Oh Crap

Last winter I bought some plated lead .45 bullets in flat nose and hollow point configuration. I loaded up some samples and fired them at the range for accuracy and across the chronograph for velocity. I did this more than once and found them to be quite satisfactory. No issues at all.

Last week at the shoot I had 3 failures to feed with the flat nose. The bullet stuck on the feed ramp and was pushed back into the cartridge. I've never had that problem before despite using Unique, which is a relatively dirty burning powder.

So the last couple of evenings I spent some time checking out the various magazines, including the brand new 8 rounders I used at the shoot. I found one magazine, that I've used the most (7 round capacity), has the bullets higher towards the slide than the others. Ah ha. I need to adjust some magazines. Nope, that one has feed failures too. I polished the feed ramp some more, but that didn't help either.

Then I noticed something. The rounds that fed OK ended up a little shorter than they were originally. So I assume that my early experimentation did the same thing but I didn't notice it because I was shooting them. Unless I find a solution, I have 500 flat nose and 500 hollow points that will be unreliable in my guns.
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Update - I tried different seating depths and even crimps, but the same results. All of my jacketed hollowpoints feed just fine, even the ones with bog openings, so what's the deal?

I noticed that the plated bullets deform some where they contact the feed ramp. Looks to me as if the bullets are soft enough, lead & plating, that deformation on the feed ramp causes an increase in friction force. This is common to both my Kimbers.

Up until now I'd always used Hornady XTP hollow points, even for practice. This was my first attempt and cheap bullets. Obviously they're not good in 1911 guns, at least mine.