Round ball in 45-70

[BAGTIC]

I enjoy shooting round balls from a wide variety of straight cased cartridges but I only shoot them single shot so I need not worry about feeding problems. I find that I have the best results by seating the bullet directly over the powder (compressed load). It seems to result in more uniform combustion and ballistics.

[beagle]

http://www.castpics.net/index2.htm

I did a bunch of work with round balls a couple of years ago. Here's the article./beagle

[rugerman1]

http://www.castpics.net/index2.htm

I did a bunch of work with round balls a couple of years ago. Here's the article./beagle

Direct link to Article

[Oldmanjeffers]

Hello all, just signed up and I have been doing a lot of research on this topic, after digging through my black powder stuff I found two boxes of speer .451 round balls, after reading the "bump sizing" article by beagle I needed to figure out how to do this with out spending a bunch of money, so I grabbed my leeloader for the 45-70, placed the boolit seating tool in the die as you would to seat a boolit and flipped it over so it was on a piece of carpet, then I dropped a .451 ball in and using the primming tool I gave it a few taps with the hammer and popped out the ball, to my surprise with very little effort out came a flattened boolit sized to .470 that looks like a button bullet!!! I'm going to load some up and post the results, Just thought I'd share this easy and inexpensive idea to size round balls for straight case loads. Thanks

[Linstrum]

Hi, Oldmanjeffers, welcome to the board!

I shoot cheap to be able to shoot a lot unless I'm doing some serious long range target work or hunting, and cast lead or wheel weight ball loads are my favorite since the most costly part is the primer.

I'm glad that you found a way to enlarge a projectile, Beagle is THE master of boolit enlargement and if something can be enlarged he probably knows how.

I have made balls smaller, which is real easy using a cast bullet sizing die. I have a lot of .30 and .31 caliber military rifles and I make petite little pill-like projectiles for them by taking a cast lead ball in the range of 0.324" or 8mm and running it through a Lee push-through sizing die for the particular caliber rifle it is for, such as a 0.309" die for my .30-06 or a 0.312" for my Mosin-Nagant. I think I tried running a 0.358" lead ball through a 0.309" die and it worked okay. The loads for round ball and petite pill loads is 3 to 5 grains Red Dot, Unique, 700X, Green Dot, Bullseye, and any of the other very fast pistol/shot shell powders. I don't use Dacron or toilet paper over the powder, I tip the muzzle up before firing, if I remember to tip it up to locate the powder back over the flash hole. The one thing you will find of great difference using mini-bullets is the point of aim is way off to the side from the expected point of impact since the sights are set for the normal big heavy projectiles and they have a different flight path because of greatly different aerodynamics. I compensate by putting a new sighting mark off to the correct side on my rear sight with some white-out erasing fluid.

Poke around a bit more, and have fun!


rl714

[mastercast.com]

You fellers and your "ball loads" have got me interested/intrigued.

I just purchased a ball mold in .457...can't wait for it to get here!

We host a "Junior Shooter" for kids at my range...that .45/70 ball load(s) should be really fun for them.

Should be just the "ticket" for the odd Racoon raiding the garbage cans here also.

[mastercast.com]

Got the .457 round ball mold yesterday.

I cast some balls out of a hard lead alloy and those drop out of the mold at .460.

I also cast some balls out of pure lead that dropped out of the mold at .457.

I am going to load both diameter balls and see if the larger diameter, hard alloy shoots with better accuracy. I am going to use 10.0 grains of Unique to start.

I will post the results when time permits.

[Linstrum]

Hi, mastercast.com, what model .45-70 are you using?

I think 10 grains Unique sounds pretty good, my Lyman 46th edition lists a modern .45-70 rifle starting load of 10 grains of Unique for the Lyman 366 grain boolit, so pressure-wise that's great for a modern rifle. Accuracy may be low, so be prepared to diddle around a bit with smaller powder charges.

