Yesterday's Weapons Forums

Transplanted from the old YW site:

gschwertley
A while back, I bought a small jug of "Trail Boss" powder, but hadn't used any of it. Not long ago, I loaded up some .45 Colt lead bullets that I made from a Lee mold (250 gr. RNFP, one of my favorite .45 Colt bullets). I used 5.5 grains of Trail Boss to propel the bullet and WW Large Pistol primers.
I fired these loads in my Ruger Vaquero and was very pleased all around. Nice accuracy, little smoke (I am used to the very smoggy Unique that I usually load in .45 Colt), and pleasant recoil in this middling load.
Now I am more eager than ever to test my 8x56R lead bullet loads that I have put together using this powder. Unfortunately after nearly two months straight of rain, the Everett Sportsmen range is partially under water and cannot be used for a time.
My Ruger Vaquero, out of the box, would always shoot to the left. At first, I just figured it was my hold on that single action grip. The Ruger has a tall blade front sight, like many single actions. After while, I decided to drift the sight to the left a bit to see if it made much difference. When I say "drift" the sight really doesn't move in a channel, the whole thing bends a bit. After doing this, it is spot-on center of the target, so I guess it wasn't my hold.

yockey5
Gary, I will be waiting on the 8x56r load info!

mikmarjon
I've heard mixed reviews about trail boss. I'm glad that some one here loaded something with it. My brother has a handgun in 45 colt, sort of a bottom end (I'll more than likely butcher this) Uberti Don't know the model but it groups really nice. He's buying Me a set of dies and components so I can load for him. When he gets tired of it I told him I wanted it.

Walnuthead
I use it in my .45-70 also. It's a nice mild powder, easy on the shoulder and the kids like to shoot it.
I was reloading some .45 colt yesterday and one thing to watch is how much powder is being dispensed when using a measure. I have a Redding with a small & large metering chambers, small for pistol and large for rifle. I was using the small with a different powder so I left it in when I changed over to Trail Boss. When checking the cases after putting the powder in, there was a difference of about 3/16th of an inch between the amount of powder in some of the cases. So I weighed a couple of charges and found ever a grain difference between them.
It turns out some of the powder was trapped in the measure. None of the cases had too much powder but about a quarter of them had too little. When I changed over to the large chamber it metered with no problem.
All in all, I do like Trail Boss and will keep using it. It works well in straight wall cartridges but I haven't read much about using it with bottle neck cartridges.

gschwertley
Yes, you could easily have a bridging problem with the size of Trail Boss "grains" using the smaller drop tube.
I always eyeball each charged case before seating bullets; that's the main reason I have never gotten into progressive equipment.
It might just be my ears, but it seemed to me that the report that Trail Boss makes when it goes off even sounds different from other powders.

mikmarjon
I'll have to get me some and check it out.

I use Trail Boss to load 10.4 Italian revolver ammo. 3.1 grs and a 200 gr. lead bullet shoots very well out of my Bodeo revolver.

Here is some data that I found elsewhere on the web:

This pertains to rifle load data using Trail Boss powder.

"IMR's booklet says, 'If you want to use any other cartridge, contact us for advice at (913) 362-9455.'

TRAIL BOSS .30-06 LEAD BULLET LOW VELOCITY LOADS
WITH 165-GRAIN CAST BULLET

CHARGE gr. VELOCITY fps.

7 - 920
8 - 1,009
9 - 1,112
10 - 1,141

IMR TRAIL BOSS "LONG RANGE RIFLE" DATA

NOTE: ALL LOADS ARE WITH LEAD BULLETS. I haven't seen any data recommendations for any load using jacketed bullets with Trail Boss.

Cart/bullet&type/min. charge/min. velocity/max. charge/max vel.

.25-35 WCF 90 LFPGC 5.5 1,224 8.0 1,414
.30-30 WCF 160 LFN 6.5 997 9.0 1,195
.32-40 WCF 196 LFN 5.0 833 6.0 935
.38-55 WCF 250 LFN 6.0 842 7.0 911
.40-65 WCF 400 LRNFP 11.0 889 12.0 915
.45-70 Govt 300 LFP 14.0 1,199 16.5 1,285
.45-70 Govt 405 LFP 12.0 971 13.0 1,007"

I have seen data for .35 Remington and it is as follows:

.35 Rem 158 gr RNL 6.5 974

The IMR load data that is published on the IMR site gives no data for bottle-neck type cartridges, with the sole exception of .38-40 Win. which is a pistol cartridge.

Trail Boss is used in such small quantities that even though the small jug you get contains only 9 ounces, it should go a long way.

Ross in California reminded us of the obsolete "Sharpshooter" powder that was similar to Trail Boss in days gone by. I have a small quantity ot Sharpshooter and data for it out of Phil Sharp's old book shows that you have to use nearly 3 times the amount of Sharpshooter as you do Trail Boss.

LoLo thats some good shooting at that distance with the old Vetterli and iron sights.