45 special brass and FF or FFF

[okotoks]

I just started loading 45 special with 16 to 20 grains of FF(Grapf and sons)
I am casting a H&G Kieth style .454 (WW)  bullet 260gr with Bull shop NASA lube
(Old style Ruger Bisley, and AWA and Uberti Colt SAA clones) all these guns shoot the "big Kieth" better than
any of the commercial 200 or 250 RNFP. smokeless or with wax wads and BP.
As I was shooting the same bullet with 33-5 grains of FFF in a standard cartridge, the recoil is now "nothing"

here is what I have noticed.

the recoil is "nothing"

Accuracy with BP is as good as  standard 45 colt loads"Trail boss" with WW primers

More or less "one ragged hole" accuracy with MAGNUM primers! & the recoil is still "nothing"

I get a lot of crud built up in the cylinder now between the case and the cylinder mouth, such that after a few rounds I can't load a standard colt cartridge.  I would expect that this will cause accuracy deterioration (towards the end of the match). But in practice I can shoot a lot more short colts, than long ones, with out the gun tying up.

Should I get the cylinders reamed out to ".454", i was thinking about this anyway, most are very tight .450-451?

Thanks
okotoks

[Adirondack Jack]

Nope. If I were really wanting to be technical, I'd ream em to .4525, but even at .451 (which mine are), a soft bullet WILL BE OK.  When ya light the fire under a bullet of appropriate hardness for the velocity, it WILL be the size of the throats when it passes through, and assuming gasses aren't blowing by because the throats are TOO BIG, the "swat" behind it is still there when it enters the forcing cone, so it WILL BE bore size when it slams into the barrel.  When shooting a two day match, I might give the cylinders a dousing with water after day one.  Generally I just swab em out, nice and wet, then dry, then an olive oil patch and call it good.

If ya are in a situation that for whatever reason you want to shoot LONG Colt "right now", you need only wet down the chambers and swab em out first OR, give em a vigorous brushing with a chamber brush real quick like (I use a .50 cal bore brush) and yer good to go.

[springfield]

If accuracy is real good, why would you change anything? I don't think there is anything you can do about the crud buildup, just shoot only CS brass and you should be OK.