UPDATED Load Data: Wear and Tear +P+ Loads for the.45 Colt &.44 Special D.I.Y. .45 Black Powder Percussion Revolvers!

Transcription

1 .45 Black Powder Percussion Revolvers! UPDATED Load Data:.45 S&W Schofield.41 Remington.264 Winchester Wear and Tear +P+ Loads for the.45 Colt &.44 Special August 2013 No. 285 Rifle Magazine Presents - HANDLOADER $ D.I.Y. Self-Defense Loads $5.99 U.S./Canada Display until 09/7/2013 Printed in USA

2 AMMUNITION RELOADING JOURNAL August 2013 Volume 48, Number 4 ISSN Issue No P and +P+ Loads for the.45 Colt and.44 Special Reloader s Press - Dave Scovill Weatherby Bullets & Brass - Brian Pearce 16 Ramshot ZIP Propellant Profiles - R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. 18 Page Casting for All My Guns Mike s Shootin Shack - Mike Venturino 22 Redding s Competition 10X Pistol Powder Measure From the Hip - Brian Pearce Winchester Cartridge Board - Gil Sengel Caliber Percussion Revolver Black-Powder Loads and Centerfire Conversions Layne Simpson Lee Precision Bullet Moulds Casting.45 and Bullets John Haviland Page Handloading the.41 Remington Power, Accuracy and Unusual Versatility Brian Pearce S&W Schofield Loading the Cavalry Colt Mike Venturino Winchester Revisited Testing New Bullets and Powders John Barsness Page Background Photo: 2013 Vic Schendel

3 On the cover... This Ruger Blackhawk (old model).41 features a inch barrel and is carried regularly as a ranch gun. Photo by Brian Pearce. Inset: a Ruger Old Army percussion revolver. Photo by Layne Simpson. 64 Velocity, Expansion and Personal Experience Self-Defense Loads in a Time of Drought Terry Wieland 74 The Age of Exactitude Almost to Excess In Range - Terry Wieland Issue No. 285 August 2013 AMMUNITION RELOADING JOURNAL Publisher/President Don Polacek Publishing Consultant Mark Harris Editor in Chief Dave Scovill Associate Editor Lee J. Hoots Managing Editor Roberta Scovill Assisting Editor Al Miller Senior Art Director Gerald Hudson Production Director Becky Pinkley Contributing Editors John Haviland Ron Spomer Brian Pearce Stan Trzoniec Charles E. Petty R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. Clair Rees Mike Venturino Gil Sengel Ken Waters Terry Wieland Advertising Advertising Director - Tammy Rossi tammy@riflemag.com Advertising Representative - Tom Bowman bowman.t@sbcglobal.net Advertising Information: Circulation Circulation Manager Kendra Newell circ@riflemag.com Subscription Information: Handloader (ISSN ) is published bimonthly by Polacek Publishing Corporation, dba Wolfe Publishing Company (Don Polacek, Pres ident), 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona (also publisher of Rifle magazine). Tele phone: (928) Periodical Postage paid at Prescott, Arizona, and additional mailing offices. Subscription prices: U.S. possessions single issue, $5.99; 6 issues, $22.97; 12 issues, $ Foreign and Canada single issue, $5.99; 6 issues $29.00; 12 issues, $ Please allow 8-10 weeks for first issue. Advertising rates furnished on request. All rights reserved. Change of address: Please give six weeks notice. Send both the old and new address, plus mailing label if possible, to Circulation Dept., Handloader Magazine, 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Handloader, 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona Canadian returns: PM # Pitney Bowes, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. Wolfe Publishing Co Gulfstream, Ste. A Prescott, AZ Tel: (928) Fax: (928) Polacek Publishing Corporation Publisher of Handloader is not responsible for mishaps of any nature that might occur from use of published loading data or from recommendations by any member of The Staff. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Publisher assumes all North American Rights upon acceptance and payment for all manuscripts. Although all possible care is exercised, the publisher cannot accept responsibility for lost or mutilated manuscripts. 6 Background Photo: 2013 Vic Schendel

