Requesting Info on redhawk 5.5" 45colt

[Nobody]

I've seen a 5.5" barreled Ruger Redhawk in .45 colt that interests me, but I have no experience with the cartridge. I once had a super redhawk in .44 mag but sold it years ago as I found the gun generally too big and unwieldy. This redhawk however, seems a good deal sleeker. It's a used gun and it's apparent that the trigger was worked as it's probably the sweetest ruger trigger I've ever pulled. I normally don't go in for really big guns but the pachmeyers on this pistol feel real good in my medium sized hands.

I've read about the .45 colt and seems interesting. I'd have to reload the beast to make it economical to shoot. Does the brass last awhile in a .45 colt relative to other calibers with which I'm familiar (.44mag, .357mag, etc.)? Anybody know the actual weight of this 5.5" model? Lastly, how does the .45 colt feel, recoil wise, compared to the super redhawk in .44 mag?

I've also heard you can have the cylinder refitted for moonclips and also shoot .45 acp but I don't know if that's true or not.

What's a fair price for a used redhawk like this?

Opinions are welcome. Thanks!

 

[Ultima-Ratio]

.45 LC Ruger Redhawk?

Buy it! Ruger discontinued the Redhawk in .45 LC, brass life is fine and the gun will handle a steady diet of 454 Casull level loads while your wrist may not

 

[BluesBear]

RUger has discontinued the 5½" barreled .45 Colt Redhawk. They still offer the 7½ Stainless model though.

With standard loads .45 Colt brass will last just a slong as any other revolver caliber. While the Redhawk will handle th heavy Ruger/TC only loads please don't try to load full strength .454 loads in .45 Colt brass.

If you alter the cylinder for .45 ACP in clips that can make it unsafe for .45 Colt loads due to excessive headspace. I'd strongly advise against it.

I think the standard Redhawk with a 5½" barrel is a nicely balanced revolver.
I just wish they had continued to offer it in .45 Colt and .41 Magnum preferably in blued finish. Those would be a nice affordable alternative to the discontinued blued S&W N-frames.

 

[Sharps Shooter]

I like my 5.5” Redhawk .45 Colt. It’s my backpacking gun. Dairycreek wrote it weighs in around 49 ounces and I think that’s about right. I remember when I bought it I was surprised to learn it actually weighs a few ounces less than my 5” Smith 629, which weighs 54 ounces.
It’s really hard to compare the recoil of a Redhawk .45 Colt to a Super Redhawk .44 Magnum. For one thing, most reloading manuals have two sets of load data for the .45 Colt – one for standard pressure loads and another for higher pressure loads to be used in Rugers, T/Cs and Freedom Arms only. Actually the .45 Colt can be, and is loaded to at least three different levels of performance, but I don’t want to get into all that. I’ll just state this – if you shoot a 300-grain bullet out of a Redhawk .45 Colt at 1150 fps it will probably kick you harder than if you shoot a 300 grain bullet out of a Super Redhawk .44 Magnum at 1150 fps because the Super Redhawk is heavier. Personally, I’ve never liked the Super Redhawks simply because they ARE so big. My Redhawk wears a set of Hogue rubber grips and with standard pressure loads it’s a real pussycat. With the 300-grain “Ruger Only” loads, it gets my attention. But with those loads I hope it will get the attention of an irate bear if I ever encounter one while backpacking.
If there’s one thing I don’t care for about the .45 Colt cartridge, it’s the case volume. Because it was originally designed for black powder, a charge of Bullseye or Unique just doesn’t take up very much room in the case. I’ve yet to try that new Trail Boss powder, but it should work well for the light to mid-range loads. As far as brass life compared to the .44 Magnum, again, it’s hard to make that comparison. Standard pressure .45 Colt loads are a lot less pressure than standard pressure .44 Magnum loads. I never load “Ruger Only” loads in my .45 Colt brass more than a couple of times, then they go in the standard pressure can and I don’t know how many times those have been loaded. Yeah, I’ve read .45 Colt brass is thinner than .44 Magnum brass, but as I already stated, the “standard pressures” of the two rounds are quite different.
I'm not surprised to hear Ruger has discontinued the 5.5" Redhawk in .45 Colt. It seems like that happens all too often to guns I like. I'm glad I got mine.

