.45 Colt round ball gallery load

[Dusty Wheeler]

I'm looking for a gallery load for indoor practice with minimal noise. Something along the lines of a .454 round ball, tumble lubed with LLA and a small dose of Bullseye or 231. Any suggestions? I plan to shoot these out of a new H&R carbine in the evening after work...
Tim

[lathesmith]

My old standby load for such work is 2.8 to 3.2 grains of Bullseye. This load has worked well in cartridges for me from 38 Spec. to 38/55 and even 44mag. I don't believe I ever tried it with a round ball though. I use very soft lead, alox-lubed bullets. This is very important; NO hard lead or hard lubes for this low velocity work. With hard lead/lubes, you will either get a stuck bullet and/or a rapid lead build-up in the bore. Be careful experimenting, watching for stuck projectiles, and play with your bullet/lube/powder combo until you have found something reliable, accurate, and quiet. Good luck!

[PPpastordon]

Dusty;
Years ago a friend used a 200 gr. boolit in a .44 Mag for finding a light, low noise load. Two things he said helped with his amazingly quiet loads from a revolver:
1. Using a boolit instead of a round ball. He was not successful with the ball.
2. Seating the boolit deeply in the case. He said this lowered noise from the cylinder gap and, therefore, overall noise from the load.
BTW; A possible other advantage with deeply seating the boolit was he could actually use even less powder. I remember he tried both Bullseye and HP-38 and said it was possible to use such small amounts (I believe with just one of them) that it became impractical to measure the loads.
The most quiet loads he made that I am aware of was not in a revolver, but in a Contender - my Super-14 Contender to be exact. It was amazingly quiet, but I personally had no interest in such things at the time. Now I have no idea what the load was - but I know quiet is certainly possible with a solid chamber-barrel. I do remember that in the Contender he used a heavier boolit and seated it with a homemade seating tool into unsized cases: As he put it, as far as possible without ruining the boolit's base.
Hope something here helps!

[rockrat]

You might try somewhere around 3.0-3.5gr of Bullseye with a round ball. Used to use them in my Ruger w/45acp cyl.

[HEAD0001]

I use 3 grains of Red Dot. Round ball works great for me. Should give good accuracy to at least 30 yards. Tom.

[BAGTIC]

I also use Red Dot for roundball loads because of its bulk and quick burning. Is your carbine a lever action or a single shot?

Does the cartridge need to feed through the action or will you be single loading it?

I ask because I have found that seating the ball all the way down on the powder creating a compressed load works best. It gives cleaner and more uniform burning.

3 grains of RD in an H&R .357 produces a very quiet load like an air rifle and I use HTWW balls that are dip lubed to help keep the bore clean. I have never had one fail to clear the bore and it makes a good rabbit, squirrel, pest load.

[HEAD0001]

I shoot mine in single shots. 1885 Browning. I seat the bullet flush with the rim. I use Puff-lon as a filler. It is a little dirty, but one patch cleans it out. Tom.

[Leftoverdj]

Go with a .457 or .458 RB. The slight increase in size makes a considerable improvement in accuracy. You need not bother sizing cases, either. Reprime by any means expedient, charge, and seat the ball by thumb pressure. If your cases are a little loose, seat against the internal taper with a pencil or similar. Friction and the stickiness of LLA will hold in in place for reasonable handling.

I've never bothered with filler for this stuff since I get 25 yard squirrel accuracy without it. You do need to keep the charge light since the ball strips easily. 3 grains of whatever fast powder is handy works nicely in the .44 Mag, and I assume will do so in a .45 Colt.

[Dusty Wheeler]

Thanks for the info--computer went down for longer than I wanted. 3 gr of BE and the .457 turned out good. Did a similar load in .30-30 with a .312 ball, another good load. These are both quiet enough that a couple local farmers don't mind me popping a ground squirrel or rock chuck!

[daleraby]

Have been playing with this idea due to the fact that I currently have no suitable cast bullets for my Cimarron Mason/Richards conversion revolver and a surplus of .451 round balls that do not work so well in my percussion revolvers. My problem has been the tiny amount of powder in such a huge case. I have used Green Dot and 700X. Green Dot and 700X loads for light bullets require four grains, or a Lee .5 scoop. I crimp the ball right around the center. You have to make absolutely certain you do not double load a case as it might be more exciting than you'd like. This would be easy to do with only a .5cc powder volume.

I don't use any bullet lube, other than an Ox Yoke Wonder Wad (.55 Caliber) over the powder, and have noticed no leading so far. If you don't use the Wonder Wad to keep the powder down near the primer, you have "issues", i.e.: the projectile is launched at less than optimal velocity and the primer backs out of the case so as to lock the cylinder up. You have to pull the wedge and remove the barrel to fix this. Probably the wad moves under recoil as well, so this evening I tried filling the space between the Wonder Wad and the ball with a cotton ball. Probably Super Grex or corn meal would be a better filler material.

I had no "issues", but while I am pretty sure I hit that pile of wood chips, I have no idea what kind of group I got. Tomorrow I'll load up a few and shoot a target.

[fcvan]

I have shot round balls through my classic carbine with 5 grains of Unique. It was very quiet at 900 fps and sou.ded like a .22lr. I recently cast 27 pounds of soft lead round balls with the intent of shooting them through my carbine and Vaquero. I didn't lube the round balls before as i was only shooting a handfull at a time. I'm looking at tumble lubing some and see how they fly. I know the ones i fired without lube were spot on and deadly on tin cans. Frank

[Dusty Wheeler]

Thanks for updating this thread! I'm still shooting round balls but cans are my targets now.