Now loading for 45 Colt..Questions

[retread]

I use a RCBS 200 gr. SWC for plinking and the Lee 452-255 RF for serious things. Both work well with a range of powders.

[DougGuy]

Figure out if a .452" bullet will slide into your cylinder throats from the front. If not, then plan on getting the cylinder throats reamed & lapped to .4525" so you can size to .452." Some Ubertis have modern throats and some have old style which are much larger.

Either way you want a light drag fit in the throats so learning what size throats you have would be one of the first things you want to know, even before you order your first mold because if you have the larger throats, you will need a mold that drops large enough for a good fit in the throats and hopefully large enough that you can size the boolit because they come through the sizing die a LOT more round than "as dropped" and would probably shoot better as well.

[lablover]

Sized some up and they take a little nudge and go thru the throats.....Awesome! .452 BTW

[rexherring]

I have carbide dies and have reloaded my brass over 30 times with no problems. Unless you have an exceptionally over sized chamber on your gun, there shouldn't be a problem. Starline brass is pretty tough as well as Federal brass in .45 Colt, stronger and heavier than Win. or Rem. brass in my loadings. If the mouth starts to crack on older brass, I anneal it because it can start getting brittle.

[DougGuy]

200gr in any style is pretty light for the .45 Colt, although it can be done. Lee 255 RF is a good one, and the 454190 is a really good rounded nose style. For most shooting, the common mistake is to use too hard an alloy and I used to get leading from this and too hard a lube will really make things a mess. I found from experience that the Ruger rifling and twist rate really takes to 50/50+2% and soft lube like Felix. If you can scratch it with a thumbnail, and your lube is soft, you have perfect alloy for 900 ~ 1200fps from a Ruger revolver. It's just a good combo that the barrel likes and you won't even have to clean it.

Carbide dies damaging cases? Really? That would be a new one on me and I have been at this quite some years and never used anything but carbide sizers.

Another near perfect match that you can accomplish with the Ruger SA, is to have the forcing cone cut and cleaned up on 11° since many barrels leave the factory with nothing more than a random collection of tool marks arranged in an orbital fashion in front of the cylinder. Bleh... After this is done, you will have the perfect setup for using RF boolits, boolits with a smooth rounded ojive that goes from the meplat into the bearing surface of the sides without a driving band like a LSWC or Keith type boolit. Keith boolits are accurate, but when that driving band hits the forcing cone half the front of the boolit can be wiped away and slumped down the sides when it entes the bore. With the RF boolit design, there is less converging angle and the surfaces of the boolit and forcing cone are much more parallel and the transition is much smoother resulting in a lot less wiping of the boolit. This is a perfect match IMO... I use the RF style boolits 80% of the time. LSWC has it's place, I just found RF works much better in my Rugers so I use that style.

[cherokeetracker]

ON the powders try Winchester Super Target WST 6.0 grains with your 200 grain bullet is a nice, usually accurate, load. As you mentioned in the first post, Unique has always been pretty good in the 45 Colt. With it I suggest 8.5 grains, and the 255 grain bullet. Good Luck