.455 Webley reloads

[lamontagne0527]

Is Hodgdon Trail Boss a good powder to use inside of .455 webley reloads or is the casing just too short to get an effective charge? It would be under a 255 grain .454 bullet.

The revolver would be a Colt New Service manufactured for the British in 1916 to supplement the shortage of Webleys. I assume the colts and smith and wessons were a stronger frame since they were swing out not break action.

[RWS]

Trail Boss will work fine if you are looking to duplicate the Mk II load in the 600-650 fps range. It's my powder of choice for reloading Mk II cases for my Webleys. Probably somewhere around 3 grains of Trail Boss ought to do it. The Colt cylinder is long enough that you can seat the bullets out a bit further to get more space in the case, if needed.

Both the S&W N-frame and the Colt New Service are considerably stronger than a break-top Webley. The New Service was chambered in .357 Magnum running pressures in excess of 35,000 psi, so theoretically you have plenty of buffer there. In my experience, the only problem with the New Service is the lack of replacement parts should something break so I would suggest going easy on the old girl.

-Bob

[S.B.]

I'd have to check but, IIRC I chose a light load of Bullseye in mine(probably what I had on hand)?
Steve

[lamontagne0527]

I'd have to check but, IIRC I chose a light load of Bullseye in mine(probably what I had on hand)?
Steve

currently im using hodgdon HP-38, very light load since the casings are not very long but it seems to do the trick, next time i end up loading up some loads for my colt new service i will load up some trailboss or another type of powder i get my hands on. In Canada bullseye is hard to find since its in such high demand so supplies dont last long.