45 colt, 454 soft roundball, and BP- what wads/lube shoots well and stores ok?

[Radarsonwheels]

I shoot a lot of cap and ball so I have cast piles of 454 round balls. I want to get into black powder cartridge shooting with my 'spaghetti' 1873 SAA but I don't want to switch my lyman 450 over to a BP type lube to shoot lube groove boolits.

I figure since BP must fill the case I would be good to go with something like a wonder wad over a card? Wonder wads are not reccommended for storage in cartridges because they leach and foul the powder over time. I'm interested in maybe making my own wads if I can make a lube soft enough to keep the fouling soft but hard enough to store for weeks or a couple months.

If its my only option I can just load whatever Im about to go shoot, but it'd be nice to make a few hundred at a time.

Any advice would be great!

Thanks

[bigted]

I never load any cards nor wads in my 45 Colt loads. especially the round ball loads. I simply size ... flair ... powder the cast full ... set the ball in the flair ... compress the powder enough [with the ball ... pure lead] to get the equator of the ball into the flair completely ... then crimp the case to hold the ball in the case ... walla ready to shoot.

sometimes I run the balls in a baggie with some Lee allox tumble lube and allow em to dry on a coffee can lid over nite. then load em to stay loaded till I wanna go shoot em.

trick I find that works very well for target shooting is to smear the cylinder end full of Crisco for lube and making the fouling soft for more shooting ... I bought a chainsaw bar grease gun with the little tip on it for doing a fast job of the greasing of the cylinder chambers ... what with the squeeze handle it only takes a single squeeze for each cylinder and a turn after all are greased ... then wipe off the left side of the frame/cylinder gap of excess Crisco.

if ... on the other hand ... you are going to just use it for hunting birds n small game ... or ... just a carry gun ... I do not use the Crisco as it is too messy for the simple carry need.

jest me 2 cents werth.

[Nobade]

I haven't messed with ball loads in the 45 much, but when I did I loaded it just like my percussion revolvers - felt wad lubed with ugly cat lube and a plain naked ball on top. Make sure there's plenty of compression. Depending on the gun, you may find you have to drill out the flash holes in the cases some or the primers will back out and tie up the cylinder. I can see why wonder wads shouldn't be left loaded, the ugly cat lube is much less liquid and doesn't do that. But it does a good job of managing fouling.

By weight, two parts Gulf wax two parts sheep tallow and one part beeswax. Also makes the best dip lube I have ever tried.

-Nobade

[bigted]

Nobade ... what is Gulf wax?

[SharpsShooter]

Nobade ... what is Gulf wax?

It's paraffin canning wax.

SS

[Nobade]

Nobade ... what is Gulf wax?

Yep, like he said... you get it at the grocery store. I didn't think anything like that would work with BP fouling, but I tried it and sure enough it makes a great lube for BP. You can get the mutton tallow from Dixie Gun Works if you can't find it locally.

-Nobade

[Radarsonwheels]

So gato feo huh? Ok I'll try it

[Nobade]

Yep, he's the first one I ever saw mention it. Evidently he got it from an old dip lube recipe for 22 bullets or something. Works good at any rate.

-Nobade

[bigted]

thanks ... ill try it.

[Grapeshot]

Having done this a few times over the years I came up with a workable way to do it without contaminating the BP. I's coat the RB's with LLA and let dry. Pour in about 35 grains of 2Fg in my .45 Colt cases, put a wax paper wad that was .460 in diameter on top of the powder, followed by a wonder wad insert ball and seat until you passed the mid point of ball, then taper crimp case over ball's radius and up have a round that will work just fine. You can also use a 1/4 inch cork wad over the powder and insert ball on top of that. Either way you get C&B performance out of a cartridge arm.

[Radarsonwheels]

So I ended up getting a couple pounds of NASA from señor Bullshop, melting the blue magma crayon lube out of my last 30 commercial hardcast 250gn 45 slugs I had on hand, and hand smeared the NASA into the grooves. Then I loaded them full just compressed with goex fffg.

Still haven't gotten a chance to shoot 'em up- I've been concentrating on trying to run my Lyman 450 out of lyman moly lube so I can cram a bunch of NASA in there to try. They say 500 large bullets per stick- its gonna take a few sessions to load 1000 44 mag slugs!

I'll report back when I get em shot up!

Radar