Another great post, Driftwood. Was period 45 LC brass thinner? I would assume that light loading would cause poor case obturation and blowback in the revolvers. Are people having blowback with 45LC and revolvers? As far as I know, no period rifles were chambered in 45LC, that is a modern phenomenon.
Interesting questions.
Yes, rifles chambered for 45 Colt is a completely modern phenomenon, dating to the 1980s. Before that, lever guns were never chambered for 45 Colt. The old traditional Winchester cartridges were what were usually chambered in rifles; 44-40, 38-40, 32-20, and 25-20 for the short action 'pistol caliber' rifles.
I just grabbed some old Remington-UMC 45 Colt balloon head cases I had laying around, and they do tend to run a tad thinner than modern stuff. Most are running around .010 - .012 at the case mouth. Without cutting a few in half I can't measure much further down than the case mouths. Cartridge brass tends to get thicker the further down it goes, so measuring case mouths is the best way to judge. Grabbed some modern Starline cases and they are running around .012 - .013. I'm not sure how old the balloon head cases are, probably from the 1940s or so. Not super old. I have one box that have obviously been fired, and another box that are virgin. One of these days I want to load them up to see if I can get 40 grains of FFg in them, rather than the 35 or so grains I currently put in modern solid head cases. Another one of those projects I have not gotten around to yet.
Here is a comparison of what one of the balloon head cases looks like when sawed in half compared to a modern solid head case. The balloon head is on the left. You can see why they had a little bit more powder capacity. No, I don't know where that one went, so I cannot measure it part way down.
I have not loaded any 45 Colt with Smokeless in a long time, but I do remember there was a little bit of blowby on my 45 Colt cases. I was loading 7.5 grains of Unique under a 250 grain bullet. Certainly not a mouse fart load, but not a magnum load either. What tended to happen was there would be one streak of soot most of the length of the case. It is generally thought this is because when the round is fired, gravity has it sitting down slightly in the chamber, any clearance that exists would then be on the 'up' side. So any blowby would be one streak of soot along the 'top' of the case. This was only with revolvers, I do not own any rifles chambered for 45 Colt.
Frankly, I don't think the .001 or so thinner case mouths with the balloon head cases is significant. Certainly not as significant as .007 thick 44-40 case mouths. That it why 44-40 (and 38-40) are the darlings of Black Powder shooters. The thinner cases expand more easily to seal the chamber.
A rifle barrel is basically a pipe.Seal the chamber and all the soot winds up going out the muzzle or sitting in the barrel. Revolvers are a different story. Because of the barrel/cylinder gap, fouling winds up everywhere anyway. Up until recently I did not own any revolvers chambered for 44-40. I own a couple now, plus a couple chambered for 38-40. Some day it would be fun to see if there is less soot on the cases with my 44-40 wheelguns than with my 45 Colt wheelguns. I doubt it really matters, with Black Powder there is black soot being blown everywhere, no matter what.
Just for fun, the very earliest 45 Colt cartridges were copper cased. Not brass. The copper was softer than brass, so they probably expanded just fine to seal a revolver chamber. No 45 Colt rifles yet, remember?
This is what the very first 45 Colt and 45 Schofield cartridges looked like. The two rounds in the center are a 45 Colt on the left and a 45 Schofield on the right. Their modern counterparts are next to them.
I only have a few of these, so I am not going to pull the bullets, or cut them up or anything.
I forget now where I got this photo, but I did get permission to use it. This style of priming was known as Benet Priming, after the superintendent of the Frankford Arsenal. The crimps near the bottom of the cases hold an anvil plate in place inside the case. The priming material is sandwiched between the anvil plate and the rear of the case. When the firing pin struck the rear of the case, the priming material was compressed and it ignited. The flame passed through the two holes to ignite the powder charge. Notice in the cutaway the rim is formed by being folded over. It is not cut, the way balloon head and modern cases are. This type of case is sometimes called 'folded rim' cartridges.
When viewed from the rear, Benet primed cases look like rimfires because there is no visible primer. They are not, they are inside primed centerfire rounds. But just as with rimfires, they could only be fired once, they could not be reloaded.
then what?
