.45 Colt lead hardness question.

[douglas_knott]

Okay folks. I don't know much about brinell hardness. I have looked it up and I'm not quite sure that I fully understand it. I load a 250 grain round nose flat point lead bullet Cowboy number 1 from Missouri Bullet Company. I used 5 grains of Trail Boss for my Rossi 92 lever action. I went to my local reloading spot and all they had in 250 grain was the pinbusters which have a little harder brinell rating if I'm reading it right. My question is am I going to have to change my powder charge or will it be ok? I want to throw this in there as well. If I wanted to use one of these bullets for deer hunting which would be better? thanks for the help.

[NAMVET72]

Ask the Col he shoots Cowboy Action,

[sdmc530]

or ....he casts as well so he might be able to help.

[Lonestar grips.]

,

just saw this so i'll add what info I can.

for general use (plinking/deer/hogs) anything in the 12-18 BHN is fine and you should be just fine with the same powder charge. in fact you can probably up that charge some as my lyman cast bullet handbook says for a 250 gr boolit 5.8 gr of trailboss is max with a rating of 12,500 C.U.P. perfectly safe for your lever gun and Colt style sixguns.

the only time you would really have to worry about the BHN is if you were shooting soft boolits (say 8 BHN) at 1400 fps. you would then get some leading unless you were using gas checked boolits.

as far as which one to use for deer, neither would be my first choice as there are many better boolits out there for hunting but between the two i'd say the pinbusters would be my choice because it's a little harder boolit and would break bone better.


now for future reference you can look here for some great 45 colt hunting loads. http://singleactions.proboards.com/t...-loads-hunting

a lot of them are meant for Ruger Blackhawks and would be unsafe in a Colt SAA style gun so keep that in mind. I would also look into a boolit with a bigger Meplat such as this Keith boolit. http://missouribullet.com/details.ph...y=14&keywords=

or the RCBS 270 SAA here http://www.mattsbullets.com/index.ph...roducts_id=314

both of those boolits would punch bigger holes than what you're shooting now and are just about guaranteed to go completely through a deer.


hope this helps.
.

[Lonestar grips.]

if you happen to try the RCBS 270 SAA then here is a article Brian Pearce did on it with some 14,000 PSI loads that would be perfect for your rifle or a SAA style revolver.


http://www.riflemagazine.com/magazin...246partial.pdf