45 Colt BP loading for me, Yikes

[Savage99]

Howdy
My brain has gone into overload a wee bit.
I want to reload 45 Colt, 38-55, 44-40 and 45-70 with black powder and cast bullets, I have the molds.
After reading many of these posts that are here and You Tube videos this is what I have decide to try.
I am not into competition but I want accurate loads.
First off I didn't know you needed to lube the bullets with a BP lube so I am going to use the Emmerts Lube
that I got from the boolit lube section. I am going to order some things from RandyRat to complete the mixture.
So here goes with what I'm going to do, the 45 Colt first.
1. Brass which is primed (large pistol) and slightly belled.
2. Drop about 40 grains of powder. I have Hodgdon Triple 7 in FFG and FFFG, Goex Pinnacle in FFG and FFFG.
I am not sure which to use since I have 5 lbs each. Help me out here!!
3. Cardboard from a cracker box that is .045 thick. I found a punch that will work, it is about .454.
4. 2 felt pieces that each are 1/16" thick (for a total of 1/8") and soaked with the Emmert's lube with lanolin.
5. 1 more piece of cardboard from the cracker box.
6. then the BP lubed bullet seated to the proper length and crimp. I pan lube then size.
I haven't reloaded BP before so I am a little overwhelmed with all the various techniques and info out there.
So what do you all think? I will use the same procedure with the other cartridges if this makes sense to youall.
Thanks for helping out.

[Chill Wills]

You will need BP lube if you are shooting BP. The fuel you are going to use is not BP.

The case is not near big enough for all that you plan to put in it.

Cases are smaller inside these days than in 1873.
You might only get in about 30-35 grains real BP with zero wads and felt stuff.
The fake powder stuff is fluffy so less of that will go in.

You are on the right track by reading and trying. Try some things then regroup and learn from your efforts.
Have fun and be safe.

[Dan Cash]

Chill is right. I can only add that you will be well served to forget the 777 and by hook or by crook, get some black powder. I know; you are in California.

[Bent Ramrod]

A good start on BP lube is SPG. It works OK on other powders too.

You don't necessarily need a wad stack for the short BP cases. The relatively light powder charges can be handled by a good lube even in the small grease grooves of Ideals 42498 and 454190. However, I've been trying the NOE version of that .44 caliber Big Lube boolit in my Low Wall, and the extra lube doesn't seem to hurt.

I broke down some original .44-40 Winchester loads for salvage. They had around 42-43 gr of powder, a wax disc and bullets around 198 gr, 0.426" diameter. There was dried lube in the lube grooves, too.

I use the 2.5 and 2.8 cc Lee powder scoops (35-38gr) dropped through a drop tube into balloon head .44-40 cases, seat the boolit and the Lee Factory Crimp. Seems to work OK; 10-shot groups at 100 yards maybe 7" with most of them somewhat tighter, blow tubing between shots.

[ian45662]

Imho just load your FFg powder with no wads or anything. Try 30-35 grains by volume. 35 grains by weight is about as much goex that I can fit in a case so I imagine that 35 grains by volume of bp subs will be very similar.


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[MT Chambers]

Get some Black Powder, real black not pinnicle, not triple 7, use a bp lube on your bullets, drop tube charges once you find out how much the case will hold.

[Don McDowell]

You can drop about 35 gr. of Olde Eysnford 2f in that case and seat the bullet and a thin wad without compression.

[Wayne Smith]

Emmerts is fine - I added a little lanolin and a touch of soap to it but it will work fine normally. I load 44-40, not 45 Colt, but the process is the same. I use the MAV big lube boolit, and a similar big lube boolit is available for the 45 Colt, and no wad between the base of the boolit and the powder. I use Goex FFG and shoot this out of two Uberti Cattlemans and a Uberti 1874 Short Rifle (20" barrel) with no leading and no excessive powder residue in the barrel. All three of the guns are easy to clean after shooting.

You are making this way too complex. Those things may be necessary for loading rifle loads, although most use a lube cookie rather than wads under the boolit. Pistol loading is simpler - just the primer, powder, and the boolit with ample lube in the grooves. I believe Tom at Accurate makes a big lube boolit mold for the 45 as well. Lube soaked wads are only, in my experience, used in cap and ball revolvers, and I use them between the powder and ball routinely when loading mine.

