Well, here I am, dipping in the toes

[armoredman]

Well I have to say the "fill it until it crunch's" went SO hard against very long term standards of weighing charges...I tried, I did, but I went back and weighed everything to make sure it was all 30 grains, but I am getting ahead of myself.

First. The SPG lube. Yes, that's a cat food can, it's what I had available, don't judge me for recycling. I doubt the fired boolits will smell like cat food.



The lube directions, (SPG Tropical), say wait 45 minutes...really? The stuff was solid in a few, but I waited. Do note - I put WAY too much in...this will cause trouble later.



The 45 caliber cookie cutter tool LAGS made for me, what an awesome guy!



As cut. See all that excess above the lube groove?



Now this is where a lot of time was wasted - cleaning the excess off. However, note that large lube groove is full of nice back powder lube, unlike the last ones...



Here we go, hours of work, trial and error for this. And cleaning.



So, lets get started, shall we? And we start with something different - homemade powder.





And the final product - I made others with the other powder, of course.



I only made 5 of each, just to get an idea how they group, worth exploring or no. I tried like HECK to use the "load it until it crunches", by my scale kept wincing...so fine, I measured every load to 30 grains. With home made powder I doubt I could overload it, at all, BUT, I would like to be able to do repeatable accuracy, and knowing the powder charge might help.
I won't get back out to the line for a bit, but we'll see.

[Wayne Smith]

I understand the fear of the 'crunch', but I must say, after filling some 45-70 cases the same way the 44-40 ones didn't bother me so much!

[armoredman]

So, we went today. The wind was so insanely strong that I had to tie four bags full of rocks to the target stand to keep it from tipping over. The hearing protection kept my hat on! But make it we did, with just 10 rounds to try, to see if I had wasted my time or am on to something. I also need to point out all the powder used here is homemade, not by me, but someone who really knows guns.



I soon found out that Bore Butter was more like soup - it was apparently past it's shelf life. Oh well, I still smeared a little on the cylinder pin.
First up - what I nice shiny revolver...like that's gonna last.





Meh. I do have to claim some slop due to wind action.



Next set. Remember that nice shiny wheel gun?



Now this is where it gets interesting. I saw shot 1 impact, then shot 2, while holding a mid target hold. So I moved to my usual with everything else 6 o'clock hold, and look at 3-5.



To say I am interested in exploring this some more might be a wee bit of an understatement. That's pretty darn good once you see what I did. I asked my son to verify that was two in one hole - he did. The wind flapped the edges back and forth.

It was so windy out, though, after I fired that last five, we packed up and beat feet.
Now, I forgot the bowl of dish soap and water, BUT, as soon as we got home, (we live quite close), I dumped them into a small container and shook them with dish soap and hot water. When I get over to the reloading room tonight, I will tumble them and compare. New Starline nickel brass, BGTW.
Thanks for coming along!

[Nobade]

You are getting the hang of this stuff. Pretty soon the addiction will be strong and you will be fully immersed!