Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders 45 caliber smokeless???

I see a lot of talk about building a 45 caliber smokeless ML on a Remington M700ML. What size bullets are being shot out of these 45 calibers? I also saw someone mention that they aren't using sabots on them? They aren't just pushing 45 caliber bullets down the barrel without anything behind them are they? Somebody needs to school me on these!

I recently got onto a 45 cal M-L kick, Knight of course. Some common bullets are the 200 grn SST, the 195 grn Barnes copper & a 200 grn Hornady pistol bullet. The 45 should give a few 100 more FPS than the 50, on average, similar charges. I plan to set up my chrony with warmer temps.

I did take my 45 cal 'Elite' on a Jan IL anterless hunt. I took 2 shots & had 2 deer. A much better ratio than my shotgun slug shooting buddies I may add. I was using a 200 grn SST & 110 grains of Blackhorn 209. These bullets are held in a plastic sabot/jacket.

With the proper jacket you can use any .400 bullet. I have other sabots that allow a 9mm pistol bullet. I've used these for initial sight in.

The most common bullets are the 200gr SST and the Barnes 195gr in a Harvester 45x40 blue sabot. 45x357 sabot and bullet combos dont work very well with smokeless.

The barrels run smaller than .452 usually and sabotless shooters buy a sizing die that is slightly smaller than their bore. Then you knurl the bullet up with a file if needed so they load snug. Commonly used sabotless bullets vary from a 200gr to 325gr. The most popular are probably the Parker Ballistic Extreme and Match Hunter bullets.

Another option is to get a adjustable sizing die and size the bullet for a exact fit. They make dies to full form size a .458 and a smooth die to size .452s. The fullform die even engraves the rifling on the bullet because it is made from a part of your barrel called a drop.

Sabotless shoots really well but its often harder on the vent liner and pressures are higher than sabots. You have less room for a mistake. When you size the bullets, you also need to account for fouling because bullets will get tighter as the barrel gets dirtier.

You should really go to Dougs and read up on it. There is a ton of info there.
http://dougsmessageboards.proboards.com/index.cgi#shootinghunting

I don't find sabotless to be any harder on a vent liner than shooting with a sabotted bullet. I also do not need to account for fouling when I size my bullets. That's just silly.

As far as less room for mistake, that is correct - you have removed one of the safety features - the sabot. When pressure gets past 40,000 or so, a sabot will blow, allowing gas to escape. No such thing with sabotless.

I do shoot a smaller caliber and shoot faster (speedwise) than most.

Good advice ewc one more thing 40 cal work great with the blue sabot

I am shooting 300 grain Parkers out of mine, expensive but very accurate. Actually I have shot them mostly with Blackhorn 209 as I have to use a BP sub for my Ibex hunt in NM that starts saturday. I have shot some of the 275 parkers smokeless and they are half minute at 100 and were close to that 200. I have a brux barrel on mine and I am not sizing either bullet, the 275 seat slightly easier then the 300's. I will probably resize the 300 in my full forum die when I shoot them more smokeless.
Got to run now and get packed for the hunt.

http://www.swinglock.net/adjustablebsd.php

Another important consideration which warrants the need for an adjustable die is how a sabotless bullet fits in the barrels bore after it has been fouled by shooting. Bullets which have been resized to fit in a clean bore will be a much tighter fit after the barrel has been fouled and may be difficult to load. Whether the rifle shoots best fouled or clean, the adjustable die will provide the compensation needed to produce the correct size bullet.

I think its safe to say Tom Post is widely respected in the SML community on Dougs board and his opinion has some merit.

I imagine some of this statement is to encourage sales of the die but some powders and loads do leave more fouling than others. BH209 sabotless loads for example have gotten very tight for me within 5 shots. Going extended periods without a thorough cleaning using smokeless made my bore too tight for bullets that would load on a clean bore. Even sabots got very tight. N120 fouling is much lighter than Re7 fouling ect ect.

Undersized bullets i knurled up larger than land to land dimensions dont seem to be effected nearly as much by the fouling. At least it hasnt been bad enough that i could not seat the bullet yet. Once i found the fit mine preferred it was not really an issue anymore.

I don't understand when I read a post like yours overkill?

I guess you could call a Thor a sabotless bullet? I've loaded 50 loads of BH 209, Thors, and no swabbing at all. They all loading the same. I'm not sure what the limit would be on how many could be loaded with no swabbing. Maybe there is no limit?

I usually run out of bullets before a need to swab comes up.

I think overkil post was spot on, not just from my limited experience but what I have read from others also. I don't think mine "tightens" as fast as his but it you sure can tell a difference in the loading pressure. i guess maybe one thing to remember is that most are using a pretty darn light load pressure with these guns, maybe 20 lbs as a general rule. They also feel that accuracy is best with the lighter pressure. Most of this is with full formed bullets. i do feel that once the load pressure jumped up it did level out after a number of shots. I have been using an over card so far only because we did int eh first test it shot lights out and I didn't really have time to play with it before testing at longer range for this hunt.

Good post from someone that is knowledgeable and has experience with smokeless muzzleloaders.