I searched this forum up and down for information on reloading the .45 ACP and couldn't find anything so sorry if this post seems remedial. I seem to recall that the .45ACP is an easy round to reload due to its low pressure. Now I need to know what do you recommend for primers, powder and bullets? I plan on using the ammo for plinking and am not extremely worried about accuracy or fps. I am however worried about safety and reliability as a newbie to reloading. I have a Sig 220 super match if that is even needed. I plan on using the slow and steady approach and have plenty of time off to load plenty of rounds. Any tips would be greatly appreciated. Also, how clean do the cases have to be? I have a tumbler and was thinking of using corn cob media, but what are your thoughts? I plan on going to the gun shop next weekend so I sort of need a grocery list of sorts. Thanks for the help.

A classic, maybe THE classic 45 ACP load for competition in "Conventional Bullseye" matches is a 200gr. LSWC and 4.0 grs of Bullseye powder. I use either CCI or Winchester large pistol primers. By the nature of it's purpose it has to be, and is, reliable and accurate (though for those much depends upon the gun).
The issue that you will run into is that this is a light, a target, load and may not function in your firearm. In a 1911 type pistol, normally seen at the matches, shooters install a lighter recoil spring, replacing the standard 16lb. spring with one of 12 or 14lbs.
As to your Sig - how difficult is it to acquire and change recoil springs? If that is too much trouble, then increasing the powder charge until the gun functions reliably is the way to go.
Does the Sig have polygonal rifling, as do Glocks? If so, then lead bullets are out of the question due to severe leading. For jacketed bullets, I use Remington's 185gr. wadcutter and 4.9 to 5.4 grs of Bullseye, depending on the gun. Same primers.
Corn cob is fine as is ground walnut shell.

For plinking I would go with round nose. They feed the best. I use TiteGroup powder because its cheaper per pound and a pound goes a long way since I only load in the 4.5 grain range.
Make sure you have a good crimp, not so much to crimp the bullet but to crimp the brass back around the bullet so it will chamber.
Take your time and you will do fine.

I load 230 grain Hardball (FMJ Round nose) for my action pistol shooting. I would highly recommend the 200 grain lead SWC.

Try to purchase a few boxes of factory loaded ammunition in the bullet profile you want to use and make sure that it will feed in your gun.

As Pete said, the 200 gr. LSWC in the H&G 68 profile is a classic target bullet. Your 220 should have 6 groove 16" twist conventional rifling, so lead bullets will work fine. The recoil spring, however, is a special multi-strand wire, IIRC. Getting a lighter version isn't going to happen unless SIG makes one?

A lot of 45 bullseye shooters ran the 200 grain bullets on as little as 3.2 grains of Bullseye for 50 foot Gallery and 25 yard timed and rapid fire loads, but their 1911's had to be tuned with very light springs and kept cleaned and lubed with light oil for that work reliably. I used to shoot a lot of 185 grain lead with 3.8 grains of Bullseye for 50 ft gallery targets and for 25 yard timed and rapid fire, but was running an 11 lb spring at the time. I never could get anything lighter than the 200 grain bullets to shoot accurately enough for the 50 yard slow fire target, but I ran those heavier slugs with 3.8 grains of Bullseye, too.

I've been told that the 185 grain jacketed target bullets were loaded commercially with the equivalent of 4.2 grains of Bullseye. My most accurate load used that charge, but with the heavier 200 grain Hornady jacketed SWC. I've got one group of 5 shots 0.37" CTC at 25 yards with that load when I was sandbagging my Goldcup just after first fitting it up. Anything jacketed recoils more, and that load functioned a standard 16 lb recoil spring OK, so it ought to function in your gun.

The standard round nose hardball load developed for the .45 ACP originally used 5.0 grains of Bullseye. That was before WW II and before the SR 7970 powder they use now was available. 5.0 grains of Vihtavuori N320 will do it, too, and burns cleaner than Bullseye.

I've always used Federal 150 primers as standard. I had some trouble getting the CCI primers I first learned reloading with to seat reliably in my Dillon press. They seat a little harder, and I got a lot of high primers doing that. I've used Winchester when I didn't have Federal, and they seem OK, too, but I favor the Federal, for no real reason other than gut feeling.

