Bp in 45LC info please...

[RugerBob]

  Hi all, I am fairly new to the cap and ball scene. But I do like it,alot. In the last 3 months I've bought 2-1851 navys and 1-1860 army. And if Mrs. Clause read things right I'll have a walker on christmas. What I am interested in is whether or not I can shoot FFFg out of my Ruger 45 Blackhawk and my Puma 45 Lever action? Currently Loading with 8grains Unique 250gr RNFP. What loads are recomended if I can us Bp in these fire arms? Thanks all and if I have left out any info I should have put in please let me know. Bob

[panhead pete]

You can not cram enough 3F into the case to match the smokeless pressures which the Blackhawk was designed for.  The Puma should spit em' out with no problem as well.

The way I load my 45 LC is to calculate the seating depth of the bullet and subtract that from the top of the case.  Add 1/16-1/8 inch to the powder height (for powder compression) and that should be your charge.  Personally I use an overshot card cut from milk cartons and that put a small amount of SPG on top of the card and then seat the bullet.  If you are using lubed bullets add an 1/8" for powder compression.  If you intend to use a card, use 1/16" to your measurement.  After you have the measurement, dump the powder into a measure or a dipper and that will be your drop amount.  It will vary if you use a drop tube.  I find it simpler to use a Lee Dipper and compress the overshot card onto the powder using a piece of 29/32 drill rod.  It sounds complicated but it works ok for me. 

Hope this helps shed some light.

Kind Regards,

Panhead Pete

[Cuts Crooked]

Pard, you really need to take a look at this thread in the Dark Arts forum: http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php/topic,6290.0.htm

[Dick Dastardly]

Howdy RugerBob,

Our moderator, Cuts Crooked, has suggested some great reading.

One thing that keeps our BP guns running trouble free is bullets that haul enough lube.

Welcome to the Darkside.  Hang out around here and ask questions.  Also, you have hard earned experience of your own.  Don't be afraid to post it.  Some will agree, some not and some will just say thanks.  Regardless, this is a great place to palaver about shootn' the Holy Black.

DD-DLoS

[Wills Point Pete]

 Just recall that few storebought bullets carry the right kind of lube for BP and almost none will carry enough lube for that Mod. "92 clone. Dick Dastardly's Big Lube Boolitz carry plenty of lube for either one and there are a few guys that sell them.  Another option is those Remington swaged lead 250 gr RNFPs, if you fill that slight hollowbase with BP lube that will be enough lube to last for most any barrel.
Otherwise you need a grease cookie.

[RugerBob]

 Thanks Pards for the great information. And Cuts ,nice article you wrote there. I believe I'm on my way to the 3f world now :)Bob

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Thanks Pards for the great information. And Cuts ,nice article you wrote there. I believe I'm on my way to the 3f world now :)Bob

GOOD!

Welcome to the wonderful, smelly, smoky and FIRE-ey world of BP!

[Pitspitr]

Ok
I gotta hypothetical question. I have a Lee 255 gr mould for my .45lc. I'm sure the miniscule grease lube rings won't hold enough lube, but what would happen if I went ahead and lubed it with say, SPg then put a lubed OX Yoke wonder wad under it?

[sundance44`s]

I use the same Lee mold and pan lube them with a 50% crisco & 50% beeswax mix ..they shoot good out of my Remmie conversion cylinders and Henry rifle . I use a card between the powder and bullets just to keep the lube from migrating into the powder on hot summer days  never a problem ....with 30 grs of 3f goex these are tack drivers in my guns.

[Dick Dastardly]

One thing that could be a minor fly in the ointment on that Blackhawk and black powder ammo.  Some Ruger cylinder/barrel gaps are just too tight for black powder.  If that's the case with your gun you may have to open that gap a few thousandths.  I had it happen to a brace of RVs in .357 Mag and in one of my 44 Mag RVs.  I took a Twelve inch Mill Bastard file to the back end of my barrels and it worked great.  That's not a practice for the feint of heart because you could make a mistake and have to buy a new barrel from Ruger.  I recommend having a gunsmith do it.  Either that, or get the tool from Brownells and do it yourself, if you're handy.

The black powder ammo should run great in your Puma rifle, until it fouls out.  After that you will learn about Big Lube™ bullets.

DD-DLoS

[Pitspitr]

I use the same Lee mold and pan lube them with a 50% crisco & 50% beeswax mix ..they shoot good out of my Remmie conversion cylinders and Henry rifle . I use a card between the powder and bullets just to keep the lube from migrating into the powder on hot summer days  never a problem ....with 30 grs of 3f goex these are tack drivers in my guns.

My Henry was what I was most concerned about having enough lube for.

[Driftwood Johnson]

My Henry was what I was most concerned about having enough lube for.

Howdy

There's more than one way to skin the Black Powder cat. I used to melt the smokeless lube out of regular inexpensive hardcast commercial Smokeless bullets and pan lube them with a 50/50 mixture of Beeswax/Crisco. Did it for a number of years until I started casting my own Big Lube bullets.

