I'm planning on casting my own bullets and making my own homemade powder. I've cut some willow wood and have read up on the procedure of making a good quality charcoal. For .45 I will need an FFg size.

I'm planning on purchasing a .45 1911. I prefer to buy the Norinco because I've heard that it's cast from one piece of metal as opposed to two.

Here is my dilema:

I haven't been able to find any black powder brass (casings or jackets). I'm aware that black powder primers have to be more powerful than smokeless primers and thus they will need to be bigger and thus the casing has to be specialized for black powder primers.

Where can I buy black powder primers and casings or do they exist only for revolvers?

Thanks

Welcome to the forum. Rules are to join in and have fun and play nicely with the rest of us kids.

I have moved your post to the cast bullet forum for suggestions and help with bullet casting.

For safety reasons we can't recommend making black powder. A number of people do, but if you are wanting to granulate and glaze to FFG specifically, the way professional powder is made, you will find procedures with potential for fatal disasters are required to be undertaken, particularly in pressing and breaking up the cake. If you are simply using a dextrin binder approach, it isn't quite as risky, though the powder won't be as good, either. Wear hand and eye protection at all times and don't make too much at one time.

All your other assumptions are misinformed. No special brass or primers are required. The standard stuff is used all the time with commercial black powder by many people on this board.

I assume the .45 you want black powder for is not the 1911? The short .45 ACP case was never designed with enough capacity to work well with black powder. It is just for smokeless powder.

All investment cast 1911 receivers and slides are made as one part, AFAIK. There would be extra cost and no advantage in complicating the assembly by having to weld two parts together when you can just cast it all at once. The highest steel quality, however, is generally agreed to be in hammer forged parts. The Colt slides and frames for 1911's are hammer forged, as were Springfield Armory's, last time I got one. The only two part weld-up I am aware of in some 1911's is in .45 ACP barrels, both GI and Springfield armory. I believe that was originally done to cut down on steel scrap during WW II? I've shot both one-piece and two-piece barrels and could find no problem with either. Good custom barrels are widely available and are all one-piece, so you are not necessarily stuck with anything you buy initially. That said, I've not heard anything bad about the Norinco 1911A1, either.

To get some suggestions on casting, give information about the bullet weights and the gun and cartridge they are for?

Thanks for your concern.

I'm not worried about the black powder manufacture just yet per se.

By brass I meant casings. I read somewhere that black powder is much more difficult to ignite than smokeless is. That's the foundation for that statement.

Yes, I was refering to a 1911. My goal was to make black powder bullets for a commercial pistol (read: NOT revolver).

But you say that this is not possible.

Ok if I'm moving to revolvers, which high caliber revolver would you recommend I use with the black powder bullets I'm thinking of making? Keep in mind that I need to buy the casings for the bullets.

Thanks

.45 Colt is probably the best in a blackpowder load for today. Blackpowder is easy to ignite so any large pistol primer should work for a 45 Colt. Trying different primers may help accuracy and velocity just like smokeless loads. As for a bullet mould, try to find one that has a big lube groove. Black will foul a cylinder pretty quick. The BP cowboy shooters have come up with the "big lube" bullets that help keep the revolvers running for long strings of fire. BP cartridges require using a dipper for the right load or one of the special powder measures made just for BP. Do a search on the net for "loading blackpowder cartridges." Theres lots of info out there.

Black powder is actually far easier to ignite than smokeless powder. It has more danger associated with it and static electricity for that reason.

When a primer goes off, it does two things. One is to apply a spark to the powder, but the other is to pressurize the case enough that a smokeless powder will start burning quickly and will keep burning. With black powder, once you apply a spark it burns pretty fast, with or without pre-pressurizing. Primer pre-pressurizing will affect the overall performance, as Ironhead7544 said, but any spark at all will at least get it to go off, where some smokeless powders can actually go out if the pre-pressurizing is inadequate.

Black powder smoke has so many solids (ash, carbon, etc.) that it fouls and clogs guns fast. That can lead to the impression it is harder to light, when actually it is fouling from a previous shot interfering the spark getting to the main charge of powder that causes misfires. In general, the more primitive the ignition system the more frequently you see some kind of ignition problem.

I won't tell you it's utterly impossible to make the 1911 operate on BP. With a lightened recoil spring you could probably get it to operate for a few rounds using FFFG before fouling jammed it up. But because the cartridge was designed for the higher energy density of smokeless powder from its inception, you simply cannot load it to its normal full power level with black powder. You really want a cartridge that was designed for black powder originally, since it will have enough room in the case. The .45 Colt and, more recently, the .38 Special are probably the two most common ones in use for Cowboy Action Shooting. I don't expect CAS is your purpose, but the fact it is popular makes single-action revolvers of the types that originally shot black powder widely available in those chamberings.

Not to sound like a mother hen, but a lot of the initial information you had was pretty far off base, so I am concerned that your sources of information on making black powder may be off, too? An old reloader's rule of thumb is to check at least three sources of loading information before actually trying it. That should apply to the other stuff you've been looking into as well. You might want to invest in a copy of Lyman's Black Powder Handbook (http://www.lymanproducts.com/lyman/publications/black-powder.php)? I think you'll find it informative.

Out of curiosity, I just weighed a charge of FFFg that I poured into a .45ACP case. Allowing room to seat the bullet and compress the BP slightly (NO airspace allowed in BP cartridges), the case held 15 grains +/-.
I wouldn't shoot them in any of my 1911's; the guns get dirty enough with Bullseye; I cannot imagine BP.
Pete

I once tried loading my 44 Mag and a 30/30 with BP just to see how it worked, they fired fine, I hated the cleanup needed afterward so did not try more then that one time, about a dozen rounds in each.

Michael Grace