Which bullet for 45 with BP?

[Galloway]

I'm thinking of getting a uberti 45colt Henry and am looking for suggestions on a bullet that will work with black powder. I'd like to get close to 44flat performance with a 200gr bullet. Other than the big lube bullet is there anything else availible? I have a taurus thunderbolt with 26'' barrels that I cant get to shoot accuratley with a traditional two groove bullet with either 200 or 250gr bullets. The big lube bullet makes sense but I've seen them keyhole with my 44-40 which I hear is due to their unbalanced design. So for those of you who shoot henry's with black powder is there anything in the 200gr range that will let me shoot accuratley out to 100yards consistantly? Thanks

[Galloway]

I'd prefer real BP, but what do you suggest? I have both hard and soft cast bullets if it matters.

[Springfield Slim]

I shoot the 200 grain Big Lube bullet from my 44-40 Henry. On the odd stage where  we put the rifle targets out to 100 yards I am the only one who can hit them all. My Henry is way more accurate then my 2 66's. Maybe I just got a good one. Never experienced any keyholing from any of my rifles with BP and BL bullets, nor have any of my customers mentioned it. Maybe they were casting their own with too hard a bullet alloy and didn't get good contact with the rifling.  What size bullet were you using? Have you slugged the bore on your Thunderbolt? What was the hardness of your bullets? "Soft cast" means different things to different people.

[will52100]

I have had a 60 henry in 45 colt for several years and I shoot almost nothing but real black powder.  I tried this and that, anealing the neck, just neck sizing, all the trick and finaly settled on just full length siziing and a full case of compressed 3F and a 350 grain PRS big lube bullet.  My bore slugs out rite at .454 and that's what I size my bullets to.  I pan lube and run them through a lee push sizer.  My lube is a mix of mutton tallow, bee's wax and parifine.  It used to be the old outside lube for the colt 44's and such outside lubed bullets.  Kinda looks like SPG but a little firmer.

I can go for a couple hundred rounds without cleaning.  The bigest issue for me with 45 and the henry is that I get a little fouling on the carrier.  Enough when it was new to only go 30-40 rounds without hanging up.  The orginals were a bit looser there.  I took it to a disk sander and took a little off each side to loosen the tollarances up and it works great now.  Be carefull how much you take off or you could be buying a new carrier.

That said I've put a couple hundred rounds through it and could still hit steel chickens at 200 meters.  If your getting key holing with your 44-40 you've eather got an undersized bullet or an oversized bore.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

Who ever told you the Big Lube bullets are unbalanced and will therefore tend to keyhole does not know what he is talking about. I shoot nothing but Big Lube bullets, the 45 PRS and the J/P 45-200 in my pistols and the Mav-Dutchman 44 in my rifles. I have never experienced any key holing, they are very accurate bullets.

The key is sizing the bullets to your groove diameter. You will only truly know the groove diameter by slugging the bore. Then, ideally, the bullets should be sized .001 oversize of the groove diameter, to fully engage the rifling.

My Henry is a 44-40, as are all my CAS rifles, I don't own any 45 Colt rifles. But if I had a rifle chambered for 45 Colt and wanted to shoot 200 grain bullets in it I would use the J/P 45-200 bullet cast from soft lead sized .001 over rifling groove diameter. Because the J/P 45-200 extends slightly less into the case than the PRS bullet, you will have slightly more case capacity and higher velocity with it than the 250 grain PRS bullet. My notebook says I put 2.5 CC of FFg under the J/P 45-200 rather than the 2.2 CC of FFg I put under the PRS.

[Dakota Widowmaker]

I have to echo DJ's comments on this as well.

I have had EXCELLENT results with both the PRS (250gr big lube boolit) and the rest.

I too shoot 44-40 in my Henry, but, 45LC in all my model 92/94 guns. (my SRC model 94 is a champ with the PRS boolit and 35gr of FFFg)

I prefer to shoot GOEX when I can, but, I have so much Pyrodex to get rid of, I am just going to finish off those last 2 pounds and be done with it.

[Ransom Gaer]

Galloway,

In .45 colt I tend to use a 250 grain bullet and have had no problems with them in terms of accuracy.  Fouling at the end of the barrel, yes.  Have up till now used a lube cookie with them to help alleviate the problem.  It does help significantly, but is a pain to load .45 Colt and .45 Schofield with lube cookies.  Have used a 200 grain bullet in the .45 Schofield case for matches.  Nice combination.  Very accurate, but still have some trouble with fouling.  Just got my first order from Springfield Slim for some of his Big Lube bullets in 200 and 250 grain.  I normally shoot a .452 sized bullet.  That is what my Henry slugged out to.  Haven't had a chance to try yet.  Just ordered a caliber conversion kit for my Dillon RL550 press so I can start loading them.  Expect the kit by the end of next week.  Also got the Lee factory crimp die to use on my .45 Colt and .45 Schofield cartridges to get a good crimp on them.  That is supposed to help with fouling and such. 

Never have had any keyholing problems.  For keyholing I would expect a sizing problem before a "balance" problem.  On another forum I frequent there was discussion on the Polish Tantal rifle(Polish version of AK74) and keyholing.  Apparently some early production ones got 5.56mm barrels instead of the proper 5.45mm barrels.The little 5.45mm bullets were basically wobbling down the barrel.  No wonder they keyholed.

Springfield Slim,  Your Henry I think is pretty typical of the breed.  Mine is way more accurate than my '66 and I have heard others on this here Henry forum say the same thing.  What I have heard is that since the barrel and mag tube is machined out of one piece of steel, the barrel is stiffer and as a result more accurate.  Don't know if that is really true, but I do know my Henry is more accurate than my '66.

Ransom Gaer

[Galloway]

Thanks everyone, whats the J/P bullet Diftwood is referring to?

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

http://www.biglube.com/Default.aspx

Click on Bullet Molds then scroll on down to J/P 45-200 RNFP. The J stands for Johnson. No, I don't make any money off of this, I just have a little bit of pride in the creation that Wild Bill Peterson and myself came up with. Lots of folks like it.