45 colt-ish wildcat in Judge help needed

[victorfox]

R5R others had told me to not worry a .451 will swage safely. I was worried because my gun's only diameter is .447 and there's no rifling.

I agree with you on the pattern thing. I'm very satisfied with this judge as a shotgun, it patterns well and the factory 000 buck shoots great in it. Just struggling to make it shoot a single projectile well (minute of possum at 15/20 yds is now my goal )

[runfiverun]

the no rifling thing is rough, but many old muzzle loader rifles had smooth bores and they done pretty well out to 40-50 yds.
I think a tighter fit would help you a ton.
the 451 you mentioned earlier might be just enough, between case tension and bore diameter to work fairly well.

I don't know how your fixed for .410 wads but maybe doing a slug type set up using them could turn the trick.
[cut the petals down or all the way off?]
I know that can give some decent accuracy in a shot gun with a round ball.

[victorfox]

we only have a teeny 5/16 shocup style i pictured some pages ago in this thread. I shot .40 pellets with cut petals to a tad below ball equator but accuracy was less than so so (using plastic hulls as they are loose in the brass cases). I could hit an A4 sheet of paper at 10yd but it would pattern knstead of group. With the larger 440 or so pellets in brass cases they patterned a little tighter.

I'm avoiding loading plastic hulls, because the primers are much more expensive here, and brass cases allow a larger projectile which may be the ticket.

At first, I'm looking for accuracy with a RB, then add some punch to it. The best size is still a mistery, but as soon as I know it (R. Charlie kindly offered me some cast balls of various sizes to try), I'll order the proper mold and hit the gas.

I'm considering a ton of possible things that would be cool and will be instructive to me to do. This gun made me learn in 6mo about more than I knew in 30yrs when I got to like firearms...

[victorfox]

couldn't go to the range yet but spent some time loading more stuff.

.Like these
Attachment 173928

Cut .410 brass to 45Colt length and loaded a 7/6" (about 11,11mm) ball to fireform to final chamber dimension.

Tried this to see if it fits, but is a bit too tight now. A pulled 185gr 45 acp JHP. I won't shoot this and the picture round was just a dummy and didn't chamber for some reason. I puller the bullet again and it would not go. Then I did a full .410 resize and it went fine.
Attachment 173929

The sized pellet. The best fitting are those bean shaped pellets I cut with the wad punch and it removee a nice ring of lead. Let's see how it shoots. Most of the next loads will be straight BP and duplexes with smokeless
Attachment 173930

[victorfox]

don't know why the pics disappeared. here they go again.

[MnSpring]

Victorfox,

Lot of very good advice, on how to, ‘do’, with, ‘what can be done’.

My Advise is. MOVE OUT, of the COMMUNIST Country !

Come to the USA, After all, the, ‘Liberals’ here, say ALL, ‘Refugees’ are, ‘Welcome’.

Should be a piece of cake, after all, it does NOT sound like,
You are the type, that is going to walk in to a, ‘Gun Free Zone’, and start shooting !

[victorfox]

hey I don't think I have the profile wanted by the authorities. I'm white, Christian, registered Republican, want to work for money, like guns and believe in the 2nd Amendment. Why would they let another future NRA member in?

[runfiverun]

ehh do like our prez and just lie on your application.
he got through law school no problem and it was paid for by lying on his loan grant application.

[cpileri]

Well, if you do decide to move: move to my neighborhood! With those creds, you'd be welcome.

C-

hey I don't think I have the profile wanted by the authorities. I'm white, Christian, registered Republican, want to work for money, like guns and believe in the 2nd Amendment. Why would they let another future NRA member in?

[victorfox]

No update yet. Had no time or the desire to go to range (got a cold or flu, whatever, and it is still beating me).

Just wanted to post one of the best and free wadding materials I found: lever arch file folders. I get these well battered (missing lever, cover cracked at the "hinge", etc) and free at work, because they substitute these for new folders and throw the used ones away. A single folder provides about 1,000 wads and they are great used alone (no filler) or combined with fillers. Didn't measure them, but the thickness is ok.


We don't have many components available here, so improvisation is the key. I'm falling in love with black powder, which I avoided in the beginning, because it allows the use of wrapped newspaper wadding...

Also, I think I learned how to properly clean it, using some old deodorant bottles filled with the proper "chemicals", that is, a house-hold cleaner, not much different from the stuff used to clean windows, and an aerosol lubricant, with a degummed soy bean oil base (as they call it). It doesn't form any tar-like stuff mixed with BP fouling, so I got my gun pristine clean after playing with BP.

This is the product I'm talking about, in case you see it at some autoparts store (they are very common here, since it's a lot cheaper than WD40 and the like). I got a 12can box for a little sum a year ago and that would last me for a while (I'm at 3rd can). It's really "oily", it drips a lot when spraying, and is no substitute for WD40, but penetrates and loose screws, rusted stuff, pretty well.