I think you will do okay with the hard alloy balls at 0.460" since the barrel contact area of a ball is very small compared to a cylindrical projectile and in my experience they readily conform to the bore when fired because of the small contact area. I save my pure lead supply to use in my cap and ball revolvers since I have very little soft lead compared to my supply of wheel weights. If you have trouble inserting the slightly oversize balls in the cartridge mouth you can always run the balls through a 0.458” sizer die. Another thing, like I have mentioned in previous threads and posts, you can take a greatly oversize ball, in this case something like a 0.469” round ball, and run it through a 0.458” sizing die to form it into a compact pill-shaped projectile with one rounded end and one flat end. It might take a lot of pressure to run that large of a ball through the sizer, though. I have used the pill-shaped mini-bullets for years for my .30 and .31 caliber milsurp rifles, starting with a 0.358” or smaller round ball and running through a 0.309” push through bullet sizing die for my 0.308-bore rifles and a 0.312” die for my Mosin-Nagants. For the .30 and .31 caliber rifle ball and pill loads, like .30-06, .308 Win, 7.62x545R, 7.5 French, etc., I use around 4 grains Red Dot, Unique, or 700X. The ball loads are by far more accurate than the pills, though, so if you try pill loads don't load up a lot of them since they may disappoint you.

I have a late model Winchester M70 in .458 Winmag (the one with the re-introduced pre-'64 features) and I have fired more round ball loads through it than I have any other kind of load since it is a shoulder-buster with full house loads. My other favorite load for it is the Lee 340-grain meant for the .45-70 and I load it down to .45-70 performance since the .458 Winmag may be thought of as a “.45-70 Long”. The ball loads are pretty good but the rear sight has to be re-calibrated to one side (to the left as I recall for right hand rifling twist) to compensate for the lack of windage drift that balls exhibit compared to cylindrical projectiles. I simply put a dab of white-out correction fluid on the rear sight instead of actually moving the rear sight over since sighting in the rifle is a chore I prefer not to do very often.

The one area of concern, and in my experience it has fortunately been just about non-existent, is gas cutting of the ball because of the very small contact area that seals the bore. High pressure gas cutting of cast bullets is the main source of barrel leading, not the rubbing-off of lead like a soft crayon onto the barrel wall as is usually thought (this has received a lot of discussion elsewhere and from the evidence I am satisfied that it is true). To prevent barrel leading from gas cutting, keep your powder charges as small as practical and put a dab of Lee Alox or some kind of lube on the ball after loading. I think Johnson's Paste Wax (JPW) will work, I use it for my .50 BMG plinkers and on down. Besides that, from my own experience I have found that large powder charges with round balls are terribly inaccurate to begin with, so barrel leading is kind of a moot point anyway! At the moment I don't recall what powder charge weight I use for the .458, but I have used Red Dot, Unique, Green Dot, and 700X. I didn't get good burning with Blue Dot, and partially burned Blue Dot eats out bores and rusts everything it contacts in just minutes because it is loaded with nitric acid regenerated from the partially decomposed nitrogen compounds in the powder. I'd leave Blue Dot/2400/H110 alone for very small loads since they don't do well at all at low pressure. But for the other powders I listed for a .458 round ball load a general rule of thumb I go by is that around 13 grains is the maximum safe load UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE, so 10 grains of Unique is within that and you can work up – which is standard operating procedure anyway. A 0.458” round ball weighs approximately 144 grains, so you can use that as a guideline to extrapolate "ball park" velocities from pistol loads.

I think you will do fine, and using mild ball loads for teaching kids is great!


rl725

[mastercast.com]

Hello Linstrum,

I have several .45/70 rifles that I could use, but I believe I will use a H&R single shot with a red dot sight. I don't think it prudent to use a high dollar Ballard, Sharps, Browning High Wall, etc., for the youngsters to shoot.

I am going to lube those balls with Rooster Jacket. I am not fond of the "mess" created by LLA.

I am going to try seating the balls inside the case just far enough to place a prelubed(black powder lube)wad on top of the ball, a hard fiber wad on top of the prelubed wad, and lightly crimp the cartridge. If that does not work well, I am certain that one or more of the loads/loading techniques mentioned in your post will.

