Round ball 45 Colt smokeless powder loads.

[jh45gun]

Ok first of all I developed asthma and being winter in WI I don't want to cast inside.
I just bought a 1858 Remington and have a 45 Colt/ Scofield cylinder coming. I did a search and cast bullets at the normal places are non existent. So I bought 2 boxes of Speer .454 Round Balls.
So I need some recipes for cowboy type loads under 850 fps. Powder on hand is Unique and 2100.

[Outpost75]

I'm not sure that Unique will burn completely with a round ball. It generally needs a heavier payload for a complete burn in .45 Colt. I use 5 grains of Bullseye, TiteGroup, 700X, WST or Red Dot, seating the ball flush with the case mouth and smearing a pea-sized dab of any soft bullet lube over the ball.

[rockrat]

I would tumble the RB's in LLA. Think you need some powder more along the lines of B'eye or RD

[jh45gun]

I may have some older red dot and maybe blue dot I'll have to look.

[Larry Gibson]

What Outpost75 and rockrat said about the powders and TLing the RBs.

[shell70634]

jh45gun,
Sent you a PM

Shelly

[nhithaca]

Lyman manual used to show round ball loads.

[JoeJames]

Just an academic interest mostly as I'd unlimber my 1860 Colt Army as a purely last resort (who knows these days) but I assume the same size .454 round balls would operate in it. With 3F bp, and number 11 caps?

[sharps4590]

My old Speer manual has round ball loads for 44's, 45 Colt and some others. Lemme go get it. I tried some in my 45 Freedom Arms without much success but, I didn't pursue it very hard either. I did size .457 balls hoping for a larger shank. I don't know if it matters much.

Unique: 4.5 grs.
231 4.0
700X 4.0
Bullseye 3.2
Red Dot 3.2

It shows SR-7625 at 4.5
" " SR-4756 " 5.0, if you have either of those. Oh, HS-5 at 5.7 grs. also. Those all run between about 550 except Unique which is 632 fps. They used a Colt SAA with a 5 1/2 in. barrel

[LabGuy]

From Speer #10

[smkummer]

I just loaded and shot some of these with 3.2 grains bullseye in my 455 (eley) Colt. In which a case with about the same dimension as 45 acp, one would think it would improve performance. Well, outside these always pushed the bullet out the barrel but felt and sounded very weak. They shot flat enough to the 12-15 yard target. Indoors, they may be just fine at short ranges. It’s not going to be anywhere the performance of 30 grains of blackpowder. Just so you know.

[Gray Fox]

Much simpler to just load up a .44 cap and ball and get some decent performance with 30-35 grains of fffg. GF

[Potsy]

Had decent luck with Trail Boss. Didn't sandbag it, but once I figured out the hold on paper, they all hit a 12" gong at 20 yards, which was better than I was expecting (5-1/2" Ruger Bisley).
Sized a .457 ball down to .452. Smeared alox on it and wiped the excess off the bottom. Pretty sure I dumped 7.0 grains of TB.
I didn't continue fooling with it, as it was louder out of my 16.5" Henry than I wanted it to be.