[bigted]

simple is best with these Colt 45 loadings ... or any other short revolver cartridges. think back to the OLD days when the fellers would charge em up outside around the campfire with an old ideal and later lyman loading tool.

prime em
powder em
seat n crimp the boolit
shoot em
clean em up ... reload em ... repeat till ya fall over having had so much fun ya cant stay on yer feet anymore.

finesse will come later ... rite now just shoot fer the grins it brings to yer foul mug.

[Springfield]

There a at least 5 cowboy shooting clubs up in your area, and I believe one of them specializes in Blackpowder shoots. If you were a little further south I would show you how I do it. My daughter and i both shoot BP in our cowboy guns at matches a couple of times a month, and it is no big deal unless you make it so. Just use a bullet with a decent amount of soft lube, use real BP, and make sure you have a slight bit of compression on the powder. The bullet will determine how much powder that is, some are longer than others. And clean up with some sort of water soluble liquid, with just water working fine as long as you lube you guns well afterward.

[Dale53]

I competed regularly for some years with a fixed sighted single action .45 Colt in both NRA score matches as well as silhouette. My choice was a Bisley Vaquero. It has great fixed sights and, as luck would have it, shoots to the sights (dead on at 25 yards) with my choice of a load.

My bullet is a home cast Lyman 452664, lubed with Emmert's modified home mix lube (50% pure natural beeswax, 40% Crisco, and 10% Anhydrous Lanolin). I lube with my RCBS or Lyman lube sizer and size the 30/1 lead/tin bullet .452". If you don't want to mix your own lube, SPG works just as well.
Size your bullets to your cylinder throat.

IMPORTANT: you load Black Powder by VOLUME, not weight. Using YOUR particular brand of cases, drop enough black powder that the bullet compresses it by 1/16" when seated. No more, no less (more can damage the soft bullet). These loads shoot under 2" at 25 yards off a rest. I use 3f Swiss. It is a heavy load (900+fps) but shoots center at 25 yards and at fifty yards you can hold at the top of the black on an NRA pistol target and they drop into the ten ring. Pyrodex P works as well with the same loading methods.

I clean my revolver at the range, immediately after shooting, and it looks as good after thousands of shots as it did new:

http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj80/Dale53/RugerVaquero-2.jpg (http://s269.photobucket.com/user/Dale53/media/RugerVaquero-2.jpg.html)

I carried a milk jug 3/4 full of tap water with a couple of squirts of Dawn dishwashing liquid in it. I decapped the cases at the range and dropped them in the jug. By the time I got home they were nearly clean. I rinsed them several times and threw them in a dedicated colander and shook the water off, then immediately dropped them in my Dillon vibratory tumbler and tumbled them for a couple of hours in ground corn cobs. The cases come out sparkling clean. Fail to clean your cases promptly, the black powder fouling will destroy them.

I won a number of matches with this combination including at Friendship, In where competition was fierce.

No need for ultra complicated loads - simple but correct...

FWIW
Dale53

[Outpost75]

I love it when people validate the K.I.S.S. principle!

[SSGOldfart]

" O
I love it when people validate the K.I.S.S. principle!

Same here

[commando223]

I've been using Olde Eysnford 2f with a milk carton wad decent accuracy.

[tigweldit]

Dale53, what a great write-up and a beautiful gun. I think you just talked me into a new phase of this hobby.

[Outpost75]

If you cannot get SPG lube locally, a home-made expedient we use here we call Confederate Army Lube.

Equal parts by melted volume of Goya Manteca (refined, filtered, unsalted pig lard) and beeswax.

If unable to get beeswax, substitute for the beeswax equal parts by melted volume of Fougera, Lanolin, Modified Topical Lubricant and Gulf (paraffin) canning wax for the beeswax, then mix THAT equal parts with the Manteca.

Good consistency to use in lubricator sizer, but also works fine for pan lubing.

185189

[Good Cheer]

250 grain bore rider hollow base loading for single shot rifle to let the case be used for powder.
The lube is in the base.
185367