.45 L.C. Load

[Ben Nevlezer]

I finally decided that after about 15 years, sitting idle in the shadows of my gun safe, that it's time to dust off my ole Henry. Found about 25 rounds of old ammo I had stashed away and headed to the gravel pit with a target and a couple beer cans, full to start with... After a couple 2 shot groups and emptying the beer cans, fired 5 shots off hand and had a base ball sized group just a hair low at 50yds. 5 more rounds later and the empty cans were blown to bits. Not bad for old ammo and not being out of the safe for so long.
So my question... What load are skirmishes using in a 45LC Henry these days? The old loads I had were just 30gr. Goex 3f with a 250gr pre lubed cowboy bullet. Carrol brand bullet I think. Which I always liked because I didn't have to mess with another mould or mixing types of lead.

[John Holland]

Hi Ben, sounds like if you continue using the same loads you just fired you should do quite well with it, especially in team matches.
You know the old saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

[Michael Bodner]

Ditto to what John said. I would also suggest that you keep an eye on how quickly the barrel gets fouled. I suspect that the pre-lubed cowboy bullets are using wax which tends not to melt at our black-powder pressures/temperatures.

You'll know you're fouled if the accuracy goes to heck after so many shots then gets awesome again after you clean the barrel. If this happens, you will need to rethink the lube.

Good luck!!

-Mike

[jonk]

Discovered this one based on necessity of what I had on hand.

Lee .45 REAL mold. The one they sell for .45 inlines. Sized to .454. Or whatever is proper for your gun. 26 gr of FFG. YES, TWO FG. Winchester LP primer. Two .030 over powder wads or one .060. Bullet seated to base to top lube groove. Cast from hard lead. If I'm holding the gun well, it gets me into a 10 second hit time. Meaning about 3/4 of them hit the target.

This is my 50 yard load. With that charge, the bullet doesn't perform at 100. I admit that.

I'd be happy to send you a handfull of bullets to try, lubed and sized. With the wads. PM me if interested. On me.

[pastore]

I finally decided that after about 15 years, sitting idle in the shadows of my gun safe, that it's time to dust off my ole Henry. Found about 25 rounds of old ammo I had stashed away and headed to the gravel pit with a target and a couple beer cans, full to start with... After a couple 2 shot groups and emptying the beer cans, fired 5 shots off hand and had a base ball sized group just a hair low at 50yds. 5 more rounds later and the empty cans were blown to bits. Not bad for old ammo and not being out of the safe for so long.
So my question... What load are skirmishes using in a 45LC Henry these days? The old loads I had were just 30gr. Goex 3f with a 250gr pre lubed cowboy bullet. Carrol brand bullet I think. Which I always liked because I didn't have to mess with another mould or mixing types of lead.

Some bullet sellers will sell you their bullets unlubed if you ask. I bought 500 bullets for my 44-40 unlubed and unsized.

[Ben Nevlezer]

Thank you very much guys! Next question???...
What is the lube of choice for said cartridges?
And, thanks Jonk! I may take you up on your offer. What exactly are the wads you use? Lubed wads like "Wonder Wads" or just plain felt wads to take up headspace?

[Michael Bodner]

If you want to keep it simple, use Len's Lube. Its the most popular...

Or you can make you own from 50% beeswax and 50% Crisco. Percentage of beeswax goes up or down as the temperature goes up or down, BTW.

You will find that there a million possible choices and suggestions, but start out easy and buy some Len's Lube....

-Mike

[jonk]

Thank you very much guys! Next question???...
What is the lube of choice for said cartridges?
And, thanks Jonk! I may take you up on your offer. What exactly are the wads you use? Lubed wads like "Wonder Wads" or just plain felt wads to take up headspace?

The wads are an unlubed cork or veggie fiber wad (doesn't seem to matter) that I get from Pat Marlin, who sells a lot of wads, lead, and alloys.

They DO serve to take up some space in the case, yeah, but they don't get anywhere near far enough out to touch the rifling in my gun at least. That distance would push you past the OAL that would feed in the mag. Mainly I use them for two reasons.

1. They act as sort of a gas check to protect the bullet in its travel down the bore. Probably not needed, but they do, even so.
2. Whatever they are doing, my own accuracy was better with than without them. Which is the main thing.

It's a cheap mold to get, and I use it in my inline like I say, so it was on hand. I have tried the standard Lyman 454190 and a few others and nothing else comes close to this for 50 yards. Probably due to the great amounts of lube it carries.

Given the fairly blunt nose, it DOES occasionally hang up on feeding, but it's a one in ten occurrence on average, and a quick rap to the side of the receiver takes care of it.

[ian45662]

Jonk does very well with his 45. He has a good load worked up.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ben Nevlezer]

Thanks guys! For now I think I will keep it simple and stick with the bullets I have and can easily buy instead of adding another mould to my collection. But I do think that I will keep the several hundred pounds of hard lead that I was going to get rid of. Just incase.....
And Jonk, just out of curiosity, what lead do you use?
Just Incase...

[jonk]

Just saw you asked about what lead I use.

I find the Henry likes hard lead. For me. Ian (who also responded) uses the Lee 405 gr hollow base bullet with soft lead. He does very well. That bullet never worked for me. Just shows, you have to play around.

When I cast I use about 4 alloys.

Pure lead.
Pure wheelweights.
20:1 lead to tin.
Half pure lead, half wheelweights.

Now, I admit, the pure wheelweights don't do too well for me in the Henry. That's apparently just TOO hard. As I said, the pure lead doesn't do well for me. For me. Either of these might work well for you.

I get about equal results with the mixed lead/wheelweights or 20:1. The 20:1 is a tad softer than the ww mix. Main thing with working with ww is: 1. Cull out any zinc. 2. Because they have antimony in them, you can get a cratered base when you cut the sprue. Let that sprue cool a lot, or touch it to a damp sponge.

For what it's worth, my uses for those alloys are:
Pure: minies and smith bullets (my smith likes soft bullets).
WW: Smokeless rifle and pistol bullets and smoothbore balls.
20:1: most black powder cartridge applications.
Pure/WW: generally interchangeable with the above, BUT... you have to play around with them and make some slugs to test hardness when you are mixing a batch. WW hardness is all over, and you want an end result that is a Brinell Hardness around 8 or so (pure lead is a 5-6). SO you mix up a 50/50 batch, keep it molten, pour a small ingot, let it cool, test it. If needed, add more lead or ww to get to that 8 or so hardness. 7-9 is fine, just in that range. And, make it a big enough batch to do plenty of bullets.

I get my ww for free. If you don't, don't bother with them.