A couple of comments on bullet seating and crimps are appropriate. The .45 ACP cartridge was designed to headspace when the mouth of the case comes to rest on the step in the chamber where it narrows to throat diameter. In the real world, many guns are sloppy enough in chamber and throat (probably not your SIG) that the extractor hook ends up actually stopping the cartridge from moving further forward in the chamber. That doesn't seem to affect jacketed loads much, but it messes with lead bullets by starting them down the barrel with the lead smeared more on one side than the other. Moreover, the low pressure of the cartridge does not stick the brass to the chamber wall, so it blows back against the breech when the bullet starts to move, making it fatter and shorter. Resizing puts most, but not all of the length back, so my cases end up losing about half a thousandth per load cycle. I have some that have been reloaded about 50 times that are about 0.025" short, and could never be relied on to provide headspace with their mouths. Instead, I learned long ago to load lead bullets to headspace on the bullet instead of the case mouth. Use your barrel as a gauge for seating depth to do this. You seat the bullet just deep enough so the back of the case head is flush with the back of the barrel at the breech face when you drop a bullet it. I'll attach an illustration using the 1911 barrel, but the principle is going to be the same for your SIG. The only drawback to this method would occur if you had a very long throat in the barrel, in which case the bullets might have to be seated out too far for your magazine. That becomes the limiting consideration. In that case, just seat them out as far as is consistent with reliable function in your gun. Don't worry about the SAAMI length maximum. Just load what works in your gun.

For a crimp, I use the taper crimp, and not a roll crimp. The latter is available for .45 ACP, especially in older dies, and some of the old timers swore by it. In fact, I am going to be experimenting with a comparison later this summer. The drawback is that roll crimp shortens case life. In the semi-auto you don't have the revolver's tendency to back bullets out. On the contrary, with the magazine housing recoiling against their noses, the tendency in the semi-auto is to push them in. That raises pressure, so you want to avoid it. The taper crimp presses the edge of the case mouth slightly into the bullet which makes a step that stops it from backing up. You don't need much of that, but you do need a little with lubricated lead bullets because they push in much more easily than jacketed bullets.

I find the stepped Lyman "M" type case mouth flare makes it much easier to get a bullet seated straight. Lyman's patent ran out on that and Redding dies now have it, too. Maybe others I am unaware of do as well, but if you buy dies in one of those brands, you will get that feature for sure. Be sure you get a separate taper crimp die and don't try to crimp in the seating die. That shaves lead bullets and makes lead rings at the case mouth that can wind up in your chamber.

So, get the dies, get the primers, get powder (and if you are unsure which one, get good old Bullseye because its digressive burning characteristic gives you a little more pressure safety margin than some other fast powders do). Get a cast 200 grain LSWC bullet rather than the softer swaged ones until you know more. The swaged ones take a little more care and experimentation to make shoot well, and they lead more easily. I don't think I would mess with 185 grain bullets in your gun unless they were jacketed because it will be harder to get your gun to function a cast 185 reliably since we can't change the springs.

Guess over the early years, tried well over 200 .45acp loads. Settled on a very simple one. 230gr. RNL (usually home cast), 5gr. of Bullseye, WW cases, and whatever primers i could get cheap (taper crimp much prefered). About as close to the basic GI load as a lead bullet can come. Certainly not exciting. My Dillion that had sat on that never loaded anything else for the last six or seven years it was in use...would just crank out a couple of ammo cans and not worry about it until getting near the bottom of the last can.

Would also load other cases...mostly range pick ups or "gimmie" cases from other shooters. Usually would load them up and save them for shooting sessions at gravel pits, swamps, from boats, etc. where you just aren't likely to get the cases back. NOPE..don't belive WW are the ultimate .45acp case, it's just that I alwasy seemd to get a deal on new WW brass when i needed replacements, so stuck to them over the years.

Whatever jacketed ammo i'd use was (and still is) generally factory loads....but 99.5% of the rounds fired used home cast 230gr. RNL.

Yep...Bullseye leaves some residue. Clean my guns after every use, and it never left enough to make the clean up a problem.

