I had read Hobies blog awhile back how he was loading .454 round balls in .45colt as a low power plinker and short range rabit buster. I was intrigued by the idea so thought I would give it a go. I did some reading in my manuals and found a Lyman load for the RB using 5.6gr of Unique. I loaded up 10 ten just to try them out and they sat on my bench for months.
Since we were doing the get together and my boys were going I decided to take them along and see how they did out of my 94 Trapper. I figured my boys ( 8 and 6) would enjoy shooting them at the 25 yard swingers.
I feed them one at a time since I wasnt sure if the crimp would hold in the mag tube on a RB. I drop the first one in the chamber line up the sights and squeeze. Poof goes the gun smoke leaks out of the end of the bbl and out from around the bolt not even a hint of recoil ( 22lr kicks harder than these). I look at the gun open the action and inspect the barrel to ensure it didnt lodge in the bore. My oldest son swears I hit the metal target.
So I fire a couple more and get the same results ( I should add that the brass came out very dirty and smoke leaked out around the bolt on every shot) just a poof like noise and a bit of smoke. After making sure that this was a safe load I let the boys try. My oldest son chambers his first round snugles up to the gun and gives the trigger a squeeze and I noticed that the report was very quiet and pleasant no louder then bb gun. His first shot was a miss so he fires again. This time I am paying close attention to the target. What happend next made me laugh hard enough that it hurt. He fires the round the gun goes poof and here goes the Ball traveling toward the target as if it had been launched with a sling shot. I could see it arch threw the air and land just before the target.
.Every round fired with the same results and the boys had fun shooting them. I had to put max elevation on the rear sight to be on @ 25 yards but it was fairly accurate at that range. I will have to load up some more in the future with maybe a slightly higher charge but the boys enjoyed shooting daddys gun with these light loads so I may not change a thing.
Before I get flamed I know I should have posted pics with this but my hands were full at the time with the boys and I forgot to take any.
