[andy2166]

I have a 1860 Army .44 and I wanted to mess around with some mounted shooting. All the organized groups shoot conversions with no projectile cartridges.

I would like to use my 1860 as is with no conversion. would powder and corn meal compressed with some bore butter over top work? cant really use a wad as i dont want to be responsible for a flaming wad shooting across the arena.

any thoughts? The load has to be enough to pop the balloon yet it has to stay in the gun while holstered.

[Old Dragoon]

FWIW,
From what I understand, all blanks are 45LC cal. and are provided at the shoots or by certified reloaders. I don't think they'll allow C & B pistols or rifles. No way to insure your loads.

[andy2166]

I'm not interested in that group. Its just for me and my brother to mess around with on our horses. I dont want to have to convert my weapon.

[DixieTexian]

I knew a guy who used to do old west reenacting, and he said they would load their own bullets with floral foam on top of the powder. You might consider making paper catridges without anything but powder or something, but if it is just you and your brother to messa round with, then why worry about shooting flaming wads?

[andy2166]

Because saftey is always an issue. One reason for doing this is plain ol fun. I am also a mounted police officer and this would be a great exercise in horse desensitation.

Seems to me that floral foam would melt and stick to things.....

[Son of Sam]

Here's an idea, and it's only and idea, mind you. I haven't actually tried shooting one of these loads yet:

Load up a smallish to medium sized load of BP, top that with a nice paper wad (enough to keep the powder well away from your projectile), then load a ball cast from the glue from a hot glue gun.

They cast easily enough, and that I have done when I first got my Lee mold.

I read about people doing this somewhere and have actually cast my own balls from this type of glue but haven't ever shot one from my revolver to date.

My only two concerns are if anyone got hit with it I'm quite sure it'll smart something fierce, so I'd not go aiming at anything or anyone... and how easy it might be to clean any plastic gunk (if any) from your pistola afterwards.

I know it's not really a "blank" per se, but it'd be most realistic aside from shooting the real thing.

[BigBlock]

Foil.

You HAVE to have something in there to contain the powder, and thus, you HAVE to have a projectile of some sort. Regular blanks are made by crimping the end of the shell closed, obviously you can't do anything like that.

[Steve499]

If you will cut wads from a thin sheet of beeswax or pariffin wax and seat them on top of the powder, you will have a balloon busting projectile which loses velocity rapidly enough to become totally harmless in only a few feet. A thicker wax wad will travel farther before decellerating, of course, so you could tailor yours to the distance you need. I used to shoot wax bullets, propelled by the primer, from a .38 for indoor practice and they can be very accurate.

Steve

[Loyalist Dave]

Let me second Steve499's suggestion. You can use parafin or beeswax and a bullet mold. It works fine. Pretty accurate too over 15-25 feet.

LD

[nomadboi]

For film/theatre they'll sometimes use flash paper as a wad- it'll hold in the powder, but it burns off fast enough it won't catch anything on fire or go flying off where it shouldn't.

[4v50 Gary]

Use cotton fibre paper (recycle some fancy stationary paper) and soak it in nitrate to make nitrated paper. You can use that as a wad to hold your powder in place and yes, it'll go bang. As a kid, I use to use foil wrapped newspaper but who needs a fire hazard?

[TnRebel]

Us war between the stats re-en actor use 30gr. BP and 20gr of cream of wheat lots of smoke and a big bang :what:

[DixieTexian]

Just twist some powder in some cig papers and drop them in. If you have to, you can poke a hole through the nipple to make sure they go bang.

[nomadboi]

Met with another group lately that uses that green florists' foam (the stuff they stick the bottoms of flowers into). Said it pretty much disintegrates.

[dstorm1911]

for years we have used wax slugs in cartridges as well as BP, remove the barrel from your 1860 plug the muzzle and pour in a mix of melted paraffin and bees wax after it cools push it outa the barrel with a dowel which will produce a wax rod cut it into 3/8" lengths these are your "bullets" they melt on their way to the target totally safe past 15 yards (I've been shot with em more than a few times) load with 20 grns in a .44 or just use the caps but the caps won't generate enough heat to melt the bullets but they also don't travel far at all.... with cartridges ya just pour a sheet as mentioned above so the layer is 3/8" deep let cool then use the primed case as a cookie cutter alota fun for indoor gallery shoots or pest eradication no powder needed

[Coyote Hunter]

I'm in a western reenacting group and we just use cream of wheat over the black powder load in our revolvers. if packed tightly, I've fell down, jumped fences, and our riders run their horses hard, and it stays put. BUT... and a big but, if you have a so called 1851 navy .44, you will need a seperate tool to compress the charge. Uberti and Pietta 44 navies keep the .36 loading lever, it will not compress the sides of the cream of wheat, and you will get a multiple discharge! .36 navies, 1860 colts and Remmies work great.

CH