How to Load Ammo that Live Ejects

Handloaders have a great advantage over folks who only buy factory ammo: We can deliberately load cartridges to a specific overall length (OAL) such that we can be sure they live eject from our guns. Those who rely only on factory ammunition can’t.

The term “live eject” as I use it here means that when we cycle the slide on an autopistol, with a live round in the chamber, as when unloading the gun, we want the cartridge to exit the gun. Problem: When we do that on certain guns, the cartridge will become lodged in the ejection port. This gives us a time-consuming, and in some cases dangerous, mess we then have to clear out.

Among commonly encountered gun/cartridge combinations, we really are talking here mostly about the 1911 auto in .45 ACP with hardball. (More modern .45s like the Glocks 21, 41, etc., have huge ejection ports, so they’ll reliably live eject even long ball rounds.) The 1911 has a comparatively small ejection port not terribly longer, front-to-rear, than a round of .45 hardball. The typical OAL of a factory .45 ball cartridge will be 1.250” plus or minus a few hundredths due to manufacturing variance. Back in the day, this wasn’t a problem because the classic 1911 design had a short ejector.

By contrast, most 1911 these days, unless they’re retro-guns, have been fitted with an extended ejector as an aid to positive ejection. On balance, I like extended ejectors, there’s a reason modern 1911s have them. But while the extended ejector performs well its intended function of making sure empty shell casings positively exit the gun when actually firing it, unfortunately when trying to rack a round of live ammo out of the chamber, the extended ejector causes the front of the cartridge to begin rotating to the side sooner than it would have with the traditional short ejector, and the bullet tip will hang up on the front edge of the ejection port.

At the least, this requires picking the round out with our fingers, which is slow. At the worst, assuming a semi- or untrained shooter, they’ll begin reefing on the slide, trying to force the round out of the gun by banging its base repeatedly against the ejector, the cartridge has turned enough the primer is up against the ejector, and, as the shooter pulls back-and-forth on the slide, they drive the primer into the ejector which does a wonderful impersonation of a firing pin. However, instead of being safely surrounded by ordnance quality steel in the chamber, the round is hanging out there in the open ejection port, the shooter has their hand over the ejection port, and the cartridge detonates into the palm of their hand like a little shrapnel bomb.

There is a myth that “flaring the ejection port” i.e. that backward-pointing scallop we see on some 1911s, whether applied at the factory or by a custom pistolsmith, is an aid to live ejection. It isn’t. Flaring the ejection port is intended to prevent the rear of the ejection port from hitting and deforming cases, which is a boon to reloaders. A 1911 .45 with a flared ejection port is still quite able to hang up factory hardball rounds while attempting live ejection.

Obviously, having your gun/cartridge combination live eject is a very desirable thing. Since we can’t really enlarge the ejection port, the obvious solution is to shorten the cartridges. But while we’re doing that, we don’t want the cartridges so short they no longer reliably feed. The answer to this problem is our Dillon loading machine.

To start with, assuming you’re reloading hardball – and most of us who handload .45 ACP do – load a round to 1.250”. Check the measurement with your dial caliper. Then stick that round in the magazine, insert the mag into the gun, rack the round into the chamber. (Never insert a round directly into the chamber by hand, then drop the slide on the loaded chamber, this forces the extractor to bend backward and around the case rim, which is really hard on the extractor.) Then try to rack it out. Does the round smoothly exit the chamber? Or does it get hung up in the ejection port?

Assuming it’s the latter, slowly and carefully remove that round from the ejection port. Then insert it back into loading machine, dial down the seating die, let us say, a quarter-turn, cycle the handle. You’ve just shortened the round’s OAL. Remove it from the machine. Try the process again: Rack the round into the chamber, then try to live eject it. Did it clear the ejection port that time? If not, carefully pick the round out of the gun, stick it back in the reloading machine and dial down the seating die again. Do this over and over again, incrementally shortening the cartridge. Eventually, you’ll get the round short enough it live ejects, but it’ll still be long enough to feed smoothly.

Congratulations, you have just created ammunition that live ejects in your 1911 .45 with long ejector. Now begin cranking out a lot of it.

Understanding that every gun is different, therefore what’s true for my guns and what’s true for yours may be completely different things, I will say I find 1.235” works for me.

Setting your ammunition to a particular OAL can be useful not just to have cartridges that live eject, but, depending on the gun, fit into its magazines at all. The Para-Ordnance doublestack .45s were notorious for having front-to-rear magazine dimensions considerably shorter than .45 singlestacks. To load .45 hardball into those magazines, you needed to set its OAL around 1.230”. But no problem, your Dillon reloading machine could deal with that problem, too.

Once you find out what your reloading machine can do, you realize it’s not JUST for reloading ammo at a lower cost than factory stuff. While that’s great, it also allows you to create ammunition that can do things factory ammo won’t. Like, for instance, have .45 hardball that will live eject from a 1911 auto fitted with a long ejector.