The Firing Line Forums

Go Back   The Firing Line Forums > The North Corral > Black Powder and Cowboy Action Shooting

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old December 26, 2005, 05:56 PM   #1
NRAhab
Senior Member
 
Join Date: August 20, 2005
Location: Bellevue, WA
Posts: 683
Lead round balls in cartridges

The long and the short of it is that I'm working up a bunch of .45 Colt loads for my '58 Pietta. However, I've got about 200 .451 LRB sitting around. Can I load these safely into .45 Colt brass?
NRAhab is offline  
Old December 26, 2005, 08:59 PM   #2
Old Dragoon
Senior Member
 
Join Date: October 31, 2005
Location: The Republic of Californi
Posts: 581
Have you measured the inside dia of the 45 cases? If it is .451 and you can crimp just past halfway of the dia of the ball it should be fine. If not .451 inside Dia you will deform the ball somewhat. I tried this with 44 Rem mag brass with a turned down rim to fit my 44 Rem. conversion cylinder. and they work OK, but the ball is deformed in the case side upon seating. Not near as accurate as the .451 x 248 grn bullet for the 44 Rem Round. I did use some at a cowboy action target. Target was big and I was close so I didn't aim, just pointed and fired. Hit it. I used some at a 25 yd. official pistol and rapid fire targettarget They seem to shoot a bit high and to the left, but that was in the pistol that had the indentations in the rifling under the front sight and above the rammer latch. Everything was high and left that morning so i honestly cannot tell you if they are are aren't accurate.
Old Dragoon is offline  
Old December 26, 2005, 09:22 PM   #3
Hafoc
Senior Member
 
Join Date: August 20, 2005
Posts: 552
My Speer Reloading Manual, 11th edition, lists round ball loads for the .45 Colt. "Loads shown for the SPEER lead round ball are intended for use as gallery, or short range target loads. Accuracy can be quite good out to 50 feet."

They specify a .454 diameter ball of 141 grains. It's loaded very low, to under 600 fps.

I presume you could do the same thing with black powder instead of the smokeless the Speer manual specifies. Probably have to seat the ball deep within the case over a reduced powder charge? It seems to me that if you followed safe reloading practices, the worst that could happen would be a batch of inaccurate cartridges. But I am not sure, so I will defer to the experts on that.
Hafoc is offline  
Old December 26, 2005, 09:26 PM   #4
James K
Member In Memoriam
 
Join Date: March 17, 1999
Posts: 24,383
Since you can't lube a round ball cartridge load, seat a greased felt wad under the ball.

Jim
James K is offline  
Old December 27, 2005, 12:05 AM   #5
Jbar4Ranch
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 19, 1999
Location: Near Helena, Montana
Posts: 1,719
I recently had need to make some very mild .45acp loads and chose to use a .451" round ball and Trail Boss for some of them. I found that the ball would fall right into the case once it cleared the mouth, so I used a .44-40 sizing die to size the top third of the case small enough to grip the .451 ball tightly enough to hold it, expanded the mouth just enough to be able to start the ball, primed, charged, seated the ball, then applied a conventional taper crimp.

I expect you could do the same thing to make a .451 round ball work in the .45 Colt.
__________________
Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets replaced...

SASS 47015
Jbar4Ranch is offline  
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 03:13 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
This site and contents, including all posts, Copyright © 1998-2021 S.W.A.T. Magazine
Copyright Complaints: Please direct DMCA Takedown Notices to the registered agent: thefiringline.com
Page generated in 0.26344 seconds with 10 queries