Another question I have is this. If I bump into 41 SAA Colt, how do I know if it is short or long 41 Colt? According to what I am reading they both existed. Confused?? I'm not expert in this field.
No SAA came in 41 Short Colt from my reading on the SAA.
I shoot .41 Colt. I have tried the heeled bullets from Ben, they are nice but I refer the hollow base for a couple reasons. I found the accuracy was about the same, maybe better with the hollow.
The hollow base are easier to load for in terms of crimping and lubing. If you do go with heeled here is a crimping tool I made for those bullets:
http://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showpost.php?p=3648100&postcount=31
They need to be outside lubed, one by one. I found this a pain, even when doing twenty at a time. The hollow base can be pan lubed. The standard crimping and lubing makes it a lot easier to load several hundred at a time.
I cast mine with pure soft lead, the hollow skirt needs that to puff up and fill the bore. With the heeled you will need to size your bullets according to the bore diameter, which can vary. You will need to slug the bore to get the measurement.
I load both blackpowder and smokeless in mine. BP is 19gr and SM is 4.4gr Unique. The Unique gives me about 680fps, the BP I have yet to chrony. If you do load BP use magnum primers.
Get your brass from Mysticplayer on here. It's very good Starline and as cheap as $0.67 per case if you buy several hundred, IIRC.
I use a Rapine 386185HB mold. I love it, unfortunately Rapine shut down right after I bought mine. Lyman make, or maybe used to make, hollow base and heeled base molds in .41 Colt. NEI also make both but I would not deal with them (do a search in the reloading section).
I use Redding dies from Buffalo Arms.
For shellplates I use Lee #1. Lee
says they work for .41 Colt but you'll need to dremel off some material around the top edge to get a case to fit.
Accuracy at 10 yards off hand is nice, at 20 it starts to open up.