4 PROPELLANT PROFILES Another opportunity to take a look at a powder reviewed in the past presents itself in Ram - shot s ZIP. When ZIP was reviewed in 2003, there were few cartridges for which data had been published. Now the list has grown sig - nificantly with the pub lication of the Ram shot Load Guide, Edition 4.5. The most recent Sierra reloading manual, Edition V, new with the first ZIP review, also includes quite a bit of data for Ram - shot powders. Lastly, in the Ramshot publi - cation there have been some changes in powder charge maximums. ZIP is a double-base, flattened spherical pistol powder. Its nitroglycerin content is 18 percent, and its bulk density is a space-filling.775 g/cc. ZIP s burning rate, according to the Burn Rate Chart in the 2012 Hodgdon Annual Manual, falls behind Accurate s No. 2 and in front of Hodgdon HP-38/Winchester 231. This makes it a relatively fast burning target pistol powder, and in the Ramshot Load Guide it is gen - erally treated as such. In some 16 RAMSHOT ZIP by R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. small- capacity pistol cartridges such as the.380 ACP, 9mm Luger and.40 S&W and a few others, including the.357 it is loaded to SAAMI maximum pressures. Previously published ZIP data did not include the.380 ACP, but the latest Ramshot Load Guide does. As mentioned in my earlier review, ZIP would be a fine powder in the.25 ACP and.32 ACP. For the.380 ACP, the Sierra 90-grain hollowpoint was selected. Its performance with ZIP was quite good, keeping in mind the cartridge s Selected Loads Ramshot ZIP bullet charge velocity (grains) (grains) (fps).380 ACP mm Luger , Special 148* , , S&W Special 235* * ACP 200* * Colt 250* * * cast bullet Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data. purpose and the guns in which it is chambered. Next up was the 9mm Luger. Maximum powder charges have increased slightly since the earlier data. Last time I selected 4.2 grains with both 115- and 124- grain jacketed bullets. The latest Ramshot data has a different maximum charge for each 115-grain bullet listed, and the same goes for each 124-grain bullet. With a 115- grain Sierra, this time I settled on 4.4 grains; with the 124-grain Speer, I stayed with 4.2 grains. Both loads performed well. In the.38 Special, the 7.75-inch Ramshot test barrel skewed velocities upward to the extent my 4- inch barreled revolver couldn t compete. Even at the maximum allowable powder charge, my 140- grain jacketed bullet load was so anemic I won t even list it. On the other hand, a 148-grain wadcutter lead bullet load was quite accurate and may find some favor in cowboy action shooting. For the.357, small rifle

5 primers were employed, in accordance with the Ramshot data. Both 125- and 158-grain bullets were accurate and consistent although, in my inch barrel, not the equal of the 6-inch factory test barrel. The differences were not that great, however, and the powder performed rather well. In the.40 S&W, ZIP can t equal the velocities of some of the slower-burning powders, including Ramshot s True Blue and Silhouette, and ZIP s pressure is a bit higher, but results were still quite satisfactory. The 180-grain load of 5.0 grains was a compromise between Ramshot s 4.5-grain maximum with a Hornady bul - let and Sierra s maximum of 5.7 grains with its bullet. The load virtually duplicated a factory Remington/UMC target load (955 fps) clocked 10 feet from the muzzle from a 4-inch barreled Smith & Wesson Sigma. Given the light weight of the pistol, such loads are more controllable than heav - ier loads and more enjoyable to shoot. I chose cast bullets only with the.44 Special. Five grains of ZIP pushing 235- and 255-grain bullets produced a very anemic 650 fps or so. Six grains produced a fairly mild but accurate load with each bullet; good recovery time for cowboy action shooting while pro - ducing fair results from a inch Ruger. The.45 ACP is another cartridge in which the allowable powder charges have changed. My earlier reported loads are still safe, although one now exceeds the current maximum. As such, I ve increased my 200-grain cast bullet target load while reducing the 230- grain bullet s powder charge to match the current maximum. Accuracy remained much the same. Gas Checked & Plain Base Match Grade Cast Bullets Everything from 6.5mm to.500 S&W, BHN Real Keith Bullets -.357,.41,.44 & , 465 & 500 Gr. in.500 S&W,.460 S&W Gr. 349 NW 100 St. St. John, KS Tel: Website: We supply all of CorBon s cast bullets! RIFLEMAN S REST Custom, handmade shooting rest. Tel: Online: riflemansrest.net Finally, the.45 Colt. Previously two loads were listed: one normal and one light with 250-grain bullets. They re repeated here. The former still performs well. The latter is really suitable for cowboy action only. August-September $195.00

