SAA not grouping

[moose30273]

Seeking advice here. My 3rd generation SAA in .45 Colt shoots patterns not groups. I am trying to shoot the Lyman 454190. I have shot them sized both .452 and .454 and I can't see any real difference. The gun does suffer from large chambers and throats. My next plan is to try the Remington .45 colt bullets with the hollow base. I hate to be dependant on factory bullets but I am not sure where to go from here. The gun shoots about a 6 inch pattern at 20 yards. Suggestions? Oh I am loading over 8.5 grains Unique.

[44man]

You did not mention boolit hardness. You might be slumping and skidding with that much Unique.
Try a slower push on the boolit.

[subsonic]

Have you shot any good groups with any ammo in this gun?

There are a lot of variables to getting a revolver to shoot.

[subsonic]

I think trying those store-bought boolits you mention is a good way to rule out some problems.

[tek4260]

How big are your throats? Any leading?

[Silver Jack Hammer]

I have 4 Colt SAA's in .45 and shoot 454190 sized .454" wheelweight alloy over 8.7 gr of Unique. The 4 3/4" get 3 to 4" groups at 25 yards and my new 7 1/2" gets 3" and under at 25 yards. If you heat treat your boolits you'll get tighter groups but they hit lower. I get 7" groups at 50 yards. Remember these are horse pistols that throw large slugs with authority. Keep working with it and have fun. I'll post again when I'm home from vacation and can refer to my notes.

[MtGun44]

Rem or Win factory lead with the old style boolit shape are (as you apparently know) hollow
based design to solve or at least minimize this problem. Give them a try.

Bill

[Tim357]

Also, do you use a too-small sizing die for your brass? Most Colts, IME, have muy big chambers. I usta use a 45 ACP sizer til I woke up one day and realized that was wayyy too small. Now it is back to the Lyman steel die. Most accuracy and leading problems are gone.

Good luck,
Tim sends

[Silver Jack Hammer]

The Colt’s went from .454” bores to .452” when they came back after WWII. Colt’s thought American shooters wanted to shoot the same boolits in their bottom feeders as their horse pistols. The .452” bores have grooves more shallow than the old .454” bores to accommodate jacketed boolits. The old SAA worked well in the dirt and dust of the frontier the cavalry faced while using black powder. The cylinder throats were oversized back then, and they still are. Colt hasn’t changed those dimensions. Then the cylinders of the Colt’s were made with a slight draft angle or taper to aid reloading when the guns get hot from black powder so I neck re-size to maximize case life. Most of my .45 cartridges don’t chamber in my Ruger but my brass doesn’t split as much when fired in the Colt’s.

Colt’s tend to benefit from having the forcing cone re-cut to 11 degrees. Then next thing to do is have a cylinder re-cut to .452” but this is expensive. Cylinder throats of .456” is not uncommon.

Some of my loads that work with Lyman’s 454190 are 6.3 gr of Bullseye and 15 gr of 2400. 8.7 gr of Unique is my standard charge. I re size to .454” and use Lyman Alox but am switching to SPG so both of my sizer-lubricator machines can size for black powder boolits.

The Colt’s tend to favor boolits with a high bearing surface, I have found 452460 the most accurate boolit in the SAA. It became kind of silly to cap a voluminous black powder case with a 200 gr boolit and hit the target with a “pa-ting” instead of a “ka-thud” so I went back to the 454190.

Since I never apply lead from a bench rest in the field I quit bench rest testing at the range. Most .45 ACP hollow points penetrate about 22 inches of water, the Colt’s 454190 lit with 8 ½ gr of Unique penetrates 56” of water. I’d hate to have to try to penetrate a skull of a loco cow with a .45 ACP hollow point but on the other hand I wouldn’t chose the 250 solid in a bank lobby or crowded theater either.

