Black Powder Cartridges 45colt

THe lube on commercially available cast bullets will gum up with black powder fouling to produce a tarry mess. Most that shoot Frontier Cartridge shoot with Pyrodex or 777 for this reason in the cartridge loads but load with proper black powder for the shotgun loads.

The other way around this is to boil the lube out of the grooves on the cast rounds and replace it with some variation of shortening, lard and beeswax to form a BP friendly lube. Then you can load with actual BP.
 
If you already have hard-lubed bullet, place them over a stack of newpaper in a cookie pan and put them in the oven at low temparature (200 F). After that, you can "pan-lube" your bullet with a softer lube suited for BD (i used a mix of 50% beeswax 50%olive oil, by volume). That all you need to lead real black powder.

Yes, it's a bit more work!
But it's a bit more fun to shoot, too.
You will smile like no one shooting loaded-down 38. spl will ever smile!
 
Or load using Hodgdon Triple 7 BP substitute - it works best with regular smokeless lube, and in fact will produce an undesirable mess if shot with bullets lubed with soft BP lubes .....
 
You'll want to use the "2F" grade of Triple 7. (It also comes in "3F" but the cartridge loading data suggests only 2F .... I suspect that 3F could be too "hot".)

A reminder (and possible advantage, especially if you use ready-cast bullets): Use bullets lubed for smokeless powder. (Triple 7 will form a gunky fouling mess if used with one of the soft lubes normally recommended for black powder!)

For ease of reference ... (NOTE: these are volumetric measures, i.e. using a volume measure intended for black powder. They are NOT actual weight measures.) -

Triple7CartridgeLoadingData.jpg
 
Triple Seven shoots very clean with relatively little fouling (.... provided you avoid the use of traditional organic-based soft blackpowder lubes, as cautioned above - and again below ....) and cleans up with plain water, though some people do use things like Ballistol. Here is one thread on clean-up on the CAS City forums (CAS = Cowboy Action Shooting, as you likely know) - http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index.php/topic,37094.msg473921.html#msg473921

Triple Seven residue is virtually non-corrosive on steel if cleaned properly, but it can be fairly corrosive on your brass, so it is still important to wash and rinse your cartridge cases ..... but of course that is the case with black powder, anyway. (The consensus of many is that you don't have to use soapy water, just rinse thoroughly with plain water, dump out that water and then rinse well again with more plain water.)

Another caution I have seen stressed more than once is to avoid the use of any ammonia-based modern/smokeless bore cleaner, as apparently the ammonia reacts with the Triple Seven residue and will cause rusting/corrosion on steel.

Getting back to the issue of what lubricant to use with Triple Seven, this is what the Moderator of the British Militaria Forums posted (nine years ago) in a thread there on various cartridge loads:
NOTE: Recent experimentation suggests that Liquid ALOX or other smokeless powder lube will be more successful ...... Use of the beeswax/Crisco lube can lead to the notorious "Triple 7 Crud Ring" in your barrel, which is nearly impossible to remove. Experience shows that lots of scrubbing with WD-40 will remove it, but the easier method is to avoid natural lubes and stick with a modern lube on the bullet. Triple 7 is a low-fouling powder, so you don't need to worry about keeping the residue soft. In fact, beeswax/crisco will have the opposite effect. This is one of those "live and learn" things that could only be found by experimentation.
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