Casting & Loading

[Griff]

Went shooting yesterday... Cowboy action match and shot my Colt SAAs & the 18" 1873 Short Rifle. 200 grain RFN 45 Colts in the rifle, and 160 grain RFN in C45S in the pistols! Had a couple of rifle misses from trying to push my stage time goals. I used to simply loaf along and TRY to reach 60 seconds a stage... Now, I'm trying to halve that. The forty second range is pretty easily reached, unless there's a lot of running back and forth on the stage. Yesterday saw 3 of the 6 stages like that. One stage was nothing but rifle & shotgun, another was just rifle & pistol. On the latter, you just stood in one place, and blazed away! Great fun... shot that one clean; on the rifle & shotgun, you shot the rifle down a hallway, and HAD to hit a clay bird before you could move the rest of the stage... I heard a few folks had to reload to finish the rifle portion... Luckily I got the bird with the first shot and ran thru the rest in quick order.

Anyway, that sorta depleted my loaded rounds... So, I've spent the afternoon casting some bullets with the new mold Sixgun sold me... a Lyman 454190 single cavity... man, are those SLOW! Luckily I just wanted to cast a few to try out. Yeah, had to reset the lubri-sizer depth, and culled a couple that made it past the 1st inspection.

Had cast up with about 50, after lubing, sizing and final inspection, ended up with about 30. Maybe in the morning, I'll got out and sight 'em in and send in a target for the Levergun challenge!.

Reloaded my match ammo, while that brass tumbled, (what, you don't have a couple thousand empties laying about)? Then found a 100 round box that was missing about 94 rounds of my RCBS 45-225-CAV bullet behind 6 grains of RedDot.

So reloaded those.

Pssst... I DON"T think, I'll make it back to work tomorrow... still have a bunch of laundry to do... IF I get that done, along with my shooting, I might start looking for work on Tuesday... or maybe Wednesday!

[J Miller]

The 454190 is one of my favorite bullets. MY old Ideal mold drops them at 255 grs when I use wheel weights. Very accurate from all my guns when sized to .455". (Factory bullets run from .455" to .457")

If you fill both lube groves with RCBS rifle lube and load them over Unique, it will look like you're shooting black powder.

Joe

[earlmck]

Looks like you had a fine day yesterday and a somewhat productive day there today Griff. But as much time as you spend on the road you can't be tied down to a single cavity mould: they make 'em larger you know! I have a 6-cavity Lee that turns out a bullet real similar to that one in your picture (Lee calls it a 228 grain but it casts up about 235... and it really shucks 'em out with no drama and with very few rejects ('course my standards may not be as high...). And NOE or Arsenal will fix you up with a 5-cavity if Lee doesn't have something that tickles your fancy. That guy Sixgun was doing you a dirty trick, fixing you up with a single-cavity!

And I am glad you are going to get the challenge shooting done. Claybob and I have been feeling real lonely over at the challenge stump.

[Griff]

I'm a procrastinator extraordinaire... I've been home 10 days, and was going to do this each and every one of those days... But, something else always seemed to take precedence!

Edited to add... as I finished loading up the truck for the pasture... it started to rain... so, TODAY ain't gonna be the day, either!

[Griff]

That guy Sixgun was doing you a dirty trick, fixing you up with a single-cavity!

It's just the way that Sixgun rolls! Actually, he put a couple little surprises in that package... A BUNCH of 45ACP, with the required odd 9mm or 380 case stuck in side!!! So... now, I have about 6 gallons of 45ACP brass to load! No wonder I'm down to about 2,500 LP primers!!!