Gun Digest Big Fat Book of the .45 ACP

336 Pages·2009·12.09 MB·English

by  Sweeney

Gun Digest®
BIG FAT BOOK
of the
.45 ACP
Patrick Sweeney
©2009 Krause Publications, Inc., a subsidiary of F+W Media, Inc.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2009923228
ISBN-13: 978-1-44020219-3
ISBN-10: 1-4402-0219-2
eISBN: 978-1-44022-403-4
Designed by Dustin Reid
Edited by Dan Shideler
Printed in the United States of America
DEDICATION
s always, to Felicia. You can thank her for my meager skills at writing and
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the fact that my spell-checker and grammar software does not explode before
my editor gets this.
To Dan Shideler, who goes through the text and makes sure I don’t repeat my
jokes too often and that the package arrives on time.
And to two fellows with unending interest: Charley and Oberon. From the
amount of talking I’ve done while walking them, on this and other books, you’d
think they would understand it by now. But they don’t, they just wag their tails
and look longingly at the squirrels I won’t let them chase.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1: In the Beginning…
Chapter 2: What To Shoot
Chapter 3: The Case of Brass
Chapter 4: Bullets
Chapter 5: Powders
Chapter 6: Primers
Chapter 7: Fun With the .45 ACP
Chapter 8: Reloading the .45 ACP
Chapter 9: Factory Ammo and Testing
Chapter 10: Offshoots of the .45
Chapter 11: Competition with the .45 ACP
Chapter 12: Defense with a .45

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
he firearms industry, except where the people in charge aren’t really
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firearms people, is surprisingly free and easy with information. You can
ask a question of someone in the biz, and unless what you asked concerns
a proprietary process that the maker spent a lot of money to figure out,
you’ll usually get an answer. If it’s something that a real goof could get
himself in trouble knowing or attempting, the engineer, ballistician or a PR
guy might remain a bit closed-mouth about it.
But a whole lot is out there to be known, if you just ask.
In the course of writing this book I worked with many in the ammunition
and firearms manufacturing industries. Among them, Jason Nash at ATK,
Steve Johnson at Hornady, Ken Alexander, Fernando Coelho now of Eotac
gear, Peter Pi and Mike Shovel of Cor-bon and Hunter Pilant of Starline as
well as his dad, Carroll Pilant, from Sierra.
I’d also like to thank the folks at both Lapua and Sako for giving me a
tour of their ammomaking plants while on vacation in Finland. The very
idea of allowing a technically-educated person loose in a manufacturing
plant with camera and notebook strikes fear in the hearts of many an
American MBA or business consultant. But the Finns are made of sterner
stuff. (Just ask the Soviets.)
I’m sure there are technical details that I’ve left out, at least “left out”
where the desires of some readers are concerned. For instance, the subject
of cast lead bullets and what they should be for various applications is quite
useful—and more than this book was meant to be or could be. If you want
the lowdown on that particular subject, you can either read Veral Smith’s
Jacketed Performance with Cast Bullets or wait until I do the planned
handgun reloading book.
If you want to know just what the pressure limits are for the .45 ACP, so
you can “take advantage” of all the “unused pressure capacity” of the .45,
you really ought to lie down with a cold compress on your forehead. You
won’t find out how to magnum-ize the .45 here. Nor will you find it in the
handgun reloading title to come. Some things are perfect as they are, and
attempts to make them more are fraught with peril should be avoided.
An example comes to mind: I once met a fellow shooter who was
inordinately proud of his truck. He had taken his beaten-up, high-mileage
Ranger, and managed to wrestle a V-8 engine into it—a 351 Cleveland as I
recall. He had shoehorned it into the engine compartment. “Yes, I had to
trim the radiator and ducting, reroute the wiring, it needed bigger shocks
and springs and the transmission had to be rebuilt. But boy does it run,” he
told me. And every time he goosed the throttle, the whole truck tipped and
twisted on its suspension as the torque increased.
No, if you want that kind of performance, you should go to a different
vehicle, be that vehicle a .44 Magnum or an F-150.
I did not begin my shooting and reloading with a .45 ACP. I started with
a .38 Special and then branched over to the .357 Magnum before I owned
my first 1911A1. But once I went to the big bore, I didn’t look back for a
long time. So thank you, gentlemen at Frankford Arsenal and John Moses
Browning. If not for you, we’d all be the poorer.
INTRODUCTION
The Beginnings
here is a building in Rome called the Pantheon. I risk over-using the
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word “unique” (which doesn’t seem to bother a whole lot of people these
days) but it is unique in a whole host of aspects. First, it is perhaps the
oldest building that has been in continuous use since it was constructed.
Erected (actually re-built, but let’s not quibble) in 125 A.D. by the Emperor
Hadrian, it was built to house all the gods. Latin is a grand language, and
much of English is based upon it. Many words we use today are
recognizable Latin. Not that Julius Caesar would recognize what we speak,
but many of the words remain the same.
Pantheon is a word derived from Greek, and in Latin means “of all the
gods.” The idea was to assemble shrines for all the gods into one building,
instead of having each in their own temple scattered across Rome. There,
the one-stop shopper could visit as many gods as needed to solve their
particular problem. Not that the old temples were abandoned or torn down,
no sirree. The others continued in use, but the Pantheon was meant to be a
place for all of them.
The building itself is a construction and architectural marvel. It is a dome
142 feet across, made of cast concrete. Imagine a sphere with a diameter of
142 feet. Now, take the equator of that sphere and turn it into a cylinder,
extending to the ground. That is the shape of the Pantheon. It is what
architects call a “pure” building. You don’t see many buildings shaped as
cubes, nor rectangles of the golden proportion, but the Pantheon is a sphere
perched on a cylinder. When it was made, it was the largest domed building
made. Since then, there have not been a whole lot of domes built bigger.
Five hundred years later, the church of Hagia Sophia was constructed in
Constantinople. While taller, at 182 feet above floor level, its dome is
smaller in circumference at 102 feet. It is bigger?
Some will argue yes, others no. In Florence in 1296, the city fathers began
work on their magnificent new cathedral. By 1419 they had finished all but
the dome, 42 meters in diameter (same as the Pantheon) over the otherwise