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Old October 8, 2018, 02:50 PM   #26
44 Dave
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Are you also shooting bp in your rifle, the check is to look for a slight ring of lube at the muzzle.
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Old October 8, 2018, 07:31 PM   #27
John E.B. Rawton
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I am not shooting bp in my rifle. I will be shooting Josey Wales, all pistols, using Walkers in place of my rifle. Since my wife shoots smokeless and we only have one rifle, I’ll keep it clean for her. Plus my rifle is .45 colt and I hear they can get real dirty with blow back. The smokeless leaves a fair amount of soot in it.
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Old October 11, 2018, 02:45 PM   #28
Crunchy Frog
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I shoot .38 Special and when I get the urge to shoot Frontier Cartridge my usual load is a 158 grain bullet over APP, which does not require a soft lube. A friend uses Black MZ with standard cast bullets (hard lube) to good result. APP residue cleans up with tap water.

APP is hygroscopic out of the bottle. I have learned to clean my press and measure after acloading session to avoid rust.
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Old October 24, 2018, 09:42 PM   #29
Driftwood Johnson
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Howdy

So how did the shoot go?

For the record, I have been using nothing but Black Powder cartridges in all my CAS guns for at least 15 years now, maybe more.

Bullet Lube: I used to pan lube regular hard cast bullets with a mixture of about 50/50 Crisco/Beeswax. I found that regular hard cast bullets carry enough lube for a revolver, but would get starved for lube about 6" from the end of a rifle barrel, resulting in reduced accuracy. Then I started adding a grease cookie under the bullet between the powder and the bullet. I put a card wad between the grease cookie and the powder to keep it from adulterating the powder. This put more lube in the bore, but resulted in terrible accuracy because the lube cookie was sticking to the base of the bullet and making it fly like a lopsided dart. So I added another wad between the bullet and the cookie. Way too much work! Powder, wad, cookie, wad, bullet.

Then I discovered Big Lube bullets and never looked back. They carry enough soft bullet lube to keep the bullet well lubed for the longest rifle barrel.

I simply load the bullet directly on top of the powder, compressing the powder between 1/16" to 1/8" with the base of the bullet. That's it. No, the base of the bullet does not get deformed by the powder. I tested some loads with both a wad between the bullet and powder and some without. No significant difference in accuracy that I could measure. Less work is simpler for me.

No, I do not use a drop tube to settle the powder for my CAS loads. No need. For my single shot 45-70 loads, yes. But not for my 45 Colt, 45 Schofield, 44-40, 44 Russian, or 38-40 loads.

When I was still pan lubing I put wads on top of my 44-40 loads all the time. No problem.
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Old October 27, 2018, 01:31 PM   #30
John E.B. Rawton
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Driftwood,
The cowboy shoot was awesome. Shooting bp put a whole new twist on it and I know I was a grinnin’ fool.
I shot 118 out 120 using all four pistols. One miss and one misfire due to a weak primer strike. I think the kirst pin was getting fouled.
The .38s ran great but the .45s, not so good. My big mistake I learned, was not lubing up the arbor and they would bind almost every stage.
I’ve been spending time fine tuning the arbor seat and cylinder clearance on the walkers.
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