Duplexing .45 Colt

[curator]

I have been duplexing .45-70 .577-450MH, and .40-65 Black powder loads with excellent success for several year. The advantages are many; almost no fouling, and no accuracy issues after several shots. Clean-up is a breeze and accuracy is outstanding. Another advantage is being able to use less-greasy boolit lubes like LBT "blue" and Lee Liquid Alox. My preferred "kicker" is 3 grains of SR4759. I am wondering if anyone on this august forum has any experience duplexing .45 Colt loads. My concept is using 3 grains of SR4759 and 30 grains of Goex FFg with an over powder 1/16" card wad and slight compression followed by a Lee .454-255 FN boolit cast from 30/1 lead tin alloy and lubed with LBT "blue." I can lube boolits with Emmit's lube or 50/50 bee's wax/lard but have 1K of the Lee .454-255 already lubed with LBT blue (which has worked very well in the past with duplexed black powder loads.) I will be firing these in a Uberti Cattleman revolver as well as a Rossi M92 clone rifle. Any actual experience both positive or negative will be greatly appreciated.

[Don McDowell]

Why not just load 37 grs. of that 3f and be done with it?I've ran as many as 50 rounds thru a SAA loaded that way with no problems and clean up was simple enough.
Don't want to shoot black then load it with your 4759..

[35 Whelen]

I'll be watching this thread. Hopefully W30WCF will chime in with his boundless knowledge.

How does duplexing affect the cases as far as BP fouling is concerned. I'm new to BP and while it doesn't bother me in the least to clean fouling from the bores of my rifles, I HATE having to clean brass cartridge cases.

35W

[sharps4590]

curator, I can't imagine it wouldn't work the same as in your rifles. As with yourself I've been lightly duplexing the same or similar rifle cartridges for decades with results that echo yours nor have I tried it in the 45 Colt. SR-4759 is also my choice. I don't duplex as a matter of course, however, using it more as a choice of last resort. Doing so knowledgeably has saved my bacon with a few rifles, especially the old black powder express double rifles where one is sometimes hard pressed to achieve velocities necessary for regulation with straight black powder.

35, the cases are also as clean as the bore, at least that's been my experience.

[Vann]

I was thinking about duplexing the 45 Colt myself yesterday. As long as the 10% rule is followed I think it'll work. In a Ruger you could possibly go up to 20%. My powder do choice is IMR 4227 in the 45/70 so that would probably be what I'd try in the 45 Colt loadings.

[curator]

Don McDowell,

I have loaded .45 Colt with straight black powder, both FFg and FFFg using the Lee 255 grain bullet with mediocre to poor results. Usually after 8 or 10 shots accuracy would disappear until the bore was cleaned. I suspect the Lee bullet doesn't hold enough lube to work well with straight black powder. I do have the old Lyman 454190 (large lube grooves) mould but it is a single cavity and I have 1000+ of the Lee slugs already cast and lubed with LBT "blue". Duplexing solved the lube problem on my rifle loads and the LBT lube gives better accuracy than Emmet's or SPG as well as is less messy to work with. I was hoping someone here had tried this combination and could advise me.

[Don McDowell]

Try a decent blackpowder lube.

[Outpost75]

I have duplexed my .44-40s using 3 grains of a bulky smokeless like Red Dot and 30 grains of Black and it shot well and burned very clean. I have done the same thing in my Ruger Old Army, evenly mixing one shot glass of Red Dot to TEN shot glasses of black, using that mixture to fill my pistol flask, having done so for years with no ill effects.

I use "Confederate Army Lube" aka "Texas Gun Grease" which is equal parts by melted volume of beeswax and pork lard or Goya Manteca.

[Denver]

I started experimenting with duplex loads for my 16 inch barreled Marlin 45C last fall. I used 2 grains of Unique under 30 grains of Wano 2f. My boolit is a 250 grain SWC from a group buy mold. My lube is a mix of beeswax, crisco and olive oil. Alloy is accw. I was surprised and delighted with the first 5 shot group at 50 yards as the first 3 holes were nearly touching and the the last 2 opened the group to a little more than an inch. This is far better than any smokeless loads I had tried before. Tried this same load in my 24 in barrel Rossi 45C, but wasn't able to get the same accuracy. Part of that is me and iron sights. No evidence of leading and barrel fouling was easily removed with a patch wetted with Ed's red followed with a dry patch. Cases were just as dirty as when using all black. More testing to come when the weather gets better.

[35 Whelen]

Good stuff so far guys. Keep up the information flow!

35W

[Nobade]

I have had lousy results with 4759 in duplexed pistol cartridges, I suspect the pressure isn't high enough for it to work right. So far, medium burning pistol/shotgun powders have worked best. I mainly use Accurate #5 since it meters well and I have a lot of it. 3.0gr. of that and 30 gr or so FFg work well in my Marlin 1894 with the #454190 for cowboy silhouette. Why duplex load? Well, it is more accurate than smokeless loads, doesn't lead the bore, and since my wife doesn't want to deal with having to blow down the bore between strings or worry about fouling it keeps everybody happy. Could I use straight black? Sure I could. But with that small lube groove bullet I have to wipe between animals and blow between strings in the summer or it will foul out. And that is using Old E or Swiss. Duplexed, no problem. Just load and shoot. Revolvers are different and I seldom duplex load for them. But rifles in the summer are another matter, and yes I do use good BP lube.