Here is what I learned, through the school of hard knocks.

Generally speaking, a hardcast bullet with just one lube groove will do OK in a revolver. The amount of lube needed is directly proportional to the length of the barrel. The longer the barrel, the sooner the lube gets rubbed off the bullet and deposited in the bore. Soft, gooey BP lube deposited in the bore is a good thing, it prevents the fouling from building up as a hard, caked on layer. Once hard fouling forms, fouling builds up quickly, filling the rifling, and ruining accuracy. A bullet without a whole lot of soft BP lube on it will run out of lube at some point as it zooms down the barrel. My experience with bullets with one skimpy lube groove was they tended to run out of lube about 6" from the muzzle of a 24" rifle barrel. This meant that every few stages I needed to swab out my rifle bore with a couple of wet patches to restore accuracy. Then everything would be hunky-dory for a while until the fouling built up again.

There used to be a few brands of bullets on the market specifically marketed to Black Powder shooters. Some of these bullets had two lube grooves rather than one, were cast with a soft lead alloy, and came lubed with a BP compatible lube. I gave some of these bullets a pretty fair shake in my 24" '73. The results were dissapointing. As expected, they kept my bore well lubed for longer than my regular pan lubed one groove bullets. But I sat down one day to do a real torture test, and after about 30 rounds accuracy suddenly went to heck in a handbasket. I started getting fliers all over the paper. I was shooting from a bench rest for accuracy at 50 yards. My groups suddenly opened up and would not stay on the paper. I swabbed out the barrel and the accuracy returned.

There needs to be another comment made here. Not all Black Powder burns the same and leaves the same amount of fouling behind. The two lube groove bullets I was using were a traditional 19th Century design. A lot of guys ask why did they work then and why not now? The answer may be in the powder. I was shooting Goex and Elephant, which are pretty dirty burning powders. They leave a lot of fouling behind. Another shooter who used to frequent this board only shoots Swiss, the high priced spread. Swiss leaves a lot less fouling behind than Goex or Elephant because it burns cleaner. With a nice clean burning powder like Swiss it is probably possible to milk better long term performance out of one or two lube groove bullets than with the relatively dirty burning stuff. Probably the 19th Century powder those bullets were used with was a better grade of powder like Swiss and left behind less fouling. This year I used mostly Schuetzen powder and it burns nice and clean, but costs no more than Goex. Really good stuff.

There are still other strategies. You mention an ox yoke wad under the bullet. That will help. Just don't forget to reduce your powder volume by a comparable amount. Particullarly if you seat and crimp your bullets in two separate steps. A buddy of mine was stuffing in wads on top of his powder without reducing the powder charge and couldn't figure out why they were jamming up his '73. Turns out in the couple of seconds between bullet seating and crimping the highly compressed powder and wad forced his bullets out a little bit and he crimped them with too long an over all length for his rifle. He had to pull a couple of hundred bullets.

There are still other techniques. There is always the lube cookie routine. I did that for a while until I found out the soft lube cookies were gluing themselves to the base of my bullets and making them unstable in flight. I used to put in a card wad to separate the lube cookie from the powder, but I seated my bullets directly on top of the lube. My groups went nuts until I finally recovered some bullets with lube cookies still glued to the base. The lube cookies were making the bullets spin erratically like an arrow with lopsided feathers. So finally I put in a lube cookie with two card wads, one to separate it from the powder and one to keep it from getting glued to the base of the bullet. WAY TOO MUCH WORK.

About that time the Big Lube bullets came along and I figured if I was going to be doing all that much work I might just as well cast and lube my own bullets. The work is about the same either way. Either you take a whole lot of time stuffing wads and cookies into your loads, or you spend a few weekends casting and lubing up a zillion bullets, but load them up without anything extra in the case.

Hope this helps some. There is nothing wrong with using a pan lubed bullet in your rifle. You just may need to do a little bit of extra swabbing at a match to keep your bore clear of hard fouling. The Big Lube bullets completely eliminate the need for that, and in addition enough lube gets blasted out of the barrel/cylinder gap of a revolver along with the fouling that it helps keep the fouling on the mechanism soft and helps prevent binding. Using pan lubed bullets in a revolver you may have to remove the cylinder and wipe it off a few times during the day.

If you are going to use pan lubed bullets you might want to try Schuetzen powder. Same cost as Goex, much cleaner burning. Graff sells the exact same powder under their own brand name.

[sundance44`s]

My Henry has been very forgiveing with everything I`ve fed it ..only complaint I had ....was I tried some 777 powder under smokless lubed bullets ...she ran smooth for 20 rounds ...then stuck an empty case in the chamber it was hot and dry that day  98 in the shade I`ve heard others say that load works good for them ..but ..I went back to casting and pan lubeing ..and nothing but 3f Goex  no more problems ..I plan on ordering some Schuetzen powder on my next order ..always heard nothing but good things about it ..cleaner burning couldn`t hurt .

