Lone Star Gunslingers

Ammunition
There are five kinds of wax bullets that are acceptable in CFDA, and they are color coded.

        - Orange; is produced by CDFA, the Deadeye EZ Loader Wax bullets. These are easy loading, mostly shatter on     contact. They “seat” nicely in the cases.

        - Blue; produced by Bandit wax. These are actually a polymer base and they are hard. They tend to bounce off of targets and will likely go through your backstop.  We found these to be very hard to load compared to the orange and purple ones.

        - Red; Spitfire wax bullets. These are good, but they are a little harder than the orange ones.

        - Brown; C&R wax bullets. These are good, but did not seat well in the cases.

        - Purple; Royal wax bullets. These are good, seat well in the cases and do not shatter.

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As a club we are purchasing the purple Royal wax bullets in large bulk, and making them available to members of the Lone Star Gunslingers in bags of 1000 for $35.00. We will try to keep these in stock for our members. Please note that  bags are based on weight and not actual count, so variance maybe encountered.

Loading Wax

Wax bullets can be pushed in the cases with your fingers. However, it is typical to seat the wax into the cases 3/8 of an inch. To accomplish this we are modifying a cattle ear tagger which will set the bullets to 3/8 of an inch with just one squeeze of the handle. We sell these for $50.00 each for members of the Lone Star Gunslingers.

 

Casing Types

There are several types of cartridges cases (all must be .45 Long Colt) that are used in Cowboy Fast Draw. The differences are in the primer pockets or the basic charge.
    - Cases that use a normal large pistol primer, with an enlarged .140 diameter flash hole, usually marked as “blank”, produced by Starline Brass. The enlarged flash hole helps prevent the primer from backing out and “sticking” on the next shot. These shoot very quiet, with a velocity of around +500 feet per second.  DO NOT USE THESE CASES FOR ANYTING EXCEPT WAX BULLETS DUE TO THE ENLARGED FLASH HOLES.

    - Cowboy Fast Draw Cartridges. These are the same cases as above, but they are loaded with about 3 grains of 777 black powder to give a “smoke effect”. These are used at State, Territorial, National, and World Competitions, and they are supplied by the shoot. You do not need these as they will always be supplied when needed in the major competitions.

    - Cases that use a “drop in” large pistol primer. Available from the CFDA General Store. There are no tools required to remove old primers and install new ones.

    - Cases that have been developed to utilize a 209 shotgun primer and propel a wax bullet around +650 feet per second. There are no tools required to remove old primers and install new ones. These are made for CFDA by Starline Brass and are available from the CFDA General Store for $75.00 per 100 + postage.

We recommend that you have 100 of these cases as these are the ones that we will use for most of our club competitions as well as other local competitions with the surrounding clubs.

 

Primers

    - There are some variations in the Shotgun Primers and the Large Pistols Primers that you should know.

The 209 shotgun primers that everyone uses in CFD are produced by either Rio, Nobel or Cheddite. The other primer manufacturers such as Winchester, Remington, etc. tend to back out and separate causing your gun to “stick”.

As a club, if we place one order, we should be able to get some discounts on primers, and we will discuss at our future shoots.

    - The large pistol primers vary in the charge by manufacturer. We have found the Federal primers to be the best. CCI primers are the “hottest” causing primers to back out. We will be testing all of the large pistol primers in the near future and results will be published to all members of the Lone Star Gunslingers.
So for now, we recommend the Federal Large Pistol primers, either Regular or Match grade as we have fired 1000’s of rounds with very good results. These are available from many of the reloading supplies for around $30.00 per thousand.