My buddy just bought a Charter Arms 2 shot derringer, he feels the long colts are a bit too stout, so he bought some schofields and likes the way it shoots with those. Very expensive to buy however and he asked me if I could reload some of them for him, having quite a bit of trouble finding reloading info. Most everything I am finding is talking about using lead cast bullets, which I'm not interested in doing. Would like to use Hornady action pistol 185 gr. .451 with Bullseye powder. Does anyone have experience with this combo?

I Have not used that combo, but have loaded Schofield. I load for derringers and several short barreled revolvers. '

When the barrel length is 2+ inches, you need extra bearing surface to get the bullet spinning before it exits. The typical Schofield bullet is a 200 grain lead bullet recent production are flat nose cowboy action bullets Hodgdon powder has loading data for this bullet with powders they market. I recommend Winchester 231 and Trail Boss, but the Trail Boss charge must never be compressed! I don't remember ANY data for Schofield with Jacketed bullets. SOFT lead is the normal bullet at slow velocity!

Back to the derringer: what kind of groups did he get? 4" at 21 feet is considered very good! 2 shots from each barrel. (On a American Arms 357 Mag I had to use one 357 and one 38 to get anything close)

Don't know what kind of groups he's getting but will ask. Was trying to find out about using Bullseye because I have quite a bit of it and I read a thread somewhere that this guy was using 4.0 gr. of bullseye in liew of trailboss with 200 gr. bullet.

4 gr. of Bullseye sounds hot to me! Your friend liked the Schofield loading for a reason. If it works, don't fix it! (I was a maintaince man for 40 years and that saying always seemed to work!)

I just went and found my copy of Lyman #49. First they list NO jacketed for Scofield! The derringer my take them but there just aren't proven loads for them and the velocities will probably too slow to open the hollow points.

I the 200 grain cast loading data it lists 4.7 gr of Bullseye as the most accurate load (also the start load) at 840 fps from a 7.5 in barrel! and 5.3 gr at 906 fps as MAX.

By the way 45 Colt and 45 Schofield are in the same area of safe chamber pressure (about 13,500 CUP).

I guess I over estimated that other Bullseye load!

Ivan

" Most everything I am finding is talking about using lead cast bullets, which I'm not interested in doing."

And why is that? At typical Schofield velocities and from a 2" barrel, most jacketed bullets would be unlikely to expand much if at all, and of course lead bullets are much less expensive. A lead .45 bullet is plenty effective for any defensive purpose.

For 180-200 grain lead bullets in the Schofield case, I'd recommend starting at 5 grains of Bullseye. That will be very safe. If recoil is too much, drop down to 4.5 or 4.

Lead gets more velocity with less pressure, just sayin............

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dd884
JMHO-YMMV

Was the factory ammo your friend bought loaded with a jacketed bullet?

Why are you against lead bullets in this application?

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SWCA #3437

I didn't know Charter Arms made a derringer?

....and work up until it gets uncomfortable or the pattern spreads.

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