I’ve got 4 inch groups at 50 yards with heat treated 454190 with both the 6.3 gr of Bullseye and 15 gr of 2400 with one of my 4 ¾” Colt’s .45’s, another 4 ¾” .45 Colt SAA didn’t perform as well but the heat treated boolits hit lower on the target. And I didn’t want to get caught by my wife heat treating boolits in the kitchen oven.

All my Colt’s are 3rd generation because the steels are better nowadays.

Three of my Colt SAA .45’s have cylinder throats that measure .456”. Two of my .4 ¾’s have groove diameters of .453” and lands which measures .449”. My 7 ½” has groove diameter measuring .452” and lands .444”. For what it’s worth I have a 4 ¾” SAA Colt .44 Special with cylinder throats .430”, groove .430” and lands .417”. It doesn’t group wheelweight boolits much better.

I bought a new Colt .38 cylinder to have it bored out to .452” but then I realized I’d have to use full length resized cartridges. Then I’d have two different .45 cartridges, one of some of my .45’s and others for this one. That cylinder is going to be bored out for another .44 Special which currently has .434” cylinder throats.

Recently I spent an evening folding new a US Patent Firearms 4 ¾” .45. The sale price was very good but I realized it wasn’t a Colt and would never be at home in my hand so I passed on the purchase.

So just shoot and have fun, get your sights regulated to point of aim and rather than try to make a Colt’s do what other guns can do, do with your Colt’s what other guns can’t.

[12DMAX]

Not sure what alloy your using but thanks to the advice of some here I switched to a 50/50 ( WW+Pure+Sn ) and my NMBH now shoots incredible. No leading and much better grouping. 300Gr WFN and 8.5 - 9 Gr unique.

[MtGun44]

Yes, softer is frequently better. The "harder is always better" myth dies hard.
IME, with handguns, hardness is a secondary effect, and most often very soft
will work just fine, sometimes better than harder.

Bill

[moose30273]

Beem a while but here is an update. The Remington bullets with the concave base shoot a little better. At .455 they fill the cylinder throats. Groups are now respectfull but not great. I do blame part of that on my shooting or the sights or both. Maintaining elevation is difficult. The windage stays consistant at about an inch or two at 20 yards.

[Piedmont]

I have suggestions. Try using the bullets as cast. My mold drops them around .455". Load to an OAL of 1.580" (if memory serves). Try 7.5 and 8.0 grains of unique. It seems you are running them a little fast if you are using my OAL. I also would use relatively soft bullets.

[MtGun44]

A bit of honest equipment critque is probably in order. IME, the sights on original SAAs
are so bad as to SERIOUSLY limit the accuracy that can be attained.

Bill

[runfiverun]

pull one of those throat filling boolits and see if the brass is not reducing the diameter for you.
if you have to go small diameter to jump the throats then size .001 over bbl diameter and increase hardness.
44 man can splain it a bit better than i can.
but sometimes you gotta ignore the throats and go straight to the bbl.
making the boolits hard enough to ignore the gas blowing around it in the process.
changing to a fast powder will quite often help this situation

yeah it sounds all wrong but it will work in many guns.

[44man]

I find guns I can't make shoot too. I try soft to hard and about everything. So many wide dimensions.
I see the problems with a bunch of guns and all are different dimensions. It is hard to deal with.
I have had those and had to load different for each because I never found an in tween load or boolit.
It seems gun makers are not too concerned with revolver accuracy.
I love Colts because nothing feels as good but they just stray too much. You can find originals that will shoot circles around a new one and the other way around.
Boolit damage before the hammer falls and at ignition has to be reduced above all else. To expand a soft booit to oversize throats and a small bore really does no good. It will be better to use a boolit with better steerage into the cone, does not skid and seals the bore.

[tomingreeneco]

A bit of honest equipment critque is probably in order. IME, the sights on original SAAs
are so bad as to SERIOUSLY limit the accuracy that can be attained.

Bill

I'll second that. There is not a single SAA gun that I have that I have not had to tinker with the sights. Even had to remove and replace a front sight on one.

