Original 45 Colt

[John Boy]

Can someone post a photo of an original .45Colt bullet to compare?

Both Pictures - Compliments of w44wcf posted on The Open Range Thread ... Vintage .45 Colt black powder ctg's. in a 24" barrel

[Glen]

Thanks for posting that John. That's very helpful information.

[Texasflyboy]

Here is Geo. A. Hensley's (Hensley & Gibbs) Contribution to the original .45 Colt Design. Strange in that it has a round grease grooves, and two at that. As I am pretty sure this mould dates to the 1937-41 time frame.

The ledger entry:

#22-- .45 Colt. 250 grains. "Standard" design with plain base, two grease grooves no crimp groove. Noses has rounded curve to meplat.


The Photos:







The Bullet:





The blocks and stamp:

[LIMPINGJ]

Wish someone made one with the quality of that H&G. I would be in line for one.

[opentop]

I was looking at the Lyman Mold on midway's web site and one of the reviewers said that the illustrated picture looks nothing like the real bullet. The real bullet is conical, just like the ones posted in GLL’s pictures.

Also look at this Remington Bullet, It looks just like the old design.

http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpag...eitemid=446981

[Heavy lead]

I have a Lyman 454190 purchased brand new two months ago. It still does have the small meplat and the same profile of the older Ideal moulds and casts .455 out of both cavities with 2 parts pure lead 1 part ww and very nicely too. It has no crimp groove and I do not have a problem with this, I can crimp it just fine without the groove. The only difference I can see between this and the older Ideal is the grease grooves are rounded, but certainly adequate. On another note I just bought an old group buy 454190 clone 6 hole Lee mould that is this boolit with a crimp groove added. This is casting huge for me at .461, this has very deep square grease grooves and a slightly bigger meplat than the 454190 Lyman I have, but essentially is the spitting image, loaded you can hardley tell the difference. I used some release agent to size it down so it is dropping .457 and I am sizing to 454. I would think for black powder these much deeper grease grooves would be a good thing, I don't shoot black so I don't know.
Here is the boolit: http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=14268

[C A Plater]

You could probably get one very close to the original from Mountain Moulds. This is one I came up with after playing with the designer for a few minutes. The second one is what I ordered for use in my S&W Mountain Gun. Both are 250 grains.

[ktw]

Would anyone be interested in a group by on this bullet to reproduce an original looking 45 colt bullet? The new lyman 454190 has a wide metplate, while the older lyman and ideal molds pictured above have a small metplate.

The new lyman design with the larger meplat that people are refereing to is the 452664.

Lyman's older 454190 hasn't changed much over the years, outside of as-cast diameters. Lyman's design drawing is a poor reflection of what the mold actually throws.

I would be interested in a 4 cavity duplicate of the 454190 in iron blocks with an as cast diameter somewhere between 455 and 457 in acww. My plan has been to convince Red River Rick to cut me one someday when he appears to be looking around for a new project.

I can pile up bullets almost as fast with a matched pair of 2 cavity molds. I could live with that option, provided the blocks are somewhat larger than those provided by Lyman.

-ktw

[opentop]

I just ordered the Lyman 454190 today from midway. I'm going to give them a try.

[LIMPINGJ]

I was looking for a 4 cavity but I see Lyman only offers the 454190 in 1 or 2 cavity. The Saeco #955 looks similar to the picture of the Lyman 454190 in my Midway catalog, does anyone have this mold and could tell me how close it is to the Lyman design?

[Tom Myers]

For as long as I knew him, a very good friend of mine, John Wesley Cusey, now deceased, carried a 5 1/2 in bbl Colt 45 from the time he got up in the morning until he went to bed at night. Every day he would shoot at least a cylinder full of rounds loaded with the 454190 bullet. He also loved to cast bullets. At the age of 82 he slipped and fell on a patch of ice and died from the fall. At the time of his death, he had approximately 27,000 454190 bullets lubed and stored in 1 lb coffee cans.

Several years before he died Wes asked me to hone out the bore ride portions of the ancient Lyman 2 cavity mold that he used for casting as they dropped from the mold at 0.454 on the bands and 0.450 on the bore ride portion.

It was a slow process to open just the bore riding portion out the additional 0.004", but once the job was finished, it transformed a bullet with mediocre accuracy into a real tack driver from both Wes's Colt and my Uberti Colt Clone.

This improvement in accuracy was evident for both smokeless and black powder loads. Wes shot smokeless and I shot the holy black. One time, I had 100 rounds lubed with homemade Emmert's lube and loaded with 30 gr. of Goex FFG with some corn meal filler on top that I wanted to shoot up and reload the cases. I shot all 100 rounds as fast as I could, reloading and firing until the pistol was so hot I needed gloves to load and fire. The pistol was not any more fouled at the end of 100 rounds than it was after 12 rounds and I could not perceive any deterioration in the accuracy.

I only have about a half can of those bullet left as all of Wes's stash and the mold was destroyed in a fire a couple of years ago.

It sure would be great if a 6 cavity mold was available to reproduce a bullet with the same dimensions that shot so well in our pistols.

This is a sketch with measurement values from a sample of the bullets I have left.

