Use a Dimpled Follower for SWC?

[Ops Officer]

HI, I'm new to THR, but had to join because of the wealth of information I've found. Yesterday at the range, a buddy and I experienced failures to eject with plated semi-wadcutter .45 ACP we fired in our auto-loaders. I used an XD-45 Tactical and he used a SIG P220. My mags had no dimple on the follower. Two of his mags had a dimple on the follower and fired SWC just fine. But when he used mags without a dimple on the follower, the gun had FTE the first round. Both guns never jammed before with JHP and FMJ. We concluded the dimple made the difference and guessed it helped overcome the angle of the ramp of each gun. What's your take on this? Thanks.

 

[wally]

When you say first round do you mean first round loaded into the mag which will be the last round shot out of the gun? That's the only one that the dimple will affect.

I don't see how the dimple makes a difference for ejection or have you confised ejection failures with feed failures in your message?

Dimpled followers are pretty much a 1911 thing, doesn't seem to matter for any of my 1911s -- I've a motly assortment of 1911 mags dimpled and not, all work well (I've discarded the few that didn't)

--wally.

 

[Ops Officer]

First & Every Round

As I've mentioned, the only time it fed and ejected without failure was when we used a mag with a dimpled follower. We never got beyond three rounds of each mag that had a failure. I know this problem is usually associated with 1911 auto-loaders and I assume it occurs on the last round.
The only other thing I can think of is the springs in the two mags with the dimple are different than the two that had no dimple. I just might start a thread and ask who has problems with plated SWC. That might draw something.

 

[ShelbyV8]

If you want to shoot SWC get lighter recoil springs when firing these rounds. They are low power target loads.