[Silver Jack Hammer]

Recenty I placed 5 shots in 5 inches at centered at 100 yards with a Colt Single Action Army. The whole process came about from reading Elmer Keith, Skeeter Skelton and watching westerns long before I could afford to purchase a Colt SAA. By the time I got my thumb over my first .45 in the early 1980’s I had more recipes than hours at a range. Lyman’s 454190 cast from straight wheel weights over Skeeter’s favorite 9 grains of Unique printed a 4 ½” group at 25 yards 8” low and 4” left of the bull. Skeeter didn’t mention the dramatic muzzle flip skyward the slick one piece walnut grips offered with that load. Back then poor Colt accuracy was blamed on the weight of the hammer fall; no one discussed cylinder throat dimensions. The books said to tighten up the pattern on target the bore had to be mic’ed and the bullets sized to match that measurement. Colt’s have tight bores and this one measured .450” so I ordered an H&I die in .450. The 454190 bullet stuck in the Lyman sizer-luber 450! Raising the handle to clear the bullet was performed by a feat similar to a bench press in the weight room. Good thing I was using soft lead.

By the time accuracy was coming around to 2 ½” at 25 yards that Colt was on a diet of Lyman 452460 SWC 200 grain over the appropriate morsel of Bullseye. Filing down the front sight brought the group up to zero but the front sight was wider now and not as favorable in the rear sight notch. My expensive custom one piece walnut grips chipped when I used a rock as a rest, the muzzle flip hammered the butt of the walnut into damaged goods. Maybe Colt was right switching from walnut to hard rubber before the turn of the century. The last century that is, I’m on a slow learning curve but catching up to what other learned over 100 years ago.

Having strayed so far from how the horse pistol was actually designed to be used on the frontier and in pursuit of accuracy I took a lesson from the Grand Old Man Elmer Keith and jumped in both feet with a new .44 Special 4 ¾” barrel and cylinder from Colt. It seemed silly to use a cavernous .45 Colt hull, a few grains of fast burning powder and a little 200 grain SWC in a revolving arm that had a bore .004” under proper dimensions and fine little rifling. This time I was dedicated to finding one load with 429421 and zeroing the fixed sights to that load. An old gunsmith installed the .44 barrel and cylinder. Tracing and measuring the shape of the factory new front sight on the new barrel before filing it down was balanced with also filing metal off the side of the front sight for the appropriate width and sight picture. I picked the side of the sight which completed the correction for windage. I now had a Colt that would shoot a heavy bullet with Bullseye, 2400 , Unique and Blue Dot accurate at various velocities. This only took a couple of three ring binders full of data.
The western movie is an American classic so in typical American style I would not be satisfied with one well shooting Colt, I had to have more. I still had a bone to pick with the .45 Colt cartridge so I took the easy road and got a Ruger. Guys this Ruger had a rear sight mounted with a spring and screw contraption pinned on the top strap that made zeroing sights with a screwdriver easy. This Ruger shot well, but it lacked the horsey on the side. It didn’t sound right when the hammer was cocked and didn’t feel right in my hand. Since the Ruger shot the .45 Colt well, certainly a Colt could shoot the .45 OK too. I must have missed something with that first Colt. Oh, ya. The old gunsmith showed me how the factory that put the original .45 barrel on crooked. A fellow arms collector had to pay some bill so he sold me his .357 SAA Colt. The gun was beautiful but only hit the target with a “pa-tick” instead of a “ka-thud.” I also had the hammer color case hardened to look prettier. The color case hardening process weakened the firing pin rivet and the .357 needed a new hammer. Again, I guess Colt knew what they were doing when they started polishing the sides of the hammer of the free floating firing pin mounted Model P. While Colt was mounting a new hammer I ordered it re-calibrated to .45. I got the .45 Colt back the day before leaving for a True Grit shooting match in Oregon. Earing back the hammer the cylinder spun like the wheel of a stern wheel steam ship. By now I’d shot Colts enough to know the cylinder is supposed to stop when it is aligned with the barrel and hammer so back to the factory it goes. The impact of lawyers was affecting the price of shipping guns and my pocketbook felt it.

