The Colt SAA style grip frame is less than ideal for really hot loads. The Bisley frame is a huge improvement, as is the excellent frame on the Freedom Arms revolvers both of which handle heavy recoil very very well.
The SAA style grip is too short and too rounded so you have the bad combination of not getting your whole hand on the grip, and the grip being more prone to roll under recoil.
Both the Bisley and FA grip are probably the best I’ve ever used in a hard recoiling big bore revolver, I greatly prefer them to anything else including various DA wheel guns that will beat the hell out of the web of your hand.
It looks to me like you might have some undersized cylinder throats on those two cylinders. Ruger is notorious for this on their .45 Colt revolvers. The throats should measure around .4525-.4530 to allow a bullet to pass snuggly before hitting the forcing cone and entering the barrel. Instead many of them measure .4500-.4510 so your .45 Colt bullets at .4520-.4525 get swaged down and don’t have a tight fit in the barrel which should be a .4520. Accuracy suffers a lot because of this, but it is an easy fix with the right reamer to open them up.
You may be right. My calipers show the .45 Colt cylinder being much tighter than the ACP cylinder throats. Calipers show the diameter as small as .449". But that’s your typical set with +/- .001 tolerances.
So I pushed a bullet through the chamber and measured it at .451", or maybe just a hair over. I’ll check the bullet with a micrometer tomorrow and be able to say better.
OTOH, a bullet pushes easily through the ACP cylinder. A .452" bullet is not swaged down when pushed through it.
I bought 1000 wax bullets for $25, 50 nickel cases built to just drop in large pistol primers for $35, and I can’t recommend enough the Silver Press for $30 that makes hand loading the wax bullets super easy. Everything arrived at my door 3 days after my order.
The cases are also available in 209 shotgun primer versions, which is what you’d use for fast draw competitions. They are twice as powerful but also twice as loud and sound about like a 22lr when you shoot them. You really need hearing protection, and there’s no doubt that the neighbors will think you’re shooting something, which is something I try to avoid when I can. That’s why I went with the pistol primer version.
I am putting together a video on this for later this week. I’m going to chrono these and do some plinking and penetration tests to show what you can do even with the pistol primer version.
ETA: You can make your own cases using a drill for the flash hole and a drill press to open the primer pocket if you wanted the drop-in feature or wanted to use 209 primers. You can also make your own wax bullets, but using plain wax is less than ideal. Most of the ready-made wax bullets include some polymer in the mix to make them a little harder while raising their melting point above the temp of a warm gun. It really comes down to how much you like to do things yourself as a hobby, because it’s hard to justify DIY’ing this based solely on cost savings when you can buy 6000 wax bullets for 2.25 cents per round, shipped.
Used to do it as a kid by drilling out flash holes, chamfering the case mouths sharp, and pressing the case into a block of canning wax. Then you’d prime afterwards…keeps the air pressure from pushing the wax bullet back out if you prime last. Then, shoot away into a cardboard box with some carpet inside. Collect up all your spent wax, melt down in a double boiler, mix in a little beeswax to make subsequent batches a little more resilient, pour into a cookie sheet, let cool, and cut more “bullets”.
I had to make a decision a long time ago whether to sell my Vaquero, or my old three screw… it was an easy choice. The below still has a home with me, and always will.
I had a 5-shot 45 Colt built on a Ruger Bisley. We’re talking 325-grain bullets at close to 1,400 fps. The Bisley grip frame handles recoil so well that Hamilton Bowen and several other revolver makers will not build 475 and 500 Linebaugh revolvers on any other grip frame.
But the question is why we should tolerate that kind of recoil at all. John Linebaugh himself has made some interesting observations on the penetration offered by a 250-grain 45 Colt bullet at 1,000 fps at http://handloads.com/articles/default.asp?id=12.
We want to push big heavy bullets fast because that is what real men with testicles do! Because pain is good! You’re not a real man unless your big bore revolver leaves your hands stinging like you’ve beed hitting a concrete wall with an aluminum ball bat!
Just kidding. While I do shoot full powered .454 Casull loads more often than I’d care to just to stay sharp with them, I’m more comfortable throttling my reloads back to around 1250-1300fps with a 300-335gr bullet. A 300gr bullet at 1650fps is certainly useful in having a flatter trajectory, or better yet a 240gr at 1900fps… but honestly they are majorly unpleasant to shoot for extended periods.
I have even loaded and shot quite a few 360gr bullets out of my Freedom Arms that were max listed loads, they were interesting. Funny thing is I think the FA is strong enough I could go even hotter since most load data now takes into account comparatively weak double actions like the 6 shot Ruger Super Redhawk.
My favorite loads for my FA are a Cast Performance 335gr wide nose flat point bullet with a gas check, over a healthy but not silly charge of IMR 4227 to drive them to about 1250fps. Powerful enough to flatten anything, but not abusive for practice sessions.