Falling Back In Love

[sonofodin]

I have noticed from shooting various reloads through my Kahr that even with trial and error seating that it has a rather tight throat and chamber, which caused some fallout between me and my First Kahr. The question is:

Which loads do you find shoots reliably and accurate in your Kahr CW45? Most important is bullet grain as I am attempting to find a load that is not far from the 230 grain base of a fullhouse load but is made by someone else (so I dont have to).

[gunmut]

I fire WWB from Wally World, 230 gr. FMJ without any problems.

Also Rem 230 gr. JHP. I have put about 500 rounds total of these two rounds without any feeding problems.

[gb6491]

6.0 grains Unique with 230 grain lead or FMJ round nose works for me. Are you using a taper crimp on your reloads?
Regards,
Greg

[500KV]

I like 230g Precision Delta jacketed with 5.8gr of HP-38 (Win231) or 6.1gr of Unique. OAL of 1.23 to 1.235.
My CW45 eats 'em like candy.

The Precision Delta bullets are about the cheapest I've found and I have used them in 9mm, .40S&W and .45acp for quite some time now.

There are many good .45acp loads; just watch your OAL and don't load too light.
My Kahrs don't like weak loads.;)
Good Luck.

[Bawanna]

I have 2000 Precision Delta 230 fmjs stacked next to the bench as we speak. Haven't loaded one yet but I planned to use the same 5.8gr W231 load I used on Rainiers. So I'm happy to see 500KV's post, sounds like they will work.
I use a Lee factory crimp die which seems to work well for me. Once I get the length correct I'm good to go and I got a handle on how to do that now after my last fiasco. I think part of reloading is having confidence in your own judgement. Look at the manual but if it doesn't work, use your own head.

[jfrey]

Three suggestions: use only FMJ round nose bullets, watch seating depth very closely, and use Federal primers. Friend of mine has a CW45 and had a lot of issues with FTF with his loads. Once he did the three things above, his problems went away. Jocko and I have both noted that the Kahr seems to have a shorter, tighter throat than other guns. Seating depth is critical but once you figure out what your barrel requires, things seem to come together well. Good luck and shoot it a lot once you get the length down.

[500KV]

I've found it to be a good load Bawanna.
I don't have a factory crimp die but a lot of folks like them.

I put a light taper crimp on mine with a Redding die. Just seems to smooth them up a bit, and keep the OAL ~1.23-1.24.

As jfrey mentioned, the Federal primers are somewhat softer than CCI and Win. and seem to work better in striker fired guns, although my Glocks are 100% with any primers so it may depend altogether on the gun.

[Bawanna]

I had to drop back to 1.20 on my Rainiers but they were a plated hollow point. The book called 123 for that style of bullet but the ogive must be a bit different cause they locked up all my 45's. Still perplexed cause they worked fine when I single stage loaded. When I loaded them on the progressive they seemed to grow but we've already talked about that and with a little help from the gang I think I have that all cured.
These being fmj should not have any issues. (I hope).

[jfrey]

Sounds like you are on the right track now Bawanna. I started loading with Rainier 200 gr. flat point bullets and when I switched to Berry's I had to tweek the OAL a little to assure reliability. Bullets looked the same, but they were different. I had to change my seating depth just a little to make 'em work.

Good luck and load 'em up. The more you load the more you can shoot.

[sonofodin]

Greg, I favor unique in my loads as well. I exceeded to crimp excessively without solution. Thanks for all the replies. I will note a few things:

I have no problems with WWB, Armscor Precision or any other FMJ load.
Last load made: 200grn XTP with 5.6 grains of unique, 1.24 overall Length.

This load fell in and out of the chamber without issue. I payed great detail to the making of this load in a batch of 100. I measured the OAL of each round to make sure it was in a mere 2 thousands of an inch variation and constantly checked the tightness of my bench machines every 5 rounds or so. The issues received where FTF from last round in the magazine, locking the gun up when attempting to extract round manually in pre-range feed testing, and failure to return to battery randomly. Perhaps they where simply not seated deep enough.

I just find 230grn FMJ loads a tad unpleasent to shoot, especially with a lack of funding for a houge or A-grip to cut down the sharpness.

Jfrey, The primers used where indeed Federals.