Loading BP for .45 Schofield

[Possum Toed Rick]

Howdy All,
     I recently purchased a new S&W #3, Mod. 2000 in .45 Schofield. I am planning to shoot my first SASS Match in April here in Austria. I have seen in many of the postings that the #3's don't like BP loads, and frequently bind up. I love to shoot BP and don't really want to load "White". I have seen many remedies for this from Machining the Pistol, Big Lube Bullets, ect... The most intresting I saw was someone was using Muzzleloader Round Balls with a liberal dose of grease over the ball, but I don't remember where I saw it. Has anyone else tried this and what were the results.

Many Thanks from across the Pond,
Rick
     

[French Jack]

Forget using black powder in the S&W 2000.  Having a machine job on it will leave you with a butchered up gun.  If maxi-balls don't carry enough lube to keep them rolling, none of the 'big lube boolits' will either.  I own two of the S&W 2000's and they are strictly meant to operate with smokeless.  You might get lucky and gett Pinnacle by Goex or APP to work.  Personally, I did not have good results with either.

[DJ]

I tried grease over the mouth of the chamber with .45 Colt black powder rounds in my Uberti Schofield and did not have much luck.  The first shot or two seemed to blow the grease all over the place, from all of the cylinders, but didn't seem to put it where needed avoid cylinder binding on later shots.  I haven't tried loading round balls, but don't see how that would change things.  One thing that might work would be to use .45 Schofield cartridges and then squirt the grease down into each cylinder on top of the bullet.  Because the Schofield cartridge is shorter, the grease would be deeper down in the cylinder and might be less likely to get blown out when the other chambers are fired.  I haven't tried that, so it's just a theory--I have had pretty good luck with thick grease wads inside the cartridge case, so I plan to stick with that for now.

[DJ]

D'oh!  I just reread your post and realized you were talking about a S&W #3--since those are chambered in .45 Schofield, my comment really didn't apply except to the extent I suggested squrting the grease as deeply into the chamber as you can.  My experience with grease smeared over the mouth of the chamber has been that it blows off of all chambers with the first one or two shots.

Good luck.