My local gun shop cleared out a guy's garage and found a supply of reloaded.45 Colt ammo.
I wanted the .45 Colt brass, so he sold me the lot with the caveat I'd pull the bullets and start over.
I bought about a hundred rounds of reloaded .45 Colt and about 150 rounds of spent brass. I could tell by the empties that some had fired black powder. All green inside.
The former owner probably participated in Cowboy Action shooting. I figured none of the cartridges were loaded to max. Misc lead slugs -- round nose, flat nose and SWC, mostly.
I sorted the reloaded stuff by their cast bullet shape, figuring they were possibly loaded at the same sitting, then disassembled a representative cartridge and examined and weighed the powder and bullet.
Inside some cartridges was an unidentified smokeless powder, but in reasonable weights. Certainly not an overcharge. Some had powder with a buffer in the mix that looked like cereal or maltomeal or whatever, obviously added to bulk up the light charge's volume for reliable ignition. None had Trail Boss.
Other cartridges had black powder or BP substitute in them.
I took a few rounds to the range and carefully pulled the trigger. All the test rounds fired gently and the black powder spit brimstone. Nice. Did not measure velocity with the chrono. But they all felt like SASS-level charges. No hangfires.
Here's the weird part.
Some of the cases have been trimmed to strange lengths. I figured he was going for Schofield-sized brass, but none are really right.
Here are the lengths as measured:
The first six are nominally the right length for .45 Colt.
Then they start getting short -- but not short enough to be considered Schofield length.
Then at the end, they are really short.
I figure I can make the short rounds work in my revolvers with light SASS loads, but to function smoothly, the .45 Colt 1873 Winchester needs a round that's at least 1.450" long, and, ideally, 1.6" OAL so it doesn't hang up in the carrier. The longer brass will work, but not the shorter ones.
My question is, Why do you think a fella would cut his .45 brass to so many oddball lengths?