 

[Lloyd Smale]

when they moon clip a redhawk they cut them so that the cartridge will still headspace normally and can be shot with or without the moon clips and eject either way too. Ive got an alaskan 454 done and have allready put 500 or so full snort loads through it with no problem. They cut them for a moon clip that is only .22 thick so you will have to have acp clips made especialy for it. I had some smith 25 clips milled down and they work great. You just have to be a little more careful with the clips as they will bend fairly easily.

 

[BluesBear]

If you want a .45acp revolver buy a 625.

There's a reason .45acp and .45 Colt/.454 use different cylinders.

But hey, it's your eyes and fingers not mine, do what you think is best.

 

[Stainz]

A friend and I each ordered a 5.5" SS .45 RH in 3/04 - and got them a couple of days later. Both went back to Ruger within days - too many QC issues. Mine was back by it's one month anniversary, my friend's was replaced by another new one! He sold his - mine is a 'keeper'. I did note an improvement in the trigger - particularly so after a dedicated 'break-in'. It's accuracy was better than my 5.5" SS Bisley and 7.5" SRH in .454 - and I ended up selling that SRH. Incidently, the .454 7.5" SRH, for all of it's 'bulk', weighs a whole ounce more than the 7.5" .45 RH.

The Redhawk really seems like a bulkier gun than it is. My new 6" 629 half lug, for example, weighs 3.5 oz less - but feels miniature in comparison. Knowing, as I do, that the cast components of the Ruger require more material than the forged and heat-treated S&W components for the same strength, I seem to prefer the S&W's. My 625 Mountain Gun is a much finer, albeit limited to standard SAAMI .45 Colt loads, revolver, it's 4" tube actually grouping at least as well as the 5.5" RH - both significantly better than the 7.5" .454 SRH I had.

The S&W 625MG's trigger was better than the SRH's, which, in turn, was far better than the RH's trigger. That RH trigger is a l-o-n-g pull. Mine still has a stock spring - and will still yield some ftf's with my Federally primed homebrews, seemingly more so with slow trigger pulls... odd trigger. My RH still sports the OEM stocks - and my wife prefers it (and them) - even after I snuck a few 250gr LRNFP's @ ~1k fps in it for her. She hates the Bisley, by comparison - and dislikes my favorite .45 Colt, that 625 MG wearing Ahrends square conversion cocobolo stocks. Oddly, she bought that revolver as a gift for me - my first-ever S&W. All said, the RH has a home...

About .45 Colt ammo - I bought a Dillon 550 to reload the round after finding that the years of shooting had amassed 2,700+ empties in zip-loc bags under my bench. It started another 'hobby'... I now make ammo for everything from 7.62x38r (1895 Nagant revolver) to .454. I tried several propellants, and switched to Titegroup due to it's much heralded (... and deserved!) insensitivity to case volume and/or position. I use it in everything! I have lots of .45 Colt - and some .45 Schofield - cases - mostly Starline, my preference. I have had one split Ni case - loaded too many times - it split when I belled it. My favorite .45 Colt load is 6.1gr T-G under a 250gr LRNFP with a Federal LP primer in Starline brass, for 886 +/- 21 fps from my 5.5" RH. I like 4.5 gr T-G under the same bullet in .45 Schofield cases for 700 +/-8 fps, for a milder round. The hottest rounds shot thus far have been the Georgia Arms 200gr Gold Dot JHP's at 1210 +/- 20fps, all very comfortable in OEM stocks. Try to stick with Federal primers!

