suggestions for cheep boolits for plinking with the .45-70?

Hopefully you cast. It makes it much cheaper to find projectiles.

If not, is it a single shot. If yes go with Black powder. Very little recoil from any projectile.

If not, then use a lighter projectile. Maybe start with a 350 gr and keep the powder charge at the lower level.

If you don't cast or reload then you are at the mercy of your local stores. Get a PASTE recoil pad and hide it under your shirt. No one will know/laugh and you won't have bruises for a month.
 
Definitely a cartridge that begs to be fed reloads with cast bullets. I've posted time and again my favorite plinker load is 14 grains Unique with a 405 grain cast Lee bullet. Not much recoil at all, and not much slower than normal factory stuff (1,175 vs 1,330? fps).
 
Berry's makes a 350gr plated flat nose bullet. Budget shooter supply has them for about $40/100. They also have the Campro's mentioned above for $30 ish/100 and a few other brands and weights as well. Henry is great to deal with and in BC, so shipping should be pretty reasonable for you.

Jim
 
As suggested cast is cheap but remember to slug your barrel first and find out the true dimension and not what the factory says it should have. If you don't and order bullets sized too small you and your brass cleaning brush will become close friends for all the wrong reasons.
 
I was using 405gr lead, plain base bullets from Bullet Barn and also Budget Shooter Supply (Missouri Bullet Co.) 13gr of Trail Boss was a very light load. I also loaded up a bunch with 15gr HS6 and a pinch of pillow stuffing to keep the powder near the primer. Worked great and kept velocity around 1100fps.
 
I've bought 350gr from both Bullet Barn and Jet. Between the two and the batches I bought. Jet bullets was true to advertised diameter size and Bullet Barn was was not.

I use Jet for my accurate hunting rounds and the remaining bullet barn for plinking at about 1000fps.
 
I guess it depends on how much your shooting. For me casting is much cheaper. Even when I am paying premium to source my lead it never works out more than 5 cents a 45/70 projectile , big difference even over the "cheap" commercial cast options. Nice thing about casting is that you can get into calibers that would be otherwise prohibitively expensive or obscure enough that you could not otherwise load for them. I would not get into casting if I just shot 308 or 223(ok maybe I would), but for example a heeled 44 American, 43 Mauser, 577 snider or 50 bmg I am saving $2-6+ per round even if I could find a commercial alternative.
 
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