Thank you very much for all the information that you and others took the time to share.

I have some cases with annealed case necks that I also intend to try with ball loads and see if that helps.

[94Doug]

If any one else wants it, I have a scan of an article of the 458 Lott, where the author loads everything from Black Powder to Round Ball for it. It may have some pointers for your project. I can email it to you.

Doug

[mastercast.com]

The .457 round balls shoot OK.

The hard cast .460 round balls shoot GREAT!

If I can ever figure out how to do a long post, without it being deleted, before I click on send, I will tell you how to do it.

[mastercast.com]

I finally found real accuracy, with zero fliers, using the hard cast .460 balls lubed with Rooster Jacket, loaded in annealed cases with 10.0 grains of Unique powder. I centered the sprue cut in the case when the ball was seated and applied a very mild taper crimp around the ball using the sizing die. The O.A.L. of the loaded round was 2.140". I used the case mouth expander die to finish seating the balls to uniform depth in the cases prior to taper crimping them.

I have yet to get to the range and chronograph those loads and shoot them from the bench, but they will consistently hit the end of a common 12 oz. coke can at 50 yards.

[mastercast.com]

Got to the range today.

50 yards, with a scope, equalled .428 center to center for ten, round balls.

Consistency is the key. "Thumbing them" in the case is not consistent. About "half of the ball is showing" above the case mouth is not consistent.

Load them the same way you would/should load anything else....like "consistent" and they will reward you with real accuracy.

The reason the RBS shoot so well, is because they are slow, compared to the accuracy of the "boolits" shot in the original rilfe, with real bullets.

[Linstrum]

Yeah!

I'm glad that the search for a satisfactory load was not terribly difficult.

The round ball goes back to about 1249, the .45-70 goes back to about 1873, and Unique goes back to 1899, so they are all time-tested, well-proven, and trustworthy components!


rl738

[45-70 Chevroner]

I have used round ball loads in 38 cases and 357 cases there a hoot to shoot but this sounds like a lot more fun, and I just happen to have a 457 RB mold left over from when I had a Ruger old army. I also have a good supply of 457 PB balls made up they have been setting on one of my shelves for a number of years.

[Clark]

3) 150 gr .458" lubed lead, Lyman #457130, from Western Bullets

a)15 gr Bullseye [lite load]
This load kicks like a .223
6" group at 50 yards

4) .457" lead ball,

a) 1/2 gr Bullseye [ultra lite load]
This load sounds like a pellet gun
Push the bullet down into the case to compress powder for higher velocity.
Chamfer the case mouth on the outside until sharp.
Use a board and a press to cookie cutter wadding between the powder and ball.
Compress powder, wads, and bullet with a pin gauge held in a bullet puller collet die.

The odd thing is that the 1/2 gr Bulleye makes the same sound with the bullet in the case mouth or compressed down inside. But the former bounces off wood, and the later penetrates 1".

[JDL]

Clark, Is that really 15 grains of Bullseye or 1.5 grains??
JDL

[Clark]

Clark, Is that really 15 grains of Bullseye or 1.5 grains??
JDL

That is 15 gr. Quickload thinks it is 11,000 psi and 1800 fps.


Way too fast for THAT bullet.

[45 2.1]

That is 15 gr. Quickload thinks it is 11,000 psi and 1800 fps.


Way too fast for THAT bullet.

You might be surprised to learn that Lyman sent out loading data for that boolit mold when they did the limited run some years ago. ALL of it was high velocity loadings. Some of them were faster than 1800 fps.

[steg]

I remember years back when I hunted squirrels with 3grains red dot and a round ball in .452 diameter, Had to go high tec and patch em, toilet paper, LOL. the gun was a trapdoor that I had to sell when things got rough. Anyway one day I shot a squirrel and before I could get to it It got up and ran away. Kinda glad t didnt come out of it after I picked it up, they have a nasty bite................steg