405 grain bullet in 45 colt

[ian45662]

Any one ever try shooting a 45 cal 405 grain hollow base bullet with 20 grains goex 2F out of a Henry?

[Blair]

Why would you want to try shooting something so much larger in dia. and so much heavier than the original arm was meant to shot?
The 405 gr. bullet is an intermediate weight bullet designed for the signal shot Rifle/Carbines chambered in 45-70 Gov. cartridge. Minimum dia. of .457.
Original SSA Colt's were set up to shot a .454 dia. 255 gr. weight bullet.
Why push the limits of safe shooting. What will it get you?

[ian45662]

More accuracy is what it has gotten me and in a big way. Of course I sized the bullet down to .452 and 20 grains of 2 F has a little compression. Recoil is less than 250 grain bullet with 30 grains. I have not seen any over pressure sighns so I'm going to keep on doing it. I just wanted to see if I am in new territory here or has anyone else tried this

[ian45662]

Do you guys think I have lost my mind?

[marv762]

I shoot a 300 grain bullet out of my henry. load is 26 grns of 3f with filler and a wad. it shoots very well. it is alot of work to do for loading,but it works very well so?? Marv

[RaccoonRough Spence]

Do you guys think I have lost my mind?


I have a 45/70 - 405 grain LEE bullet mold...........I was thinking of using it with my .45 LC henry. Sizing it down to .452 of course. I

have a Uberti .45 LC Henry and need to come up with a load for N-SSA use.

Have you received any further feedback on using this bullet?

How has this bullet worked for you?

Do you use a lube cookie or card?

Thanks
Spence

[RaccoonRough Spence]

Oh, another question.

How do you make a grease/lube cookie anyway? What sort of lube is it made from?

New to this type of loading.

[ian45662]

This combo has worked great for me. There is more to it than just loading a 405 grain hollow based trapdoor bullet sized down to .452. I will tell you how I have done this but since I cannot over see how you load your particular rifle I cannot tell you to do it my way. I will just tell you how I have done it and what has worked for me. First off I start with a case made by Winchester that was fired in my rifle so that it has been "fire formed". The case is then cleaned and ready to re-load. I only neck size the brass and this is important because if I full length re size then it will squeeze the base of the bullet down since it is being seated so far into the case. What I do to achieve this is only screw the the sizing die partially into the press so that only the only the first 1/3 of the case is sized. I will then bell the mouth of the case to take the .452 bullet. Next I will anneal each case. Doing this will ensure that the case will make a perfect seal. Winchester brass is the thinnest of all and annealing the cases helps greatly in keeping the 45 from that getting that blow back everyone complains about. Each case comes out as clean as it went in.... On the out side atleast. If you do not know how to anneal brass there are great videos on youtube that explain how to do it. Some people say to get the case cherry red but from what I have seen that is way to hot. Once the brass starts to turn a blue color or if you do it with the lights off it will just start to turn red and dumping into water is also not needed. Once all my brass is annealed I will prime with a small pistol primer from federal. Then I will dump 20 grains of 2F goex into the case. I will take my lee 405 hollow based bullet which is sized to .452 and seat it. By the way the alloy I have used is 2 parts soft lead and 1 part wheel weights. I seat the bullet far enough into the case so that the gun will cycle reliably every time. The last thing I will do at this point is to take the De-caping pin out of my re-sizing die, I will then push the completed case into it just until it will touch the die or just enough to take the bell out of the case. I dont want to push it in to far or it will swage the bullet down. Once I feel just a slight amount of resistance I stop. The only reason I even do this is so that the case will not hang up on its way into the chamber. The bullet is so far into the case and so snug that it will not move at all. Once I have done all of these things I will shoot it. One more thing. When I seat the bullet I hear and feel the powder being compressed. If proof is in the pudding the let the last nationals be my example. I have a 10 second hit time and out of the 14 shots I took and the clay pots I had 11 hits. I am not tooting my own horn here but I just want to illustrate how well this load has worked for me. Recoil is VERY mild and I could probably shoot it without ear plugs. I did this with RCBS dies because I can adjust the de-caping pin and take it out with ease. After I have shot some cases I will clean them inside and out and re-peat the proces. I have gone through 2 re-loads and cases are still coming out clean. I do suspect though that after 3 loadings I will have to anneal them again. I will say I cannot recommend anyone try that bullet in 45 colt with smokeless powder and if anyone tries to duplicate what I have done here I will accept no responsibility of any kind if something were to go wrong. I will say however I have seen NO signs of over pressure in my cases so I feel that this load is perfectly safe in my rifle. I just hope that the guys and gals who are frustrated with their 45s may try this and bring those puppy s out to play. My rifle is just an out of the box henry so I can assume that it can be done with other henry or uberti made lever guns in 45 colt