west coast bullets...plated

[captn-tin]

Friend of mine gave me a box of west coast 45cal 255gr fp plated bullets. He would like me to load 1/2 of them up for him to use in his 45 colt saa. Having never used plated bullet before, anything to be cautious about, as opposed to cast bullets? Crimp the same way as cast bullets? Probably be loading 7 - 7 1/2 grains of unique....Thanks, Bill

[Sheldon]

Pretty much like cast.

[trackcage]

Plated bullets don't like a heavy crimp. Otherwise you're on the right track using cast lead data

[RiskyBusiness]

What book says +7gr ? At 6 it's already too hot for my liking. I shoot 240gr PC LRN which falls under the same data as yours.

[diveRN]

Friend of mine gave me a box of west coast 45cal 255gr fp plated bullets. He would like me to load 1/2 of them up for him to use in his 45 colt saa. Having never used plated bullet before, anything to be cautious about, as opposed to cast bullets? Crimp the same way as cast bullets? Probably be loading 7 - 7 1/2 grains of unique....Thanks, Bill

That's a dangerously hot powder charge. I question whether or not you'll get that much Unique into the case and still be able to seat a bullet to an acceptable OAL.

My everyday charge range with Unique is 5.3 to 5.5gr under a 230gr plated. My tolerance for the range in weight comes from Unique being a crappy metering flake powder. Anything drop below 5.3 gets really sooty. On the other end, when I start to approach 6.0gr, accuracy suffers and recoil starts to become noticeable.

When I loaded on a single stage, I would often skimp the crimp for plinking and target rounds and suffered no drop in accuracy. Minimum flare helps here.