To trim or not to trim .45 ACP

[Dudedog]

Life is too short to trim handgun caliber brass.

I never trim 9mm/.45
Did some .38s back when, I couldn't shoot the difference.

 

[hdwhit]

sbwaters wrote:
2) Trim the longer ones to, say, .892 and the shorter ones to .890 to simplify the batches.

Trim length for 45 ACP is 0.893. If you trim, I would not go shorter.

3) Just load the dumb things and not care about variations in the taper crimp since all you are trying to do is remove the bell.

That's always been my philosophy.

In the future I will be loading 9MM for several different pistols.

My experience with 9mm has been the barrels are a little bit more "particular" about getting the bell removed than 45 ACP, so you may have to "fiddle" with the die's adjustment to get a crimp all of your pistols can be happy with, but other than that, the process is pretty much the same.

 

[Walkalong]

My experience with 9mm has been the barrels are a little bit more "particular" about getting the bell removed than 45 ACP, so you may have to "fiddle" with the die's adjustment to get a crimp all of your pistols can be happy with, but other than that, the process is pretty much the same

Yep, set the taper "crimp" die to remove the bell completely on the shortest cases, which means the longer ones will get a bit of inward movement. Not much, but some. .001 ish. Maybe .002. You don't want any more.