Along this time revolver shooters were reading about the importance of cylinder throat diameter and Colt was machining nice new guns with tight cylinder throats. Unfortunately the new cylinder Colt gave me did not have the nice tight new throats. I would have to buy a factory new Colt someday. The economy went sour and guys had to cash in on their old Colts and I couldn’t help but to take advantage of the low price of used Colts, I got pretty good at filing Colt front sight blades. I shot a lot of playing cards and steel bad guys from the holster at close range. Alliant powder appreciated me. The price of Colts on the used market came down but the price of fodder went up along with the price of the petroleum need to ship it. The price of lead bullets made returning casting appealing and lead bullets manufactured for sale had shown inconsistency. Hard bullets and hard lubes were good for shipping but caused unnecessary leading in the bore.
A 7 ½” .44 Special I acquired at an earlier gun show then foolishly parted with came up for adoption again. That one shot well when I had it before so my cash became less important to me than getting that hawgleg back in the home stables. After fooling around with a half a dozen SAA’s in .44 Special and .45 Colt with various bore and cylinder throat diameters this old file job on a longer tube early Reagan Administration era Colt turned in some mighty impressive groups.
A RCBS 44-250-K mold was on a table at a gunshow and I poured pure molten Linotype into the design Keith did not condemn as he did the Lyman product. The smell of solf Lyman Alox was reminiscent of 25 years earlier and I chuckled at my less than satisfactory results at the range back then.

When I said there were several 3 ring binders of notes from load tests and Chrony I would like to expand on that for just a moment. I built a contraption that enables me to bolt a RCBS Rockchucker press on the tailgate of my Dodge buckboard. Brass pre-primed and belled at home goes to the range with several different pounds of powder and targets. A scale on the tailgate enables the shootist to work up a load right there at the range and log in the powder charge, velocity and group size in inches. Write it right on the target, punch 3 holes and file it into the three ring binder. If you make your own targets 8 ½” by 11” the targets will fit the 3-ring binder and you have documented load data. Each Colt has it’s own tab in the binder. The best loading manuals are the one tailored to your gun.

While my son was testing his new 7-’08 from Santa at 100 yards this old re-acquired 7 ½” Colt SAA .44 Special 3rd generation rested between my knees in a Keith sitting position with my back against a brace. Still I was surprised to measure 5 shots in 5 inches in the center at 100 yards with a SAA. Shot with a Colt I had traded away and got back. I just thought I'd pass it on.

[MtGun44]

+1 on saving groups. I take a small pad of sticky notes, put the load info
on it, stick it on the target and take a digital pic. These are then stored
for the gun and kept for future reference.

I think the cure to the SAA problem is a BH.

Bill

[moose30273]

I had been to a three day patrol rifle class this week so with proper trigger control, breathing and sight picture in mind, I thought I would see what I could do with the Colt today. Dropped my powder charge to 8 grains Unique, back from the 8.6 or so I started with. Loaded ten rounds with the Remington bullets. Got about a six inch group at fifteen yards. Then just for fun, I loaded up ten of my 454190's that I had sized to .452. Shot the first five not really paying attention to what was going on. They seemed to print inside the Remingotn group. Same target. The next five I shot at a stray bullet hole in the target. Five shots went into a 2" group with one stray. The windage was a little left and the elevation was a little high but nothing that can't be lived with. So I loaded up ten more rounds. Group pretty much stayed the same. A little spread in elevation but I will claim that.
If today is not a fluke them I am happy. I have about a thousand rounds through the gun at this time. So any problems with the gun itself have pretty much been ironed out. The idiot behind it may still have some issues.
I freely admit I can't shoot the single actions as well as a double action revolver or most semi-autos.

