Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Ruger Blackhawk 45 Colt

I have a Blackhawk in 45 Colt that a good friend sold me a several years ago. I am thinking about getting it out and start getting back into shooting. I have reload in the past and have most of the equipment. Does anyone have any good loads to start out with. I like the powders 296 and H110. I was thinking of maybe starting with a 250 grain hard cast. Thanks!

Use Trail boss and work up from 5 grains.

According to their info 5.8 grains gives 727fps.

Trail boss is a good powder for making up reasonably mild practice loads.

To me, the biggest virtues of the old Colt rounds are their low pressures, recoil, muzzle blast and velocities along with solid killing power with the right bullet.
I believe if you want magnum handgun performance, you should buy a magnum handgun chambered for such a round. Kind of old fashion, I guess. E

8.0 grains of Unique.

I agree about the low pressures and recoil, but the great thing about the Rugers is that if you want more power, and everything that goes with it, you can load heavy if you think that you need the extra horse power.

I think you should get rid of that piece of junk.

Looking for one right now........

Have looked at all the available options for a 45 LC - and the Ruger Blackhawk frame is the cats meow. Run it with standard loads or load it up to romp/stomp. I guarantee it will be a handful with +P loads. And it will kill anything in NA.

Let us know how you make out.

One thing I like about single action revolvers is the ability to load rounds of various levels of power without worrying about the effect on cycling the action. Most of this data was taken using a NM Blackhawk, 5 �� barrel. The Speer 200 grain load was developed in a 45 Colt Ruger Redhawk, 5 ��. The light loads were shot in a very early US Firearms Rodeo, 4 3/4� barrel.

Speer 200 grain JHP #4477 (flying ashtray � discontinued, replaced by Speer Gold Dot)
Alliant 2400, Lot #710, 19.0 grains, 1080 avg fps (Chronograph at 8 ft.)
Winchester WLP primer
Winchester brass

Hornady 250 HP-XTP #45200
Hodgdon H110, Lot #151, 25.0 grains, 1300 avg fps
Federal #155 primer
R-P brass

Proofmark 250 LRNFP (bevel base)
Hodgdon HP-38, Lot 21683, 7.0 grains, 790 avg fps
CCI 300 primer
Any brass

Proofmark 250 LRNFP (bb)
Hodgdon TiteGroup, 6.0 grains, 820 avg fps
CCI 300 primer
3-D brass

Bullet Doctor 255 LSWC (bb)
Hercules 2400, Lot #288, 18.5 grains, 1100 avg fps
WIN WLP primer
R-P brass

I chronographed some factory ammo in May 2001 in the Ruger Redhawk, with these results:

Winchester 225 Silvertip-HP, 800 fps.
Corbon 200 HP, 1175 fps.
Federal Classic 225 lead, 850 fps.
Winchester Cowboy 250 lead, 680 fps.

Runs 1285+ in my 7.5" Ruger SBH Hunter
The groups shown were sight-in at 50 yards after installing a Burris Fast Fire.

Brian Pierce just did a huge article on the new smaller frame Flattop .45 Colt from Lipsey's with two PAGES of load data. The Blackhawk is an even stronger gun, and so any and all the loads presented will be safe in one.

I've been shooting the .45 Colt for just about 40 years now. I have three go-to loads to suit any occasion.

For light plinking loads, I use a 230-gr cast bullet meant for the .45 ACP, crimped over the ogive. Driving it, I use 6.0 grains of almost any fast pistol powder I have on hand, from Bullseye through W231. 800 fps.

For a wee bit more power, a 255 SWC over 7.0 W231, or 7.5 Universal or 8.0 Unique is perfect. 850 fps.

For hunting, the same 255 cast SWC over 20.0 of 4227 with a magnum primer gets the nod. 1,000 fps - and that's all that's needed on this continent.

I'm convinced that had Elmer Keith had something more substantial to work with other than the SAA, the .44 Magnum as we know it would have never seen the light of day. EK started out doing his experiments trying to load the .45 Colt cartridge to its potenial with the new but limited varieties of smokeless powders available at the time. It would have been a natural modernizing evolution of the cartridge had he been successful. The problem was that Colt SAA revolvers just weren't strong enough to contain the pressures. That's why he turned his attention to S&W and the .44 Special. By the time Ruger came along with revolvers up to the task he already had all of his eggs place in the S&W/.44 basket.


