Old army wads/vs no wads

[mec]

Old army wads/vs no wads/ and Lee Bullets

My Old Army is somewhat load finicky. It seems to get optimum accuracy with .457 balls and 35 grains/vol of Pyrodex, swiss, goex or h777. The chamber will hold a good bit more but accuracy goes to heck. Here is a group I shot today with 35 pyrodex and the .457 ball over the standard thickeness bigiron wad. It does its job preventing fouling

I was sitting with my back rested and using my knees for a rest as I shot over the chronograph. this is fairly steady but probably doesn't demonstrate the full accuracy potential. I overlayed the above group with the same load with no wad. The velocities may be considered identical but limited observation indicates loads with the wads have a small velocity advantage. The point of aim was the same.

This revolver doesnt shoot the .457 /225 grain dedicated old army bullets from the lee mould at all well. It also doen't like the RamLok bullets that work so well in my other revolvers. The double thick bigiron wads boost velocities considerably and prevent the hard fouling that builds up quickly with these bullets shot directly over the powder.

 

[RON in PA]

When I shot my Ruger OA in competition I used Ruger's suggested target load of a .457 ball over 20 grains of 3Fg with a corn meal fill between the ball and powder. Don't know the velocity, but the gun shot great and kept the pantry and frig full with prizes.

Every once in a while I'd load the OA with a max load of 40 grains of 3Fg, groups would double, but it was fun and certainly was OK for close work.

 

[mec]

Dissatisfied with the level of accuracy I had gotten with the 227 grain Lee Cast .457 bullets, I tried a variation. I shot a couple of loads from a steady 25 yard bench rest using 30 grains of Pyrodex P and wonder wads with one string and BigIron wads/ with the other. I also polished the lower edge of the bullets with sand paper and smeared them with bore butter to assure straight seating with a minimum of distortion. Loading these is a fairly tedious process.

This resulted in usable accuracy though not the equal of the same revolver with Buffalo bullets or the Lee 200 grain bullets of smaller diameter. The 25 yard groups were just slightly smaller (circa 4") than balls had delivered at 50 yards from a less steady rest. At 836 feet per second, the load is pretty much equivalent to a .45 acp ball load and will retain about the same amount of velocity/energy down range.