I like shooting 45 cowboy special in my 45colt revolvers. Shot 60 last Saturday in my clubs cas shoot. Need to load them back up now. Good thing is I use 45acp dies that are already on on my 45acp only Dillon, just change the plate. Actually its a 45Auto Rim plate but I did some mods to my press to get it to work.
When I would load in bulk for my SASS habit, I had an order I followed to keep equipment changes to a minimum. (using a Dillon 550b)
45 Colt
45 S&W
44 WCF
44 Mag
44 Special
44 Russian
38-40 WCF
These all used the same primer, and shell plate. Some of the powder adjustments were interchange too, so that might mix the above list up a little. (The 45 Colt load of 6.7 of WW231 and the 44 WCF load of 4.4 of Clays had the same powder drop adjustment, so they were usually back-to-back.)
The 38/357, 32-20, 32 S&W Long & short and 32 ACP were small primer and not shot often, so I usually just loaded them on a single stage press.
When I started in the Mid 90's, many SASS shooters didn't reload (yet!) So, Some would give me, or sell cheap, all their brass. I have about 5000 45 Colt brass and 2400 44 WCF brass and around 1000-1500 of each of the others. But even with nice big batches of reloads, I ended up loading twice a season minimum. My wife and #2 son shoot the 38 Special loads, so I often load the on my F-I-L's dedicated Dillon 1050 (he and my wife's brother are 38 shooters too) I only keep about 500 SASS loads in 38, my F-I-L usually has 20,000 loaded! So sometimes I just swap components and give a few hours on the press. (When I get bulk range brass, I keep the 357's and give all the 38 Specials to F-I-L)
I do use 38 S&W and 32 ACP/ 32 S&W short in Belly gun side matches, but that's just a few hundred each a year including practice.
By and large I streamlined my bullet inventory by shooting the same bullet in 45 Colt, 45 S&W and 45ACP (for Wild Bunch!), and doing 44 Mag, Special and Russian the same way, I sold off the 44 WCF set, along with ammo, brass, and bullets but my Rugar Vaquero's used .427" diameter bullets, so they were another bullet to stock. The 32-20 and 32 S&W Long use the same bullet. The S&W Short and ACP use the same bullet (and loading data for derringers)
I even streamlined my 12-gauge ammo into the same load for SASS and Sporting Clays: 7/8 oz. of #7.5's @ 1275 fps in AA hulls (that duplicates Federal's Paper cartridge Cowboy load) I used about 700-800 a season for SASS (and practice) and about 4000 a year for S.C. until I went all 410 & 28 for S.C.!
It doesn't matter what sport you shoot! Throwing lead is good fun and important practice!
Ivan