Stainz

PS I concur with B-B... I bought my 625JM (Sold my previous 625 some 7 months earlier - too long without a .45 ACP/AR plinker!) last Feb - a far better way to launch .45 ACP/AR's.

 

[halvey]

I used to own a .41 mag blued Redhawk. They are great guns and handle and balance well. I much prefer them over the Super Redhawks.

Since the trigger is already nice, you just need to find grips that work for you. Those ugly finger groove Hogue's worked great for me.

 

[unspellable]

45 Colt brass and loads

45 Colt brass has a reputation for being weak and not good for too many reloads. It's actually not the brass that's weak but rather that most 45 Colt chambers are oversized. (Hang over from the good old days of the 19th Century.) Hence the brass gets worked more than other calibers when you are reloading. That said, I've heard there is quite a difference from one brand to another in 45 Colt brass.

An important difference between the 45 Colt and the 454 Casull is that the SAAMI chamber specs are much tighter for the 454 Casull. That's why they recommend 454 dies rather than using 45 Colt dies where one might use one set of dies for both in the case of 44 Special/44 Mag.

Now, I have a Raging Bull in 45 Colt. I am left to wonder what level of loading it will take. (Six loose holes, rather than the five tight holes of the 454 Casull version.)

 

[Stainz]

Re .45 Colt brass. Yes, balloon head brass was weaker than the current crop. The Starline brass is particularly hardy. I have not noted the excessive force one would expect during resizing, if the brass had actually 'grown' due to larger than spec chambers. I feel that most SAAMI spec loads, particularly down at the 'cowboy action' level, won't even expand the crimped end to seal, causing the characteristic smoke trail along the brass from the open end, much less overly expand that brass. My loads fall out of my Rugers and my 625MG, and have always been easily yanked out of my Puma M1892 so-chambered, whose only misfeed occured when I tried to feed .45 Schofields - with their larger rims. That smoke discoloration is less apparent - even missing - in some of the hotter loads. I won't be buying more .45 Colt brass for some time... it seems to go on and on - like that Eveready bunny!


Stainz

 

[instigator]

nobody, i have a 7.5in 45 redhawk that i converted to a 454. and i love it. i would love to get a 5.5 bbl and do the same thing to it. go for it and if ya dont like it you can sell it to me

 

[unspellable]

Loads vs life etc.

If a given load is too light to cause the case to obturate properly, then its not expanding the brass all the way, and you will get dirty but long lived brass.

On the other hand, if you have a heavy load the brass will expand to the chamber size. The fact that the chamber is oversized will not cause sticky extraction. You will not notice the difference in the force required to resize the brass. I squeeze brass a lot more than that with a couple of cartridge conversions I do and it doesn't take much force.

I'd be willing to bet that with a moderately stiff load, 45 Colt brass would last longer if used in a 454 Casull than it would in a 45 Colt, simply due to the difference in chamber diameter.

 

[Stainz]

One last thing... When my SRH .454 was new, the early Hornady (Lot #99 & 00) and MagTech ammo was all I used - and it would stick tenaciously. Thinking the RMS roughness, ie, runout, was too great in the cylinder's chamber bores, and the brass was dragging, I used a wool mop and Flitz - and a drill motor - to mirror finish them. My next box of ammo - MagTech - was fine, but some Hornady remnants still offered some resistance. That was alleviated in 01 lot #'s - when they switched to harder brass, the original softer brass being used to permit more reloading. At my wimpy .454 levels, the hardness of the brass would never be a problem. Cases stick? Hint - polish the chamber bores.

Stainz

PS Hornady folks are great - they acknowledged their 'error' - and sent me fresh ammo to replace the earlier lot numbers!

 

[unspellable]

brass

It's not always a rough chamber, it can be bad brass. I have several hundred pieces of 445 SuperMag brass made by PMC that will require a mallet for extraction no matter how light the load. The folks at Dan Wesson told me they had the same problem and I should switch to Starline. I've had no trouble what so ever with the Starline brass.

One hopes that PMC has corrected the problem since then.