Thanks Fastbolt....Valuable info there...Much appreciated
I'm well stocked for now with the Speer 147gr loads.
I'm likely going to pick up some RA9T at some point
I usually avoid +p or +p+ except in all steel guns... My 4506 will happily digest buckets of RA45TP all day long. I think for a compact alloy frame I'll stay with standard pressure loads.
Thanks again.
Cheers
Bill
Nothing at all wrong with sticking with standard pressure loads, especially since some of the newer (and/or occasionally revised) standard pressure JHP's have been tweaked to also work well with shorter barrels that have become so popular.
My info about the use of +P & +P+ dates back to the days when S&W was selling a lot of the aluminum-framed pistols to LE users, and questions were always being asked about ammo use in the classes.
I liked the way one of the armorer instructors worded it one time. He said just use whatever ammunition you're being issued, presuming it's being made by one of the major American ammo companies who do a lot of sales with LE. If that meant the use of higher pressure duty ammo, then he said to consider adjusting the armorer inspection frequency and service, monitoring for increased wear and tear.
Also remember that the early 115gr +P+, made by both Winchester and Federal, was basically pioneered and developed around the use of a major state police agency's use of S&W aluminum-framed guns. One of our members could relate (and has related) a lot of his experiences when he was involved with their FTU from those days.
Recoil springs are relatively cheap, too, so it's easy to shorten the replacement intervals when it comes to tracking round count/service usage.
Then, there's remembering a little judicious use of lube, especially for the alloy guns. You old enough to remember the 60's ads for Brylcreem, and the jingle lyrics,
A Little Dab'll Do Ya?
As far as the use of +P in my .45's, I lost the interest to use it in my own .45's many years ago. I still have some, but seldom have a desire to use it.
Something I remember from the original days of the CS45 ...
I was discussing some things with a tech at the factory (I'd called as an armorer with a couple questions), and when we discussed ammo he asked me what I'd been using in mine. I told him I was primarily using standard pressure 230gr loads, but had also been using some +P loads. He asked me how the CS45 did with the +P, and went on to explain that when they were doing the R&D for the CS45, their marketing surveys indicated the primary commercial and LE sales were for standard pressure 230gr, so that's the ammo they used for their R&D. He chuckled and said they'd not gotten to trying any +P loads in their R&D because they expected the typical customer would be using standard pressure 230gr.
This was a little different than the info I'd heard in my first metal pistol armorer class, as an instructor in that class said that the R&D which was being done for their first planned aluminum-framed compact .45 (which became the M457) had involved not only something like 25K rounds fired, but had involved the use of a good number of proof loads, since the engineers were curious just how well their first alloy frame would do compared to their stainless steel 4516.
Apparently it met their expectations (and even exceeded them), as they reportedly had plans to later introduce an alloy-framed 10mm compact at some point (would it have been called the M1013?), if the market hadn't begun to substantially slow for the 10mm as a duty/defensive weapon. (Were you the one who called that factory number and name I provided a few years ago, to ask some questions about the 10mm projects?
I forget.)
Regards 18DAI
