My next door neighbor is a Colt freak. He has a refurbished Colt New Service in 45 Colt (what else). He wants to shoot it! I loaded up some loads with minimum starting load levels from the Speer 14 Manual.

Using a 255 SWCL bullet and 2400 or 4227 the gun shot to point of aim both windage and elevation, and with good accuracy, but they both appeared a little too warm for this old warrior.

Cases were hard to extract and cylinder drug on forcing cone when attempting to lock cylinder in place without ammo in gun. No powder residue under cylinder star or lead residue on forcing cone or face of cylinder.

What's a good Trail Boss load with the 255 lead bullets, that would make this gun enjoyable without the risk of sending molten steel in various directions.

I sold my 45 Colt and don't remeber the specific load but I do remembeer that it was the beginning load on the hodgdon website. I do remembere that it shot very well with mild recoil.
In 44 Special with the 245 gr. LSWC I use 4.2 gr. Trail Boss which is the minimum load in that caliber.

for general plinking, I use 6.5 gr of Trail Boss with a 200 gr LRN bullet. They are nice to shoot out of my Mountain Gun. They feel about like a .38 special from my 2" M15. you can shoot them all day.

Thanks Duckloads and TSquared for the help. Scoured all my sources and now I can't find any TrailBoss. We move forward.

For some alternative powders, here are some 250 grain LRNFP loads from the Hodgdon website. I personally run 6.8 grains of Universal under a 250 grain LRNFP for about 800 fps. It's a pretty comfortable load, but it makes a power factor of 200.

Powder-Start-Max

Universal - (6.5gr/742fps/9200CUP) - (7.8gr/941 fps/13000CUP)
Titegroup - (5.0gr/716fps/7600CUP) - (6.2gr/881fps/13000CUP)
WW231 - (5.8gr/785fps/9100CUP) - (7.1gr/916fps/13900CUP)

Post 1928 New Service revolvers in good shape should be able to handle anything in this table. However, even the lower values aren't wimp loads and would be good for self defense, if needed.


Buck