[bigboredad]

Recenty I placed 5 shots in 5 inches at centered at 100 yards with a Colt Single Action Army. The whole process came about from reading Elmer Keith, Skeeter Skelton and watching westerns long before I could afford to purchase a Colt SAA. By the time I got my thumb over my first .45 in the early 1980’s I had more recipes than hours at a range. Lyman’s 454190 cast from straight wheel weights over Skeeter’s favorite 9 grains of Unique printed a 4 ½” group at 25 yards 8” low and 4” left of the bull. Skeeter didn’t mention the dramatic muzzle flip skyward the slick one piece walnut grips offered with that load. Back then poor Colt accuracy was blamed on the weight of the hammer fall; no one discussed cylinder throat dimensions. The books said to tighten up the pattern on target the bore had to be mic’ed and the bullets sized to match that measurement. Colt’s have tight bores and this one measured .450” so I ordered an H&I die in .450. The 454190 bullet stuck in the Lyman sizer-luber 450! Raising the handle to clear the bullet was performed by a feat similar to a bench press in the weight room. Good thing I was using soft lead.

By the time accuracy was coming around to 2 ½” at 25 yards that Colt was on a diet of Lyman 452460 SWC 200 grain over the appropriate morsel of Bullseye. Filing down the front sight brought the group up to zero but the front sight was wider now and not as favorable in the rear sight notch. My expensive custom one piece walnut grips chipped when I used a rock as a rest, the muzzle flip hammered the butt of the walnut into damaged goods. Maybe Colt was right switching from walnut to hard rubber before the turn of the century. The last century that is, I’m on a slow learning curve but catching up to what other learned over 100 years ago.

Having strayed so far from how the horse pistol was actually designed to be used on the frontier and in pursuit of accuracy I took a lesson from the Grand Old Man Elmer Keith and jumped in both feet with a new .44 Special 4 ¾” barrel and cylinder from Colt. It seemed silly to use a cavernous .45 Colt hull, a few grains of fast burning powder and a little 200 grain SWC in a revolving arm that had a bore .004” under proper dimensions and fine little rifling. This time I was dedicated to finding one load with 429421 and zeroing the fixed sights to that load. An old gunsmith installed the .44 barrel and cylinder. Tracing and measuring the shape of the factory new front sight on the new barrel before filing it down was balanced with also filing metal off the side of the front sight for the appropriate width and sight picture. I picked the side of the sight which completed the correction for windage. I now had a Colt that would shoot a heavy bullet with Bullseye, 2400 , Unique and Blue Dot accurate at various velocities. This only took a couple of three ring binders full of data.
The western movie is an American classic so in typical American style I would not be satisfied with one well shooting Colt, I had to have more. I still had a bone to pick with the .45 Colt cartridge so I took the easy road and got a Ruger. Guys this Ruger had a rear sight mounted with a spring and screw contraption pinned on the top strap that made zeroing sights with a screwdriver easy. This Ruger shot well, but it lacked the horsey on the side. It didn’t sound right when the hammer was cocked and didn’t feel right in my hand. Since the Ruger shot the .45 Colt well, certainly a Colt could shoot the .45 OK too. I must have missed something with that first Colt. Oh, ya. The old gunsmith showed me how the factory that put the original .45 barrel on crooked. A fellow arms collector had to pay some bill so he sold me his .357 SAA Colt. The gun was beautiful but only hit the target with a “pa-tick” instead of a “ka-thud.” I also had the hammer color case hardened to look prettier. The color case hardening process weakened the firing pin rivet and the .357 needed a new hammer. Again, I guess Colt knew what they were doing when they started polishing the sides of the hammer of the free floating firing pin mounted Model P. While Colt was mounting a new hammer I ordered it re-calibrated to .45. I got the .45 Colt back the day before leaving for a True Grit shooting match in Oregon. Earing back the hammer the cylinder spun like the wheel of a stern wheel steam ship. By now I’d shot Colts enough to know the cylinder is supposed to stop when it is aligned with the barrel and hammer so back to the factory it goes. The impact of lawyers was affecting the price of shipping guns and my pocketbook felt it.