6 Colt s Single Action Army The Colt SAA is as popular today as it was in the past. This legendary revolver played an important role in the history of the American West. In this detailed volume, Editor Dave Scovill shares his knowledge of how to develop accurate loads for these fine guns and the skills needed to shoot them. Catalog #554.3 $54.00 Plus $7.25 shipping & handling in the U.S. Call for foreign rates. AZ residents add 8.35% tax. Wolfe Publishing Co Gulfstream, Ste. A Prescott, AZ ORDER: or From the original firstgeneration guns to the replicas that are available today, this book is the definitive source on reloading and shooting the Colt Peacemaker. This hard-bound edition contains 160 full-color photographs and is a worthy addition to any sportman s library. NOW AVAILA BLE!

7 Terry Wieland The widespread use of the personal chronograph 20-some years ago changed a lot of things, not least of all our faith in the accuracy of published ballistics data. Early portable chronographs like the Chrony may not have been the most accurate, but they were consistent. One thing they demonstrated was that factory ammunition figures were optimistic, and velocities touted in some handloading guides were outright fraudulent. In fairness, Speer, Sierra and Lyman often worked with special test barrels, and said so. A barrel that is extra-long with a tight bore produces higher velocities in a given load. Often, the aim was to get a load that produced safe pressures in such a barrel, thereby ensuring that pressures would be well within safe limits in a commercial rifle. This is all very well for hunting rifles, where 100 fps one way or the other is going to have a slight effect on midrange trajectory and not much else. It is quite another for handguns, where a load tested in a gun with a 6-inch barrel may produce such lamentable velocities in a 2-inch hideaway gun that they are useless for their intended purpose. When the intended purpose is keeping your skin in one piece, this could be a serious matter. gun slug from a standard shotshell by rimming the case halfway up with a pocket knife. I was well into my 20s before I began to seriously question the gospel I read in the pages of Outdoor Life. By the time I reached my 40s, I believed nothing unless I saw it for myself and certainly would not repeat anything in print unless I d tried it and knew that it worked. We are now in the midst of a serious drought of factory ammunition, and there is even a shortage of some types of bullets for handloading. It seemed like an opportune time to try the old inverted-wadcutter trick to see if it really works. If the personal chronograph taught us to distrust published velocities, the penetration box for bullet testing taught me not to believe any advertising claims for bullet performance until I d pumped a few rounds into my own long box full of soaked newsprint. Performance claims for hunting bullets may be outlandish, but they pale in comparison with some of the statements made about pistol bullets for self-defense. My experience in that regard has been revealing. One time in South Africa, I fired three brand-new, highly touted 230-grain,.45-caliber hollowpoints into a box of packed earth. When I dug them out, none had expanded in the least, and the gaping hollows had actually closed up slightly. Those loads were Winchester subsonics that appeared about 20 years ago just as shooters were beginning to really question bullet performance, both hunting and self-defense. The subsonics had generous, serrated hollowpoints, but the velocity was so low they did not expand at all. By comparison, Winchester s Velocity, Expansion and 64 In the old days, when self-defense ammunition choices were limited and it was sometimes hard to find, handloading writers told how you could make a perfectly serviceable expanding bullet by inverting a hollowbase wadcutter and using these in a J-frame. This became handloading legend, much like making a shotfamous Black Talon from that same era expanded beautifully under identical conditions same gun, same distance, same box of earth. This was right after the election in People were expecting political upheaval and mayhem. I was living out in the sticks far from anyone, we all carried a gun,

