Conversions

[Mikey]

How many of you 1911 shooters out there have converted your 45s to different calibers, and not just to the 400 CorBon or the 22 LR.

A number of years ago I saw adds for conversions for the 1911 that would allow an incredible number of different calibers to be fired from the same platform, with just a slide/barrel and magazine change.

From my 1911 I shoot the 45 ACP.  There is also the 45 Super and the 460 Rowland that I believe are the same case as the ACP just with heavier loadings.

The we have the 400 CorBon, which I feel has not yet reached its full potential as either a target or hunting caliber.  

But then we can covert to the 9mm family:  The 38 Super/9x23, 38 Special, 9x21, 9mm Luger, 30 Luger and even the 7.62x25 so I'm told.  I re-sculpted my ejector on my 45 to accept a 38 Super slide and still eject 45 cases and was able to just switch a complete slide setup and magazine and then shoot the 38 Super and the 9x23 interchangeably.  It was a gas.  The 38 Super slide came from an old Army Marksmanship Unit 1911 that had been converted to shoot 38 Special and I still have that barrel.  I even managed to find some old 38 AMU brass that worked well with wadcutter loads.  I had a friend cast out some hard 148 grain wadcutters for me and loaded them with the heaviest charge I could find from the older Lyman manual I was using - somewhere around 1100'/sec I believe.  What a blast.  Those darn things were accurate and hard hitting out to about 25 yards but would loose it after fifty.  The 38 Super with 160 grain round noses would do better at the longer ranges.

I still want to try the 30 Luger and the 7.62x25 Tokarev just for schmidts and giggles.

Anybody else had fun like this??  Let us know.  Mikey.

[JOE MACK]

The only one I've got is the .41Avenger. It can either use necked down .45ACP cases or better yet, cut and necked down .45Winchester Magnum cases. I use mainly 180gr. LTC or Speer 180gr JHP(when I can find them). J.D. Jones brought this out years before Peter Pi at Corbon came our with the .400Corbon. For some reason, it just didn't catch on and it's a heck of a good round. Always wanted a .22LR conversion but there's always another .41 to buy!  RKBA!

[Mikey]

Brian:  You old dog you.  I have always wanted to find someone who had one of the 41 Avenger conversions.  I developed a 40 caliber conversion for the 45 that Mr. Pi went and reshouldered slightly and called the 400 CorBon.  I can definately remember seeing a picture of the 41 Avenger and thinking to myself 'Dang', someone beat me to the punch.  And I always wondered why it didn't catch on.  Would have been so easy as the 41 was already an established caliber and at that time there just wasn't the 40 cailber/10mm bullet offerings that were available for the 41.

I figured that with the 170 grain bullet you could smoke them right out of your barrel.  I had hoped someone would introduce a 180 or 185 grain bullet or that there were some cast offerings in that weight range because I didn't think the 200 grain bullets could be pushed fast enough from the ACP case to make it very effective for game.  I figured the 170 could be pushed close enough to the lower end of the 41 magnum loads to make it a magnum contender and when I developed my conversion for silhouette matches, I used the trajectory tables for the 41 magnums 170 grain bullet to determine my impact at different ranges.  

We should swap some load data.  I have always wanted to find out how that cartridge fared.  Thanks for letting us know.  BTW, who made your barrel??  Bar-Sto made mine.  

Ya'll can have more fun with 40s and ones.  Mikey.

[Bob_K]

I had a .38/.45 Clerke conversion a few years ago.  Apparantly it was an early attempt to get .357 velocities out of an auto, but the concept failed due to the unsupported chamber.  It was an easy conversion since you used a necked down .45 ACP case, so your original .45 magazine and slide could be used without modification.  The barrel was a rechambered .38 super.  Target shooters picked up on it for a while for used in the Centerfire Match since the bottle neck shape would even feed full wad .38 bullets.  Kind of fun to play with although I did lose 10% of my cases in forming them.  Military brass did not form well, nor did cases with a channelure on them.

I currently have two .38 Specials on .45 frames.  One is a 6" Clark Long Heavy Slide that shoots like a dream.  The other is a Springfield 9MM that was reworked.  It has Bomar sights on it, so it looks like a hardball gun.  The barrel is a fully ramped Caspian.  The slide was an early Springfield, so the 9MM face had to be opened up a bit.  The magazines are some after market ones that do not have the follower that changes angles as more rounds are loaded into it, so feeding is good for only four rounds.  In bullseye matches we only shoot five shot strings so I load one in the chamber, four in the magazine and I'm good to go.

All these conversions are are separate frames, rather than conversions on a single .45 frame.

[Mikey]

Hay BobK:  I had heard that it was tough to form the 38/45 brass but I hadn't heard of the blown out cases before.  I just wonder if it wasn't the overall case design, with the case necked all the way down to the base of the bullet - 38/45 had a long neck.  Didn't someone bring that concept back - Causal maybe, or is that cartridge based on another case?  I wonder what would happen if you shortened the neck on that 38/45 to make it look more like the 400 CorBon design - prolly get some smokin' velocities out of it then.  

If you had the bolt face opend on that 9mm to handle the 38 Spl, do you think it is opened enough for a 357 Sig or 40 S&W conversion???  Mikey.

[JOE MACK]

Sorry about the late response, Mikey. Holidays are really hectic at work. The barrel I've got is a Barsto  match barrel that J.D. fit. I'm trying to find the time to send my commander for another one.  I found an old LBT mold for a 180gr TC that really works well. I'm thinking of swaging some that are a little lighter with a round nose and hollow point. As long as it's a .41, I live to experiment. The round is a good concept that just never took off. RKBA!

[Bob_K]

Micky..

The .38/45 did not seem to me to have a long neck.  Quite the opposite.  The neck seemed rather short.  The modern version of this round could be considered to be the .357 Sig.  It's a necked down .40, rather than a .45, but the concept is still there.  Large case capacity, bottle neck shape, trying to achieve higher velocities.  The basic difference is the .40 is a higher pressure round than the .45 to start with, and the .357 Sig certainly is a higher pressure round the the .38/45.