The cool thing about the Colt cartridge with the powders available in this day and age is you can load it however you need it. The Hodgdon manual has "Ruger Only" loads running at 30k+ psi with bullets up to 360 grs.

With that wide and varied range of versatility, I don't need to buy a magnum handgun with "magnum" stamped on the barrel. I already have one when I need it and non-magnum when i don't just by swapping out ammo.

I much prefer a .44 Special revolver, but you need a Magnum if you want to shoot hot loads.

I can't add anything to what stevelyn wrote.

If a handloader could have only one handgun for ALL uses, it would be hard to argue against a .45 Colt Blackhawk.

(Okay, a .44 Special Flattop would be just as good.)

Hop that bad boy up! I much prefer a bisley grip when shooting hot 45 Colt loads. I guarantee your revolver can take more than your middle finger (on your shooting hand) can.

Go to the Hodgdon site and they have 45 Colt loads for Ruger, Freedom Arms, & TC. Lead bullets will go faster than the jacketed bullets listed.

Watch out for the leading with the lighter cast bullets going fast. You might want to look into gas check bullets if you're really going to hop it up.

And you might want to get you one of them thar shooting gloves as well.

Cyde,

I just took a look at LoadData.com, a fairly comprehensive data base. Taking into account the parameters you put forth, I'm only coming up with "jacketed" bullets when combining a 250 gr and H110. Meaning the providers of all the data therein probably didn't think a 250 gr "cast" bullet would work well with such a slow powder as H110. Now, go up to 280 gr or higher and their's all kinds of H110 data with "cast" bullets. My favorite is the 280 gr WFN-PB I throw from my LBT mold. It's a bear stomper!

Alan

I hate to post anything about the 45 Colt after Rocky, Cause he has taught me much of what I know

But

I use the data from Alliant for Blue Dot

Pistols and Revolvers
45 Colt
250 gr Speer LSWC
Blue Dot
CCI 300

"http://www.alliantpowder.com/reloaders/RecipePrint.aspx?gtypeid=1&weight=250&shellid=36&bulletid=67&bdid=205"

And for mild loads Trail boss

But you see just how many bullet / powder combos there for the 45 Colt

That's a nice triad of loads, Rock. I have played with the light plinkers in the past, but don't load them anymore. Likewise, I have spent many an hour on the range working up loudenboomer loads with H110 and 285-325 gr bullets in my Ruger SA's, but realized after a while that I can kill anything I might care to kill in North America with a handgun using a more or less standard load (Unique 8.5 gr under a 260 gr WFN-profile cast bullet, good for 950-1000 fps), and since I'm past the age when I care to prove how tough I am, I don't subject myself to the abusive recoil of the heavy loads much at all any more.

I can get all the performance I want in ANY of my 45 Colt revolvers (including 1st and 2nd gen SAA, Uberti SAA clones, Ruger SA's, and S&W 25/625) with that standard load.

My only caveat with the Ruger 45's is that while in older models the the chamber throats were excessively loose, in the past 8-10 years the guns leave the factory with terribly undersized chamber throats (as tight as 0.448" in a couple of my Rugers. This constriction swages cast bullets down excessively on firing, and accuracy is consequently seriously degraded as a result. Jacketed bullets tend to pop back out to full diameter in the barrel, so they tend to shoot better in many Ruger 45's.

I have had the throats honed out to 0.452" in my Bisley and one Vaquero, a costly but necessary measure if I wanted to continue to shoot lead bullets in those guns.

This outfit hand reams the cylinder throats for thirty bucks plus shipping.

http://www.cylindersmith.com/

Any machine shop with a Sunnen hone should be able to size the Cylinder throats to an incredible finish and within 0.00005" in about fifteen minutes. I have done it for friends for free in the past.

Right, Scott. I don't have a milling machine or lathe, so bought the hone for my local gunsmith. "Costly" is a relative term...

Has anyone heard rumors of the 45 Flattop in a Bisley? I got the 44 SPCL in bisley and would like to get a companion... I know it took Ruger a while after the 44 SPCL run for Lipsey's to catalog them and figured that might be the case with the Colt.