8 and you laid your pistol on the table while you were eating. We were all living tactically, as we used to say in the infantry, so my little bullet test carried a certain meaning for me. The following year I dropped by the Winchester booth at a show and talked to one of the 24-year-old marketing grads the company had pushing the product. How did he explain the lamentable performance of the subsonics? He told me with great assurance that such bullets would not expand unless there was moisture present. How do you explain the performance of the Black Talons then, I asked? Oh, he said, those are different. Indeed they were. The bottom line? The velocity a bullet can attain in a given gun is a critical factor in whether a self-defense load will work acceptably, and about the only way you can tell if a cartridge will work in your particular gun is to fire a few bullets into an appropriate test medium, then dig them out to see. Back to the inverted wadcutters. In a handgun, barrel length plays a critical part in ballistic performance, more so than in a rifle, because the relative differences are so great. When comparing rifle barrels of 20 to 26 inches long, you re working in terms of 10 to 30 percent differences in length. With a.38 Special, barrels range from less than 2 inches to 8 or more. The stan- Self-Defense Loads in a Time of Drought Personal The much-maligned.38 Special can be loaded to great potential in virtually any revolver, with a little care and a lot of testing. Facing page, this Winchester 230-grain Black Talon was recovered from a box of earth. Retained weight was grains. Experience August-September

9 Velocity, Expansion and Personal Experience dard practical lengths 2, 4 and 6 inches are not mere percentages, they re multiples. A load that will deliver 1,000 fps in a 6-inch barrel might drop to 600 fps in a 2-inch 66 From left, a Federal 158-grain lead RN, Federal 110 Hydra-Shok and Terry s handload with 3.2 grains of Bullseye and a 158-grain lead SWC offer three distinct levels of performance in the.38 Special. barrel. When depending on velocity to expand a bullet on impact, such a drastic difference can result in no expansion at all. To start with, I went to the range with a Ruger Blackhawk (6-inch barrel), S&W Model 19 (4-inch) and a Smith J-frame (2-inch) and compared their performance with two different factory loads as well as one handload. The factory loads were the Federal 158-grain lead roundnose and the 110-grain Hydra- Shok HP. The handload was a 158-grain semiwadcutter loaded with 3.2 grains of Bullseye. Bullseye was chosen because, as one of the fastest-burning handgun powders, one could reasonably expect that it would be the least susceptible to serious velocity fluctuations due to barrel length. Table I gives the findings for all three loads in all three guns. Federal does not say what gun produced its published velocities, but as can be seen, with the lead roundnose ammunition, the Ruger Blackhawk delivered pretty much as promised, while with the 110-grain Hydra-Shok, the S&W Model 19 did the same, and the Blackhawk registered an average velocity 126 fps higher! In both cases, the J- frame Model 36 was below the published figures by 100 fps in the first case and 50 fps in the second. The Bullseye load was taken from the Speer manual, which lists the This.32-caliber Speer 100-grain JHP, shot from a.32 H&R at 1,008 fps, penetrated inches in test medium but expanded barely at all. The load was 5.7 grains of Accurate No. 5 the maximum listed in the Speer manual. test gun as an S&W Model 14 with a 6-inch barrel. The Blackhawk came close and was remarkably consistent, with an extreme spread of only 29 fps for five shots (732 to 761). The others fell short, although, again, they were very consistent; so there is nothing suspicious about Table I Velocity Test Results revolver barrel velocity (inches) (fps) Federal 158-grain lead RN (published velocity, 770 fps): S&W J-frame S&W Model Ruger Blackhawk Federal 110-grain Hydra-Shok (published velocity, 980 fps): S&W J-frame S&W Model Ruger Blackhawk 6 1, grain lead SWC, 3.2 grains of Bullseye (published velocity, 765 fps): S&W J-frame S&W Model Ruger Blackhawk Inverted Wadcutter Results Table II Bullseye velocity (grains) (fps) expansion none slight to 5 8 inch diameter good mushroom shape Notes: All loads were fired in an S&W J-frame. There were no pressure signs from any of these loads. Be Alert Publisher cannot accept responsibility for errors in published load data.

