I'll be careful....

[corbanzo]

I'm going to load up (slowly) some HOT .45 colts for my .454RB, anyone have experience overloading a .45 for their .454?  I know, I could just stick with the .454 casull, but that wouldn't be any fun, now would it? 

[Lloyd Smale]

guess ive done stuff just to do it but i sure dont see a reason to load 45s hot in a 454. Your just punishing your brass to get less power then you would with 454 brass.

[Graybeard]

I'd suggest STRONGLY that you stick to the RUGER LEVEL loads listed in reloading manuals. When you go beyond that you have absolutely NO WAY to know what pressure levels you're getting and there are NO RELIABLE PRESSURE INDICATORS to go by. The .45 Colt brass generally isn't designed for .454 Casull pressure levels even if the gun is.

If you want or need more than the Ruger pressure levels I'd use .454 Casull cases for them. BUT having said that there is data around for the various five shot .45 Colt guns by folks such as John Taffin and perhaps Jim Taylor or Paco Kelly, look them up via an internet search if you wish at least they've used them extensively and not YET exploded their guns with them.

[BIG Dog454]

I've loaded some hot colt loads and shot them in both my .454 and .45Colt.  I used max 45 colt loading data listed for the "Ruger Only" with velocitys of 1400fps with a 230 gr bullet.  I will not load .454 loads in the colt cases because they could get mixed up and shot in my 45 ruger colt.  I do shoot a lot of 45 colt loads in my 454 brass, especially for deer hunting.  I've found that 250 gr XTP's kill deer real quick at about 1150fps.

[stimpylu32]

JMHO but the whole idea of trying to load even close to the 454 level in the 45 Colt case is a trip to the Dr. waiting to happen , The colt cases were never designed to handle that kind of pressure . If you do deside to do this , you had best be ready to deal with the results .

Best case = nothing bad will happen / Worst case = you end up with a gun and yourself in peices . God forbid one of these rounds find its way into a older 45 LC or even a new Colt clone .

Something else to think about , shooting these HOT loads in a 454 chamber may lead to a bad burn ring in the chamber at the end of the colt case making it hard if not impossable to chamber 454 cases .

stimpy