[w44wcf]

DJ,
Great post!  Very good info for the pards.  I too, in testing, have found Schuetzen powder to be better than Goex regarding fouling.  Velocities are pretty much on par with Goex.

In one test with an experimental bullet in my .45 Colt Marlin Cowboy rifle (24" barrel), after 10 rounds with Goex, a ring of dark fouling accumulated in the last 4" of barrel and accuracy began to deteriorate. The same test with Schuetzen and Swiss produced even fouling the full length of the bore.

No question, the "Big Lube" bullets are the bullets to use with Goex for repeated shots wth accuracy. They also work well with Schuetzen and Swiss as do copies of the original  2 lube grooved bullets........ if they hold at least 1 grain  of a good b.p. lube.

Pitspitr,
I also have that same Lee mold and have found that it works great with smokeless and pretty well with Pyrodex, but in my experience it will foul out quickly with b.p. (just doesn't hold enough lube for a rifle barrel) and groups will start to open up in short order. If you are shooting at large targets at short distances you may be ok,  but I'm looking for consistant 2" max. groups @ 50 yards after 40-50 shots have been fired without cleaning.

The "Big Lube" bullet is actually very similar in profile to the Lee 255 RNFP except that it holds lots of lube.
You can buy the 6 cav mold from DD or bullets from Springfield Slim (Whyte Leather Works) at a very reasonable price ($26.00 for 250).  http://www.whyteleatherworks.com/PRS_45.jpg

http://www.whyteleatherworks.com/Accessory%20page.htm   scroll toward the bottom of the page.

w44wcf

 

   

[Pitspitr]

Thanks DJ and W44wcf
Great posts. I was pretty sure that by itself the bullet wouldn't carry enough lube. I was just wondering if I could get by without buying another mould if I cut the powder charge slightly and replaced the volume with a LUBED wad. That is if the lube from the wad in addition to that on the bullet would be enough.

[w44wcf]

Pitspitr,
Thank you for the kind words.  With regards to the ox yoke wads, I have no experience with them so they just might give the added lube necessary with the Lee RNFP.  Best thing to do would be to load some up using a good b.p. lube in the bullet and give them a try and let us knoiw what happens.  You could stack the deck in your favor by using Schuetzen (or Swiss) which produces softer fouling than Goex.

When I am testing a new recipe, I first load a batch of 12 cartridges and fire two 5 shot groups at 50 yards after firing 2 fouling shots.  If the second group is similar to the first, I will then load up 22 cartridges and fire four 5 shot groups preceeded by the 2 fouling shots. If accuracy stays the same for all 4 groups, then, depending on the number if rounds one would intend to shoot before cleaning, load up that many and see if the accuracy remains acceptable as the batch of cartridges is fired.

My .02.

Good luck,
w44wcf

[Pitspitr]

Another Good suggestion!
Thanks!

[Grapeshot]

I know I'm going to hear about this.

I decided to dupliocate the original loading for the .45 Colt as specified by the Government Arsenal's ammo makers.

I drilled each flash hole out to 3/32nd's of an inch, used a CCI #350 Large Pistol Magnum Primer, filled each case with a 40 grain charge of GOEX 2Fg dropped down a drop tube and compressed to allow either the RCBS two lube grooved 250 grain LRN, or the Lyman Cowboy 250 grain RNFP with a single large width lube groove.  Both were cast from a soft lead tin alloy that I had from an unknown source and taper crimped in place.

I also made up a batch with a 30 grain charge of 2Fg, topped it off with a 1/4 inch cork wad and the same 250 grain bullets as listed above.  These also were taper crimped in place.

The Forty Grain charge of 2Fg were quite stout, while the 30 grain charge was relativly mild.

I also duplicated these loads with Pyrodex loading volumetricly.

I also tried a 2.2 cc charge of APP with the above bullets with the same results.  777 gave a bit more recoil even with the charge reduced to 1.9 cc's.

[RugerBob]

  Thanks for the replys all. I have to ask tho... other then granulation.... I personally do not know the difference from 2F to 3F. I know its the burn rate but....  I see such a difference in price between the  two, is the burn rate that much different? I love the power and recoil is a 'likable' thing in my world,and I could clean and reload all day,so fouling is not an issue yet. So all in all 2F 3F , whats the better ....? thanks again all, Bob

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Howdy!

Around here, the different granulations of Goex and KIK are the same price, Ruger Bob.  Don't know about any other powders or subs.

Since 3F (FFFg) is smaller granules, there's more surface area, so you get a faster burn rate.  That leads to somewhat higher velocities.

For CAS type Pistol caliber loading, either 2F OR 3F can be used interchangeably.  I personally prefer 3F, but I'm a fan of full-power loads.  I've heard that in the CW and later era, the powder they used burned more powerfully, like a 3F perhaps, but in fact, was closer to 2F in granule size.  I use 3F in my shotgun loads.  I've even tried it in my 45-70, but I really couldn't tell any real difference from 2F, but I DO get better results from Goex "Cartridge" which is somewhat more consistent, but is close to 2F in size.