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Much farther back, when i did try paper punching for serious, had a soft-ball tuned Clark (well...had a pair, the other in .38Special WC). That one would run it's best with cast 185gr. bullets and just 4.4gr. of Bullseye. Even then, still couldn't detect any difference in large pistol primers, so would buy 5 to 10,000 of whichever was cheapest...Rem., Winchester, CCi, or Federal (and one got a deal on RWS and even used up some super-cheap Alcan).

I see that there are custom tuned recoil springs on midway and brownells for a sig 220. My sig has a 5" barrel, but it uses the springs from a 4.4" barrel. This is caused by a spacer built into the guide rod. Thanks for the great info guys.

My SIG P220 is equipped with a single strand 14# Wilson Combat recoil spring. Included in the package is an additional single strand 16# recoil spring, a main (hammer) spring, and a firing pin spring. I purchased another spring kit from Brownell's recently for my son's P220 so I know that they are available. My favorite P220 load for paper punching is the 200 gr. LSWC, 4.5 gr. of Bullseye, and Winchester large pistol primer. Hope this ends the question on whether or not you can get a lighter recoil spring. Enjoy your SIG, they are good guns.

My favorite plinking round in my 220 is 230 gr plated with 8.2 grains AA #5, I have found this easy on my brass and very consistant

Glad to be corrected on the P220 spring availability. I should have tried looking them up. The solid wire probably won't last as long or avoid taking a set as well as the multi-strand springs, and I expect that is the reason for that multi-strand design. You could address that difference by sending the solids off for cryo-treatment. When I bought my Marvel .22 RF conversion for the 1911, it came with a fist full of its little recoil springs, because they don't last. I got the whole batch cryo-treated along with some tool bits I was having done, and I haven't been able to wear out even one of the treated ones.

I have seen some different bullet diameters. What would be a + or - to shooting a .452 as opposed to a .451? Does the .001 really make that much difference?

.451 is the standard barrel dimension for groove diameter. SAAMI test barrels will be specified to ±0.0005", and old military barrels will be ±0.0015. Modern manufacturing holds modern barrels, and especially match barrels, to the SAMMI test barrel dimensions or better, in my experience. Two of the EDM barrels I measured were ±0.0002".

Industry standard is to make jacketed bullets to nominal groove diameter, and lead bullets to +0.001" over groove diameter. The deal with the different bullet sizes is that a lead bullet cannot withstand any blowby of gas without tearing up some and causing leading, plus it is softer and deforms more easily than a jacketed bullet, so the industry standard is to make sure it fills and seals the grooves with no leaking of gas by letting the barrel size it down to exact final bore dimensions.

In some of the old military barrels, even +0.001" is not enough, and since the lead is not as hard as copper jackets, it doesn't hurt the barrel any to make them 0.002" over groove diameter, either. Indeed, if you get Marshal's Beartooth Bullets technical manual, he shows that 0.002" over actually shoots more accurately in some tests he did. I find the same is true for me in my revolvers except for one Charter Bulldog that likes the soft swaged Hornady .452 bullets at low load levels best for some reason? My current .45 ACP barrels don't seem to be able to tell the difference except I have the sense that the +0.002" bullets cause less leading. Lee Tumble Lube designs are +0.0035" in my casting alloy (wheel weights + 4% tin) which I cast mostly for .45 ACP, and they work really well, but that is because they have tiny little crush grooves that conform to groove diameter extra easily. In a solid cast bullet +0.0035" wouild be getting too big; accuracy starts to go downhill again as you get much over +0.002".

Cast bullets are pickier than jacketed bullets, but once you get them right, they do very well. Marshal sells his bullets with sizing options for the above reasons. If you slug your barrel to learn its exact dimensions, he can then size the bullets you buy to be over your groove diameter by the right amount.

As to the jacketed bullets being right at groove diameter, they are too tough to mind blowby, as I mentioned. They will expand slightly under pressure in a handgun and more than you would think in a rifle, and that is good enough to allow them work well sized right at nominal groove diameter. You can make them a thousandth over, but there is no benefit and it raises chamber pressure a little, so why would you do it? So they don't.