Product Review: Richardson Reloading .45 ACP Ammo

A few months back, when I was looking for items for the Kilted to Kick Cancer Fundraising Challenge prize packages, fellow paramedic and gun nut Cody Richardson contacted me with a very generous offer: he’d donate 10% of the September profits of his company, Richardson Reloading, to Kilted to Kick Cancer, as well as 10% of the profits of his booth sales at the gun show in early October.

Cody also offered to donate 100 rounds of what he calls “remanufactured match-grade ammo” in the pistol caliber of the winner’s choice. Given the reluctance many shooters have in using reloaded pistol ammo (that is, that they haven’t reloaded personally), I told Cody that I couldn’t, in good conscience, give away any ammo I wouldn’t personally recommend.

So he sent me a couple of boxes to review.

Richardson Reloading loads all ammo using once-fired brass sourced from local police ranges, and uses components from Hodgdon, CCI/Speer, Remington, Winchester, X-treme, Hornady, and Nosler.

All Richardson Reloading pistol ammo is loaded on a Hornady progressive press, and each powder charge is individually weighed.

Specs for the ammo I reviewed are as follows:

230 gr Jacketed Hollow Point

• OAL: 1.230″
• Case: once-fired large primer brass
• Primer: CCI large pistol primers
• Powder: 6.6 grains of Hodgdon CFE pistol powder
• Projectile: 230 gr Hornady XTP jacketed hollow point
• Velocity: 900 fps, tested in a 5″ 1911

230 gr Full Metal Jacket

• OAL: 1.230″
• Case: once-fired large primer brass
• Primer: CCI large pistol primers
• Powder: 6.0 grains of Hodgdon CFE pistol powder
• Projectile: 230 gr Remington FMJ
• Velocity: 900 fps, tested in a 5″ 1911

Last week, I finally managed to get to the range with the chronograph to test the ammo. The plan was, chrono 20 rounds from each lot, and use the rest for accuracy testing. The pistol I used was my silk purse 3.5″ 1911 customized by Joe Speer, using Wilson Combat 7-round magazines.

Chrono results are as follows:

230 gr JHP:

• Lo: 707
• Hi: 768
• AV: 741.6
• ES: 61
• SD: 16.67

230 gr FMJ:

• Lo: 597
• Hi: 688
• AV: 648.65
• ES: 91
• SD: 25.25

The loss of 1.5″ of barrel length resulted in roughly 150 fps lower average velocity for the JHP, and close to 250 for the JHP. From what I could glean from the Internet, Hodgdon CFE is supposed to be a spherical, clean-burning pistol powder that burns at a “medium” burn rate.

Through my 3.5″ 1911, this resulted in a minor dusting of unburned powder, but it produced little muzzle flash and no more fouling than I’ve found with various factory ammo. It’s certainly nowhere near as dirty as Winchester White Box, for example.

But the proof is in the shooting, as they say, and I experienced no problems in feeding or extracting with the ammo, and every round went bang when I pulled the trigger.

Accuracy-wise, you can see for yourself:

Aside from the one flier with the JHP, that’s as good a group as I’m capable of shooting with any ammo. Those groups are fairly representative of the 30 rounds I fired of each, slow-fire at 30 feet.

Based upon my experience, Richardson Reloading’s pistol ammo lives up to the company’s billing: remanufactured match-grade ammo.

I recommend it, and Cody will be throwing in 100 rounds of it for the KTKC prize package awarded in a few days. Thanks again to Cody for the opportunity to review his product, and for his support of Kilted to Kick Cancer.

Contact him here to order your ammo.