2 Kimber Ultra's, 2 perfect weapons! Range day

smolck said:

Wife and I blew through 200 rounds with our Kimber Stainless Ultra Carry 2's. Mine had never been fired, hers (which used to be mine) had 250 rounds through it (without malfunction mind you). Well, happy to report that my newest Kimber is as reliable as my other one. We ran 150 rounds through it (100 from my hands, 50 from hers) and not one issue with either of them. They just chewed up and spit out 230gr ball (both aluminum cased and brass Blazer rounds) and 185gr hollow points with ease.

I even got to do something I always wanted, put one in each hand and rapid fired them till empty and stood there with two 1911's with the slides locked back, smoke coming from the barrel and breech. I felt like Neo from The Matrix. I think I missed with all my shots but who cares! And of course the range officer and I had a little "chat" :embarassed: (it was worth it).

So I know by now some of you may think I am a Kimber fanboy, I am not trying to be. But with all the negative comments online, I am trying to let folks know most of the time you will get a good one.

I love that my wife now comes with me to shoot, but dang is it doubly expensive. I'd have bought .22's if I had known she was gonna join me every range trip!

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Congrats on the two Kimber Ultra's working really great.

You 'really' need a Dillon SDB. It will cut the cost of shooting in half after the first year.

This is ~$92.00 worth of practice ammunition (400 rounds @ my cost to reload them - equivelant to $23.00 for a box of 100):



I reloaded it with a Dillon 550B, but if you only need to make .45ACP, or other handgun ammo, the Square Deal B will work great. It comes all set up with a set of dies for one caliber - and you really only need .45ACP. Just add a vibrating case cleaner, bag of media (crushed walnut shell bird bedding from Pet Smart works), and some polish. Components are hard to get at the moment, but not impossible if you are patient. It will get better, but I don't expect prices to go down much.

Fitch

smolck said:

I really want to get into hand loading, but was under the impression (perhaps incorrectly) that reloading supplies were impossible to get so I didn't think it was worth it. I would LOVE to reload. I used to make my own arrows for hunting, I enjoy that kind of thing.

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More difficult than it used to be, but definitely not impossible. Buy powder and primers locally to avoid the hazmat tax. Buy bullets where ever you find them. I've been reloading for a while so I have a lot of brass, but if you've been saving your brass you will soon have enough to keep you going. I bought the bullets in the picture when they came up as in stock during my daily check of Midway about 6 weeks ago. I bought 500 bullets. That will last me a while. I have 1,500 9mm 115g PRN on the shelf to load, and about a thousand rounds of completed practice ammo.

If I see a brick (box of 1,000) primers of a kind I use, I buy them. My LGS got me 400 Speer Gold Dot bullets. It took him a while, and they are quite a bit more expensive (like 3X) than the Rainier or Berry's plated bullets, but they shoot. I have 4 relatively new .45's that I wanted to test with the Speer GD ammo. Buying factory GD ammo in the quantities needed was not going to happen on my retirement income.

So I bought their bullets. Then I chronographed and measured the factory ammo, developed a load that duplicated it's MV. I loaded 350 rounds of it to the same over all length as the factory ammo and used that to proof test the pistols. (They all passed - no failures.) I wasn't worried about the G30, FNX45T or SIG C3, (all three were flawless) but I wanted at least 200 rounds through the XDs before I trusted it.

My load for the 230 grain Rainier plated round nose bullets (in the picture) is 5.5 grains of W231 (which gives you ~1,270 rounds per lb. of powder), Winchester Large Pistol Primer, Winchester brass, 1.258" COL. It took me an hour and 3/4 to make those. A progressive press is the way to go.

Get a Speer reloading manual, study the first 11 chapters of it. It's about the best self teaching aid there is. Nothing like having some information before making a decision.

Fitch