10 These 230-grain bullets were fired from the same.45 ACP into the same box of earth at the same time. The expanded bullets are the old Black Talon; the unexpanded ones are Winchester subsonic. The hollowpoints closed up on impact, rather than expanding. The one deformed bullet struck a stone. The stub in the center is the bullet that was cross-cut and shed its petals. (1) Two bullets with 3.2 grains of Bullseye showed almost no expansion; (2) at 3.3 grains expansion was beginning; (3) at 3.4 it had reached an acceptable level; (4) 3.5 grains gave the widest expansion (.715 inch); and (5) the best overall expansion came at the price of unacceptable pressures. the velocity readings. The chronograph was a ProChrono, for those who want all the details. This test demonstrated the problem one faces in developing a load such as the inverted wadcutter. Consulting various loading manuals, I arrived at a range of loads for a 148-grain lead bullet from 3.0 grains of Bullseye to a rather hairy maximum of 4.5 grains. Having worked up various loads using the maximum charge and conventional bullets in the Blackhawk, and finding nothing unsettling about them, I loaded some rounds with the inverted wadcutters and shot one through the J-frame and three through the Blackhawk. The results were quite startling. In the Blackhawk, I got an average velocity of 1,155 fps and no extraction difficulties. With the J-frame, one round was enough! Shooting it into the penetration box, I got a perfectly expanded bullet but some unsettling pressure signs and a stuck case. At that point, I backed off to 3.2 grains of Bullseye, then worked August-September

11 Velocity, Expansion and Personal Experience back up.10 grain at a time, shooting only in the J-frame. The results are shown in Table II. With the load at 3.5 grains, the bullet s retained weight was 144 grains, and the shape was a lovely mushroom measuring.715 inch in diameter. At a range of five yards, it penetrated 5.25 inches into the packed newsprint of the box. As a self-defense round, you could do a lot worse. Just for fun, I tried cross-cutting one bullet before it was seated. With 3.4 grains of Bullseye, the slug shed its four petals and pene- HOCH CUSTOM BULLET MOULDS Tool room quality, nose-pour, most standard or custom designs made to order. Cylindrical (straight) or tapered. Rifle & pistol designs available. COLORADO SHOOTER S SUPPLY Shop Home N. Delaware Roswell, NM davefarmer@hochmoulds.com trated 5.5 inches, but the surviving slug weighed only 88 grains when I dug it out. The loss of frontal area was exactly counterbalanced by the loss of mass, resulting in exactly the same penetration obviously, not the answer. Although the.38 Special is the cartridge most often mentioned for such experiments, it is possible to do the same thing with any caliber for which you can find hollowbase wadcutters. The only one that springs to mind is the.32. Hollowbase wadcutter bullets are available for loading the.32 S&W for competition, and these can be loaded in the.32 H&R. Whether it is worth the effort is another question. The only.32 H&R I have ever owned is an S&W Model 16-4 with a 6-inch barrel. With it I have loaded the Speer 60-grain Gold Dot hollowpoint (HP), the 100-grain Merit Iris Apertures We recommend to all who are having trouble with vision of the sights to try the Merit Iris Shutter Disk -ElmerKeith,Sixguns by Keith meritcorporation.com Merit Corporation P.O. Box 9044 Schenectady, NY Rainier Ballistics LeadSafe Reduced-Vapor Bullets Shane Hall Marketing/Sales Rainier Ballistics, L.L.C JHP and inverted wadcutters. The wadcutter results were inconclusive, and since that is hardly a selfdefense gun anyway, I didn t pursue it. As for the 100-grain JHP, the obvious self-defense bullet, without giving details (for obvious liability reasons), suffice to say that far exceeding the recommended powder levels, I achieved considerably less velocity than promised, no bullet expansion worth mentioning and incipient pressure signs. The 60-grain bullet, loaded to 1,227 fps, penetrated all of 3 inches in the box and disintegrated. At that point I gave up. If I were ever to come into possession of a J- frame-type gun in.32 H&R, I might try again, but as long as there are.38 Specials available, there doesn t seem to be much point. To the best of my knowledge, Winchester Black Talons were never available for handloaders. They ran afoul of the cop-killer hysteria of the mid-1990s, the loaded ammunition was supposedly reserved for police and security personnel, it was eventually renamed and, finally, discontinued altogether. Without getting into the logic of any of the above, it is really too bad. Although the razorsharp talons of those expanded bullets may frighten politicians, that bullet certainly did what Winchester advertised it to do. When I dug out the expanded slugs from my makeshift penetration box in South Africa in 1994, one on-looker who owned a.45 Auto immediately offered me 100 Rand apiece (about $14 per cartridge) for some ammunition. When I left the country, I gave him what I had left, figuring to get more when I got home. I arrived to find it had been taken off the market. That little experiment did convince me, though, that the only way to see how a particular type of }ammunition will perform in your particular gun is to get a chronograph and a penetration box and go to the range to find out. But don t take my word for it. I certainly wouldn t.