There are a great many shooters that load their early Colt SA's and replicas down to the psi suggested for black powder guns.
Thats all well and good......but smoky cases are the norm!
Why.......simple! 45 Long Colt cases of today are made as strong as 44 Mag cases due to the stronger Ruger guns. They just do not expand at the low 11.500 to 12,000 psi!
We have been testing both the Kirst and R&D conversion cylinders in the Ruger Old Army amd the Uberti 1858 revolvers (and Carbine).
No matter what powder we use for these situations we still get smoky fired cases! We even tried to aneal (sp) the case mouth, but it did not help much.
The answer...I suppose we will just live wieh it....James