.410 Judge Loads

[The Old Salt]

I know this site is full of serious loaders and that Taurus Judge style pistols draw the ire of more serious shooters, but I will post up my thoughts and solicited your reactions. After some reading up on the subject of loading .410's for The Taurus Judge I am thinking of trying the following load.

.410 Brass Case Load:
444 Marlin Brass (fits the Judge chambers well), w WLR Primers, Ballistic Products Stretch .410 Full-Length Wad, 3 ea .380" Super Buck #0000 (tot Wt. aprox 252 gr.) with overshot wad crimped & glued, over 8.0 gr Unique.
Anyone try this one or something similar?

FYI
Alliant Powder web site shows 9.5gr Unique as the max load for 250 gr. LSWC

[jonp]

Read my thread on blowing up a Taurus Judge. Be very careful of that lswc load. I would not in any way approach max loads in that gun

[pworley1]

Don't confuse serious loaders with gun snobs. +1 om jonp's suggestion of working up to the load you have mentioned, no matter the pistol you are using.

[The Old Salt]

JONP & Pworley1, if the max 45LC load is 9.5 gr, you 2 believe a starting load of 8.0 gr ( 15% below max ) is not suficiently low enough as a starting load? Where woukd you start? 7.0gr?

[bikerbeans]

Old Salt,

Other than payload weight, your proposed 410 triball load has nothing in common with the 45 colt load recipe. It might be safe it might not. I personally would not try it.

I would suggest getting a good shotgun reloading manual and look up a tested buckshot load. Then follow the recipe without changing components. This route is much cheaper than destroying your revolver and missing work while you heal.

BB

[trapper9260]

I am with bikerbeans get a shotgun manual and go with that. You are deal with a shotgun load not a center fire.

[The Old Salt]

Shotgun manual is good advise. Proposed load is similar to the Federal Premium 000 Buckshot load. That load uses 4 pellets of 000 buckshot (.360" shot, wt 70gr ea.) for a total weight of 280gr. it is advertised to be 850 fps. So with 3 ea. 000 buckshot, 82gr ea., I would be going to a total wt of only 246 gr. No published load data for this handgun load that I can find, that's why I am asking questions. Maybe someone has been there before me and can share what he learned.

[jonp]

JONP & Pworley1, if the max 45LC load is 9.5 gr, you 2 believe a starting load of 8.0 gr ( 15% below max ) is not suficiently low enough as a starting load? Where woukd you start? 7.0gr?

min -10% is where I'd start. I'm not a snob, my wife has a judge I bought her and it's a neat gun but don't overestimate how strong it is.

[Good Cheer]

Somebody should make a quadcutter mold for judges.
Or maybe a six pack mold!

[bstone5]

Load the 444 Marlin brass for shot shells for my S&W Govenor. Shoot find.
Use 7 1/2 shot with 5 #4 buckshot or just straight 7 1/2 shot.
Also shoot a lot of cast bullets in 45 Colt cases, the bullets are powder coated with a home made gas check installed.

[The Old Salt]

Bstone5 what powder? Type & grs?

[Treeman]

It isn't safe to interpolate based on payload weight where one load has lots of airspace(45 colt load) and the other has zero airspace between payload and charge(.410 buckshot load). A useful load for your multiball buckshot would be 12 grains of 2400. Note that 12 grains of 2400 is a really light load in 45 colt....but it is a reasonable .410 charge.

[The Old Salt]

Treeman, Thx for the input. After reading everyone's input I am going to reduce the powder charge to 6.7 gr Unique as a starting point. That would be 80% of what Alliant lists as their Cowboy Action loading for a 45 LC with a 230 gr. cast bullet. I am going to chronograph the load so I will know with the first shot something about load performance, recoil & IV. The Ballistic Product wads and Ballistic Products 0.380" balls are on order. I have made overshot cards from cool whip lids and have a hot glue gun to seal them. My 44 Mag bullet seater die just fits into the mouth of the 444 Marlin cases so it can seat the overshot cards into the case mouth nicely. Backing out the bullet seater and resetting the die height allows for using the same die to put a crim on the case mouth before applying the hot glue. Tried this procedure out by loading 2 ea. 0.358" dia, 125 gr, cast bullets into a Federal wad. Everything fits. Proof is in the pudding they say. Time to shoot one. I have a busy schedule so I may not get to the range for a little while, but will post up results after I do.

[The Old Salt]

Update
The Ballistic Products full length wads and 0.380" balls came in. Loading the balls into the wads became a challenge to overcome. Ball dia measured 0.385" and wall thickness of the wads was 0.022" at the top to a 0.040" near the bottom. Those dimensions don't work well inside a 444 case with a 0.385” ball.
So what was the original purpose?
Get a load that fills the 45 bore better and produces tighter groups with heaver balls.
Next Step: Run the 0.385" balls through a 0.358" sizer. Doing so flattened one side of the ball, gave it a 0.020" section of straight sides while still maintaining a weight of 83 gr. The new shape looks more aerodynamic. They fit into the wads easily and insert into the 444 cases easily as well. Now to load some up and see how they perform. Looking over my in-stock powders I have one Lb of IMR 4227. After reading everything I can and finding 410 load info using 4227, I have decided to make my first attempt using 15 gr. of IMR 4227. Will chrono the load to see what it does.
So far this has been quit the educational experience. Thanks to everyone who has provided input either directly or on the many posts I read across various sites.