Along this time revolver shooters were reading about the importance of cylinder throat diameter and Colt was machining nice new guns with tight cylinder throats. Unfortunately the new cylinder Colt gave me did not have the nice tight new throats. I would have to buy a factory new Colt someday. The economy went sour and guys had to cash in on their old Colts and I couldn’t help but to take advantage of the low price of used Colts, I got pretty good at filing Colt front sight blades. I shot a lot of playing cards and steel bad guys from the holster at close range. Alliant powder appreciated me. The price of Colts on the used market came down but the price of fodder went up along with the price of the petroleum need to ship it. The price of lead bullets made returning casting appealing and lead bullets manufactured for sale had shown inconsistency. Hard bullets and hard lubes were good for shipping but caused unnecessary leading in the bore.
A 7 ½” .44 Special I acquired at an earlier gun show then foolishly parted with came up for adoption again. That one shot well when I had it before so my cash became less important to me than getting that hawgleg back in the home stables. After fooling around with a half a dozen SAA’s in .44 Special and .45 Colt with various bore and cylinder throat diameters this old file job on a longer tube early Reagan Administration era Colt turned in some mighty impressive groups.
A RCBS 44-250-K mold was on a table at a gunshow and I poured pure molten Linotype into the design Keith did not condemn as he did the Lyman product. The smell of solf Lyman Alox was reminiscent of 25 years earlier and I chuckled at my less than satisfactory results at the range back then.

When I said there were several 3 ring binders of notes from load tests and Chrony I would like to expand on that for just a moment. I built a contraption that enables me to bolt a RCBS Rockchucker press on the tailgate of my Dodge buckboard. Brass pre-primed and belled at home goes to the range with several different pounds of powder and targets. A scale on the tailgate enables the shootist to work up a load right there at the range and log in the powder charge, velocity and group size in inches. Write it right on the target, punch 3 holes and file it into the three ring binder. If you make your own targets 8 ½” by 11” the targets will fit the 3-ring binder and you have documented load data. Each Colt has it’s own tab in the binder. The best loading manuals are the one tailored to your gun.

While my son was testing his new 7-’08 from Santa at 100 yards this old re-acquired 7 ½” Colt SAA .44 Special 3rd generation rested between my knees in a Keith sitting position with my back against a brace. Still I was surprised to measure 5 shots in 5 inches in the center at 100 yards with a SAA. Shot with a Colt I had traded away and got back. I just thought I'd pass it on.

That was a cool read thanks for sharing

[MtGun44]

My only SAA is a USFA model, which has much improved sight picture. With many of
the older Colt guns that I have examined, the sights are very small and difficult for me
to see.

Getting groups like 2" at 15 isn't too bad, but a 6" shows some sort of a problem,
must be the ammo if you can do 2" right afterwards, then repeat it. Sounds like
the 190 at .452 is doing a pretty good job.

How are the particular sights on that gun? Some of the rounded over ones with
lots of shine and no really flat top make it challenging to see them the same
each time.

Bill

[moose30273]

The sights are not so good. Rounded top and silvered from rubbing the holster. Kinda hard to see. Not near as bad as a nickel .44 special I once had. Was shooting it one day and actually saw a flock of geese flying over in the nickel plating.
I wish someone still made a slip over bead sight for these things.

[44man]

The sights are not so good. Rounded top and silvered from rubbing the holster. Kinda hard to see. Not near as bad as a nickel .44 special I once had. Was shooting it one day and actually saw a flock of geese flying over in the nickel plating.
I wish someone still made a slip over bead sight for these things.
I did once or twice. Brass silver soldered together with set screws to hold it to the blade. Slight undercut and painted flat black on the back.