.45 that eats its brass

[ZigZagMarquis]

Okay, I know this isn't exactly a Colt question, but I figured I'd post it here anyway and see what kind of replies I can get.

I've got a Springfield .45 1911A1 that fairly consistently dings up brass on ejection. Please see the attached photos; sorry, wish they were better, but its the best I could do. Anyway, as I hope y'all can see only one of the spent rounds doesn't seem to be left out of round. All the others, are dinged, sometimes (not photoed) worse.

Is there anything that can be done to make the dinged brass reusable? I'm hesitant to try to run them through a resizing die. Are there dies the resize pistol inside and out like the neck of bottle neck rife brass?

Or is this a situation where its the gun that needs a fix?

Thanks all in advance.

[DFrame]

It's a common occurrance with 1911 pattern semi-autos. Most people run the dented case into the mouth expanding die first to push out the dent, then reload as usual. The cause I believe is cases striking the lower part of the ejection port as they are ejected. Some people have gunsmiths lower the port to reduce the occurrance. I've never thought the expense was worth it. You brass is just dented and not seruously damaged. It can be reloaded safely.

[haggis]

As Dframe said, the brass is usable. You can use a cylindrical pin punch to iron out the dent, After that, normal resizing should work OK.

The problem is that if the brass is hitting some part of the pistol during ejection, your gun is not as robustly reliable as it could be. Determining what part of the slide that the brass is hitting isn't always obvious. Usually it requires that you mark the edges of the ejection port with something that the brass impact will remove when it hits. Permanent felt tip pens will work.

If the brass is ejecting low, the best way to fix the problem is not by lowering the ejection port (most modern guns already have a lowered ejection port) but by tuning the ejector to alter the ejection direction. Prior to doing that, you have to be sure the extractor tension and head shape are correct. There are tutorials on the Internet that describe all of this.

Buck