Cast bullets … … and great Sixguns

Guns Magazine, Nov, 2008 by John Taffin

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My first Colt Single Action .45 Colt was one of the first 7-1/2" 2nd Generations out of the factory. I bought a Lyman No. 310 Tool, a single cavity Lyman No. 454424 Keith bullet mold and I was in business. I cast bullets on my mother's stove and both the side of her stove and refrigerator were covered with specks of lead. She never complained. Moms are like that.

A half-century later I find I have accumulated nearly 300 bullet molds and we now also have several companies supplying nearly every type of bullet we might want. Sorta gives us the best of both worlds. When it is too hot, or I do not have the time, or I am just too lazy to cast bullets, I do not despair. Someone is out there waiting with just about anything I could possibly want, or at least something that will do just as well as my home cast bullets.

Besides, it is sort of ego deflating to very carefully cast, size, and lubricate bullets of just the proper alloy and then find they do not shoot as well as the commercial cast bullets sitting on the shelf at the gun shop or waiting to be ordered by phone. My first bullets for that .45 Colt were 230-grain .45 ACP bullets, simply because they were all I could find before I started casting. This is no longer true as there are many, many excellent commercial cast bullets available.

In the early days my most used loads in the .45 Colt with that Lyman No. 454424 260-grain Keith bullet was either 10 grains of Unique or 18.5 grains of No. 2400. Now the sixguns are older (so am I) and I find myself using a lot of Unique still, however in doses of 8 grains under the 275-grain RCBS Keith-style bullet, No. 45-270. I find I can also get the same results with 8 grains of Hodgdon's Universal.

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Up The Ante

When the Ruger .45 Colt Blackhawk was introduced over 35 years ago, we pushed the Keith bullet a little faster but also sized down .45-70 300-grain hard cast rifle bullets to fit in the then-new .45 Colt sixgun which was--and is--so much stronger than the Colt Single Action Army. When Freedom Arms introduced the .454 Casull in 1983, Dick Casull also designed a 300-grain flatnose gas-check bullet for his cartridge.

I settled on 32 grains of H110 or WW 296 with this bullet for 1,600 fps in the .454. However, I also found this bullet to be an excellent choice for use in the .45 Colt Blackhawk. With 21.5 grain of either of the same two powders, velocity is 1,200 fps from a 7-1/2" .45 Blackhawk and more than adequate for most of my needs. The same load clocks out at 1,100 fps from a 4-3/4" Freedom Arms Model 83 and exhibits excellent long-range accuracy.

The .357

Not long after acquiring my first .45 Colt Single Action, I purchased the first .357 Blackhawk to arrive at Boyle's Gun Shop. Along with it, I bought my second mold, Lyman's No. 358429 Keith and a large batch of very cheap .38 Special brass. The .357 cases were expensive--the .38s were not. I shot an awful lot of the .38 Special Keith Load of 13.5 grain of No. 2400 under the Keith bullet in that Blackhawk.

I recently had a custom Flattop Blackhawk built up using a 10-1/2" .357 Maximum barrel. So far this gun has only seen one load, and it will probably only see one load, and that is Cast Performance Bullet Co.'s 187-grain FNGC over 13 grains of H110 or WW296. This is a relatively mild 1,200 fps load and also works very well in a companion levergun.

For the .480 Ruger, some favorite heavy loads using heavyweight hardcast bullets in the 1,100 to 1,200 fps range are CPBC's 390-grain LBT over 21 grains of H110 for 1,210 fps and CPBC's 425 LBT and 19 grains of H110, 1,145 fps. I also like the CPBC's 370 LBT at 1,200 to 1,300 fps with several powders but I use all of these bullets mostly with 20 grains of H4227 for loads in the 1,000 fps category, They are not only most pleasant to shoot, but will handle anything short of the big bears.

Tamer Loads

Today, I mostly use 8 grains of Unique or Universal in three different cartridges with three different weight bullets. With the RCBS Pro 2000, I have found I can use the same shell plate for .45 Colt, .44-40, and .38-40. It takes less than 15 seconds to change the die plate, the powder measure is stationary, and all three take the same primer, all going together to make loads so much simpler to assemble. To help keep things really simple I use Oregon Trail's 255-, 200-, and 180-grain bullets respectively. These are great everyday working loads in Colt Single Actions putting very little stress on either sixgun or sixgunner.

For the .44 Special my most used load is 7.5 grains of Unique, Universal, or Power Pistol with the Keith bullet or Oregon Trail's 240-grain SWC for around 900 fps, while for the .44 Magnum I use the same bullets over 10 grains of Unique or Universal for about 1,150 fps. I have also found this same load of 10 grains of Unique works wonderfully well with the 290-grain Keith-style gas-checked bullet giving the same 1,150 fps velocity. These milder .44 Magnum loads are about the equivalent of Keith's .44 Special load, and again more than adequately suit most of my needs. There was a time in my life I thought everything had to be loaded to the hilt. I no longer find this necessary.