It's called "WHITE LUB", but AFAIK it has nothing to do with WHITE LABEL products . Also, I have no affiliation or interests in said company, just sharing what I found.

[runfiverun]

if your gun had some rifling [even a rifled choke tube] I think the round ball and black powder would work pretty well. [accurate]
a little bit of beeswax and olive oil lube on the base of the boolit and on top of the card would make a pretty effective load you could shoot over and over again.
the lube keeps the black powder fouling soft between shots, and easier to clean at the end.

[victorfox]

R5R, I thought initially about adding a rifled choke or something, but the "smiths" here didn't even know where to start. I suggested they got a .44 or .45 piece of barrel and they said it's not possible and if it would, should cost me the price of the gun, or more... since these are the experts I have around... let's keep trying the smoothbore loads.

For now, I've not been able to test anything, but have a lot of ammo loaded to try.

[runfiverun]

a good smith or machinist could turn one out of a piece of a barrel in about 1/2hr, the threading would be the slowest part [if the pistol had a removable choke]
for right now your 'elongated' round ball load is your best bet.

[victorfox]

a good smith or machinist could turn one out of a piece of a barrel in about 1/2hr, the threading would be the slowest part [if the pistol had a removable choke]
for right now your 'elongated' round ball load is your best bet.

*sigh* I'm aware of this, but good machinists/smiths here are as scarce as the proverbial hen's teeth, most of the smiths only change parts and most machinists won't touch anything firearm related.

Just like Obambi did, our govt almost outlawed gunsmithing of any kind. This, however, like everyone with 2 brain cells know, won't prevent illegal submachineguns from being made in some shops and sold to criminals.

[victorfox]

Last week I was going to the range twice, but in the 2 occasions, the police was road blocking and I didn't want to risk (you know...), but today I went at lunch time.

The group above happened with the "sized" pellets, over 6gr of smokeless powder, seated as a boolit, no wads, in the cut .410 cases (as a 45Colt). There are 6 shots there, about 6" apart, with 2 holes touching. I had no backing, so the paper was thrashed and is not showing very well. Distance was 10m (33ft).

Ops, sorry. One of the rounds was loaded with 7.7gr of powder. All them shot well, no unburnt powder, and I daubed the RB with a smear of my homemade lube (1part paraffin 2part grease).

Also, I played monkey with other loads, with so so results. My loads using black powder were a flop, all squibbed and sent a long flame to the target and no power behind...

With duplex loads (about 3gr smokeless + 37gr black powder), there was a nice boom, lots of smoke and RECOIL... All were loaded with 2 .40 or ~.44 pellets, printing about 4" apart. seems my black powder is not good, since the last time I shot I thought it could be the primers. The tube reads "ELEFANTE 3FG", not "ELEPHANT", without any other writing. I googled and looks like there are knock-offs using the Elephant name, so I don't have real ELEPHANT powder...

Also shot some .44-40 cases opened to accept a shotgun primer, and of these, 2 were BP, bloopers, 2 smokeless that cracked completely the cases, and 2 smokeless that formed beautifully to 45. The cracked cases were expected, the brass was old, thin and brittle, and I made the mistake of loading with smokeless... And didn't want to disassemble, so I shot them to throw away.

I can see some future on the .410 cut brass with round ball, and will try to get a Lee mold (cash is short these days, lots of stuff to pay, slow business, and I'm saving to make a purchase that offsets the shipping costs, and then there is the 60% import tax... no to mention the dollar is about 3.27 of our money -- will try to get 3 molds and sell one to pay for the rest).

Melted my last range and street lead and got 2.5 pounds . These are the ingots I got, using a brick as mold.


My "lube"


I had no leading with this concotion. I was getting a little leading with the soft pellets I use as "balls". Sizing them probably had some positive effect on this.

later,

[victorfox]

Hi there friends.

It's been a while I left this project untouched, due to many personal and other issues...

However, after seeing the sucess of Y-man with his solid socket slugs, I decided to try them myself... with a smaller one of course.

I got a 10mm socket (seems it's the mechanic's nightmare lol) and made some bells and whistles to turn it into a mold.


I could have taken the round ball route, but again laws here regarding importing are changing and again I couldn't buy anything. And could not find any machinist with the will to make me a mold at reasonable cost (even the guy that made me the cover and ping nagged a lot...)



Here's the end product besides a 00 buck pellet and a .410 factory foster slug. Notice the difference in size, the homemade one fits the bore correctly. I have to resize them, the 10mm socket casts it a bit wider.


Hollow base. Can fit a 00 buck pellet into the cavity... It feels very nose heavy.

It weighed at 10 grams or roughly 154 grains. I'll be shooting them over 6 grains of a fast powder.

Hopefully soon I'll bring the range results...

Thanks y'all for the help, support and input.