him to put the bigger bullet into .45 cases. On Sunday he had the first test of the ammo and it worked (cycled, didn't blow-up). I suppose he had to reduce the powder in order to compensate for the greater pressure caused by the longer .45 Colt bullet (255 gr.?) in the ACP case. Does this make sense? I don't reload. I heard that the recoil from the ".45 Short Colt" was slightly stronger than from standard .45 ACP.

Comments?

Drakejake

 

[Walkalong]

I used to shoot 250 Gr. Raniers designed for the .45 Colt in my 1911 .45 all the time. They shoot great. Recoil is a matter of how fast you push that 250/255 Gr. bullet.

 

[BlindJustice]

THe felt recoil is a result of the bullet weight.

A .45 ACP is a .45 ACP bullet weight doesn't equate
to place a new name to the cartridge.

In cowboy action shooting some competitors convert
their lever guns to .45 Cowboy Special (CS). The .45
CS is a .45 Colt with the case shortened to 0.898. It
makes it safer to shoot reduced loads that are used
in COwboy Action shooting. The SAA pistols don't require
any mods unlike the lever guns. THe conversion of
an 1894 Marlin - .45 Colt requires that the
"spoon/carrier" that is the part that transfers the cartridges
from the tubular magazine to the chamber is shortened
for the shorter .45 CS case. THis results in the
lever travel being reduced by approx. .75 inch on the
downstroke and upstroke so it becomes a "shortt
stroker," as well as carrying more cartridges in the tubular
magazine than the .45 Colt.

I read about this last June, and contacted the riflesmith.
I requested a similiar conversion but to .45 Auto Rim & that it
wouldn't be firing reduced poofter CS loads. The additional
pieces to the project will be a modified extractor and the
chamber has to be altered becauswe of the thicker rim of
the .45 Auto RIm cartridge. I've got a lot of .45 AR ammo
for my S&W 625 and the 1894 oughta be a nice lightweight
fast handling fun gun for plinking/target as well as say
a camp gun.





guns.

 

[Hunter0924]

Did you measure the .45 Colt bullets? For lead in a .45 Automatic I would not go larger than .452" without slugging the bore to be sure you could shoot a larger bullet.