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The mold I have was intended for a .45 cap and ball revolver and the drop around .456" but I'm hoping that after powder coat them they'll be .458" or larger.
Any suggestions for a load a subsonic load .45-70 for them? I have plenty of Red Dot and Unique and a few other powders that might be suitable.
Tony
I don't have a .45-70 but 10 grains of Unique under a 250 grain boolit works great in my .38-55
A .458” coated ball may not work well in a .458” bore unless cast of pure lead. There will be almost no seal and a very short bearing surface. That said, a light load of Unique or RedDot should work, although 10.0 grains of either will likely be too much and could cause the bullet to strip in the bore due to the very short bearing surface. What is the twist rate of your rifle?
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Try looking at gmdr.com lever gun. Really interesting and lots of powderpuff loads with different powders. 45/70 and much more. Be safe.
I use 10 grs of unique in my 45/70 - start there and work up slowly ??
My good ole Henry with 405 cast PC’d likes blue dot or red dot equally then unique in that 1000 fps area. Real powder puffs. But deer killers inside a 100. No broke shoulder either!
15 gr of Unique and a 300gr Lyman or RCBS is magic in my Marlin 95 or either of my Remington Rolling Blocks.
I'll cast and powder coat some boolits from that mold and hopefully report back soon...
Try 8.5 gr of Bullseye [no filler or wad]. That's what I used with that bullet numerous years ago. I cast them soft out of 30 or 40-1 alloy and shot as cast with a couple light coats of LLA.
I remember reading a very old article (my mind does play tricks on me sometimes....) where the author used a single round ball in a 45/70, and pushed it down onto 1-2grains of BullsEye, or some such fast powder. This upped the pressure so the ball would give good velocity with VERY small charges
In another article, the depth of seating the ball was used to "Tune" the load.
This was something I have been wanting to try for some time. I was going to start with the ball as deep as I could snug it in there without swaging it down (as best I could tell) and use 1 grain of BE (or RedDot)
go down/up as necessary to ensure the ball would exit EVERY time.
Then adjust seating depth to fine tune the accuracy, upping the charge as necessary to ensure exit
This would replicate the very short 45cal cartridges being shot in a rifle.
it "might" make an easy to load short range plinker
once I got that figgered, the next move would be to try a conical of about 300grains using the same techniques, the goal being a quiet 100yd or less deer slayer. I doubt 300grains would need much velocity to penetrate 18-24" of whitetail deer.
Ah.... So much thoughts.... so little time....
Been a while, but I used to use 9 grains of Unique and a .457 round ball in the .45-70. No need to re-size, just thumb the ball in over the 9 gr. load. Zippy enough for small game and beer cans.
The link one of you provided showed a bunch of "cowboy" loads. I plan to start with 8g of Red Dot and see how it works.
In one Handloader magazine that discussed classic and modern 45-70 loads, the author recommended 5 grains of black, followed by a card wad, two lubricated wads, and then a .457 round ball pushed down onto the wads. It was said to be good out to 50 feet.
I have used a 150 grain collar button with 6.5-7.5 grains of Titegroup (bullet seated at the case mouth). That load is very accurate at 25 yards, and pretty quiet. I think a .45-cal round ball is around 147 grains. May be pretty similar. With your RBs being a bit smaller than bore diameter, a wad may help achieve the gas seal. But there I'm just speculating.