-Nobade

[curator]

Nobade,

That's what I was looking for. My experience with SR4759 in low-pressure situations is lots of unburned powder. I have some AA#5 as well as Unique (thanx Denver) so I may try those. In the past, straight 30+ grains of Goex FFg in the Uberti Cattleman revolver would result in fouling issues after about 12 rounds. Switching to FFFg didn't seem to make much difference. I had been using both SPG and Emmit's lube (both recommended highly for black powder) but still had issues with this Lee 452-255FN, possibly because it doesn't hold enough lube. Duplexed rifle cartridges seemed to work will regardless of lube used, even good results with Lee Liquid Alox and the 45-45-10 variant.

[bigted]

In my duplex loadings I use IMR 4227 and always had very good results. Never pistol cartridges tho.

[35 Whelen]

OK...I cast a bunch of 38-40 bullets (RCBS 40-180 mould @ 192 grs., TAC-1 lube) yesterday and thought I'd try duplexing old Goex 2Fg that burns very, very filthy. As a control load I loaded 1.9cc of the Goex and it chrono-ed at 1065 fps. After only five rounds I pushed somewhere around 1/8 tsp. of dry soot out of the barrel. Added .3cc (2.4 grs.) of Unique and chrono-ed again, 1269 fps average and very, very little fouling brushed out. That's all the daylight I had and I hope to go at it again this afternoon trying a little less Unique as well as doing some accuracy testing.

35W

[jonp]

I started doing it with a bp cartridge rifle last year and much help from Nobade. Made clean-up much easier. In the 45lc I have tried it a little but have a ton of Unique and Red Dot so not much but I used Unique and 2f. Seemed to work ok.

[35 Whelen]

Shot some more 38-40 duplex loads again today. Found 4.0 grs. of 2400 under 1.9cc of old Goex 2F to be a really nice load. With the 192 gr. bullet from the RCBS mould, it average 1282 fps with an ES of only 11. I had only enough Goex for 15 rounds, but accuracy was maintained for 14 rounds. IMO this is excellent performance especially considering the bullet has a tiny lube groove and the lube itself is designed for smokeless.

35W

[sharps4590]

Interesting about the SR-4759 not doing well in handgun cartridges but makes sense. Will have to keep that in mind if I ever duplex the 45 Colt. Am a little surprised the 2400 worked so well but glad to know it.

[John in PA]

I've also used Red Dot for duplexing the .45 Colt. 2.5-3.0 grains, balance (usually around 31-33 grains) 3f black. Swiss, though costly, yields less, and softer, fouling. The original .45 Colt government bullet, a 250 gr roundnose with hollow base and deep square lube grooves, cast from 1:20 to 1:40 soft alloy (no antimony!!) performs well, and is dead nuts authentic. NEI used to make the mold, but I have to admit, since Walt Melander died, I haven't been too pleased with their quality.

4.0 grains Unique/balance black ought to perform similarly, though I haven't tried it myself.

[Outpost75]

As FYI, these are recent new listings by Accurate Molds have a substantial crimp groove for smokeless, but also provide adequate lube capacity for black powder in the .45 Colt. I recently received the 45-245O mold and have cast a few, but have not had a chance to try them at the range yet.
The 45-200O doesn't have adequate lube capacity for black, but is a lighter bullet of traditional profile providing lighter recoil for Cowboy shooters using smokeless, posted that drawing by mistake, but some might be interested...

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[curator]

Based on advice gathered here on this thread, I loaded 50 Colt .45 cartridges with 2.7 grains of Unique and 30 grains of Goex FFg, a .125 card wad (1/8" compression) and my Lee .452-255 FN BHN 12 boolits lubed with LBT blue as an experiment. I fired them today at 25 yards. Accuracy was better than most of my black powder only loads but not quite as good as my standard load of 8.5 grains of Unique under this boolit. What I was hoping for was a black powder load that would not gum up my Stainless steel Uberti "cattleman" .45 Colt revolver after 10 or 12 shots when using cast boolits lubed with smokeless lube. This load did everything I had hoped for. The cylinder pin did not gum up with fouling nor did fouling in the bore degrade accuracy after several cylinders full without wiping. Accuracy from the first 6 was good as the last 6. While the gun had quite a bit of soot on the outside, it functioned perfectly.

I appreciate the suggestions to get a "better boolit" with black powder type lube grooves, but the purpose of this was to find a way to use my stash of more than 1000 lubed boolits on hand using black powder. Duplexing with a tiny bit of smokeless pistol powder appears to make the main charge of Black Powder burn sufficiently cleaner making it unnecessary to use copious amounts of soft lube to control fouling. Since I had forgot to pack my Chrony's screen covers, I only fired a few over it to record velocity which was right around 1000 fps from my 5 1/2" barrel. Thunderous report, nice smoke cloud, manageable recoil but pretty zippy, actually!

[Outpost75]

1000 fps with 255-grain bullet in a 5-1/2" .45 Colt is a serious full power field load, whether black, smokeless or duplex!!! Thank you for the report.

I would have no hesitation to hunt deer, black bear or boar with such a load.

[Don McDowell]

Using a cleaner burning powder than Goex 2f will give you better results. I have ran as many as 25 rounds thru a revolver loaded with Goex 3f and the Remington bulk bullet and not tied the gun up. If you use something like Olde Eynsford or Swiss, and lube the bullet with a good bp lube running an entire 50 round box of rounds thru a revolver without it binding up isn't an usual thing .