143gr Round Ball in My Uberti Cattelman

[Terry37932]

There is another post in here somewhere addressing this issue but darn if I can find it now. Someone gave me several boxes of Speer .457 Lead Round Ball, average weight is about 143.2gr. I ran them through my Lee .452 sizing die with no issues and will coat them with ALOX at a later date.

Am I still good using 34gr to 36gr of FFFG (Lee 2.2cc yellow powder scoop) like I would for loading 230gr LRN? Would appreciate any feedback.

Thanks

[Terry37932]

I'm beginning to wonder if I posted this in the wrong location?

[Silver Jack Hammer]

The only experimentation I've done is with my own home cast ww LRB in Schofield brass with 3, 4 and 5 gr of Red Dot and with 6 gr of Trail Boss. With the 5 gr of Red Dot I gave 650 fps and the Trail Boss clocked at 535 fps. I was all a really promising combination but I've not revisited it in years.

[justashooter]

from a safety standpoint, you have no issues to worry about. your accuracy will not be quite as good, but your recoil will be lower, as will be your point of impact (higher velocity due to lighter bullet means bullet leaves barrel while lower in recoil related rotational movement of gun and at a differential relative recoil rate). you should still be able to hit a playing card at 25 paces. this will still be a man stopper. remember to clean after use as black powder residue is hygroscopic.

[bigted]

round balls be fun. they are very cool when you run a .500 ball thru the .452 inch Lee and get a nice flat circumference to hold in the case. then as you already stated ... allox em ... allow to dry ... allox em again ... allow to dry ... load n shoot. the BP really sends em scootin down range with a full case full behind the sized ball.


have a great time with em. report back with your success. and pictures man ... pictures

[bedbugbilly]

While Alox will lube . . if you're using BP for powder, at some point you are going to have to worry about keeping the fouling soft just as you would in shooting a C & B or BP cartridge with a regular conical design. That's why you use BP lube with BP. You could certainly try it with just the Alox but check after firing a cylinder full and see what your barrel looks like. If the fouling became a problem, put a card over the powder, then a BP lube cake and then seat the ball - but the "roundness" of the ball being seated is going to deform the lube cake and card when you compress the load.

I've only played with RB and smokeless just because of those reasons and not wanting to hassle with the RB, lube and card. On my BP cartridges with standard lead conicals, I finger lube the lube groove with the BP lube I've been making and using for 50 + years - but that's not RB.

If you don't want to mess with using a lube below the ball - I suppose it could be lubed just like a C & B revolver is - load the cartridge and put just a tad of BP lube in the throats on top of the ball - a popsicle stick would work well - and just a little will keep the fouling soft.

An interesting project - I hope you'll post how it goes and what you find works the best. RB "gallery loads" can be a lot of fun! Good luck and enjoy!