Tom Myers
Precision Ballistics and Records

[Dale53]

Tom;
You probably already know this, but just in case...

The Cowboy crowd have developed a .45 Cowboy Special. It is a short case (same length and capacity of the .45 ACP and .45 Auto Rim but with the rim and headspace of a .45 Colt) to efficiently use low charges of both black powder and smokeless powder to reduce recoil.

I ordered some of these cases out to use in a Taurus Tracker (.45 APC) that I had. The Taurus was not headspaced for Auto Rim cases as were the 1917 Smiths and Colts (and later commercial versions) but the headspace was exactly spot on for the .45 Colt rim. They worked just fine. However, after I got the Taurus, I ended up with a couple of S&W 625's so had little need of the Taurus so it went on it's way.

However, I have and shoot a Ruger Bisley Vaquero in .45 Colt and will use the cases in that revolver for reduced recoil with black powder and for target loads with smokeless. I have every reason to believe that they will work very well.

Due to temporary (I hope) vision problems I have not yet shot them in the Vaquero. Just thought it might be a better solution for you than using a case filler. .45 ACP and/or Auto Rim dies work perfectly but you will need a .45 Colt Shellholder or shellplate (which you already have). In the Vasquero I'll also be trying my H&G #103 .452", 200 gr, SWC with both black and smokeless (I'll be using "Improved Emmerts" for lube) for target use. It should materially reduce the recoil (which can be tiring with full case loads of black in the full length .45 Colt case.

Incidentally, the brass seems to be of excellent quality (I suspect that Starline may be the supplier but do not know that). Here is the web site for the case and story:

http://www.cowboy45special.com/cowboy45brass.html

Just a thought or two...

Dale53

[Tom Myers]

Dale

I've heard about the shortened cases, but the reason for the filler was not to take up space, but to act as a scouring agent to remove the black powder residue during each shot. In this case it worked quite well. During my 100 round torture test, although the outside of the revolver was a real mess, the bore and chamber throats remained in the same semi-fouled state throughout the session. I have also loaded the corn meal filler in the Marlin 38-55 to shoot lever gun matches using black powder. After 50 rounds there seemed to be no deterioration in accuracy from fouling. Although admittedly the temperature was low and the humidity high during these shoots. It might be an altogether different and disastrous scenario during high heat and low humidity conditions.

I believe that the reason the superb accuracy of that 454190 bullet was the fact that the bore ride portion now fits the throats of the cylinder and is in fact supported by the throat walls when the bullet is chambered. A shortened cartridge case would pull the bullet back into the chamber where upon firing it would rattle down the chamber walls until contacting the throat lead and would most likely not be aligned when exiting the throat into the forcing cone.

Tom Myers
Precision Ballistics and Records

[Glen]

I've got a 3-cavity Cramer mould for that same bullet, and it is one of the most accurate I've ever shot in the .45 Colt.

[45 2.1]

Everybody is right, the 454190 that casts out at 0.454" or slightly above is an excedeing accurate boolit, even at long range.

[madcaster]

Now this is a great thread!

[Dale53]

Tom;
When I was competing in the "side matches" at BPCR Silhouette matches with the revolver, I ended up using the Lyman Cowboy bullet 452664 lubed with home mix Emmert's lube. With my Ruger, I could get 70-75 shots before the cylinder started to bind. The chambers, throats, and barrel were never the deciding factor - just the fouling build up on the cylinder pin. I used a heavy application of Rig but I also hear that STP works well for that purpose (lubing the cylinder pin). Of course, most matches were over before the "limit" was reached. Further, I found that each revolver seems to be a law unto itself regarding number of shots that could be fired before binding the cylinder.

Regarding accuracy with the Cowboy Special cases in a .45 Colt - I can't give a report in that area. However, if my vision continues to improve, I WILL continue with that experiment as soon as the weather moderates. Frankly, I am "cautiously optimistic" given that .38 Specials often are as accurate as the parent cartridges in .357's (keeping in mind that the distances are longer in the .45 Colt). We'll see...

I MUST say I admire your artwork. You just flat do good work!! Thanks for sharing that with us.

Interesting thread...

Dale53

[FN in MT]

I've got one of the old Lyman Ideal tong loaders/bullet moulds, for the .45 Colt.

I'll cast a few and post a picture. Found the tool on a beam in an old barn thirty years ago out near White Sulphur Springs, MT.

FN in MT

[cajun shooter]

Dale, Happy to hear that the site is improving. Try using Mobil 1 sythentic red grease on the base pins. I shoot CAS and with this my revolvers never even have a hiccup. I shot a match this past Saturday and after arriving home put everthing in the safe. On Tuesday I went to clean and the cylinders were still free spining like they had never been fired. That's with nothing but the real "HOLY BLACK" no subs in this bunkhouse. I also shoot nothing but the big lube bullets that have my blend of lube. If I want to calm down the action I use 45 Schofield cases and the 200 gr Big Lube. Or for my true WARTHOG loads it's the 255 Big Lube in 45 Colt filled to the top.

[Dale53]

cajun shooter;
I'll give Mobil 1 Synthetic Red Grease a try. Thanks for the tip.

Dale53