Thread: black powder data

Black powder basic reloading is: you fill up the case and slightly compress it when you seat the bullet.

The next thing to know is about the bullet composition: it must be soft lead. With pure lead or pure lead with a bit of tin added. The bullets you buy off Trademe that are made with wheelweights or some unknown alloy, are always too hard. You do not want a hard cast bullet - they are only for smokeless loads.

Black powder load development of a load can get elaborate and esoteric as you want. Firstly, which type of blackpowder 3F, 2F etc. The other is the brand of powder. Swiss is best, Holy Smoke the most accessable. (Goex is gone)
And then there is how you are dealing with lube which affects accuracy, in that you have to have enoug h of the right type for repeatable accuracy, but sometimes that can take up powder room, say if you decide to use lubed wads or grease "cookies"etc.
What about a wad - often there was a card disc seated under the bullet on top of the powder in some cartridges, ostensibly to protect the bullet base from BP ignition.
Then there is primers - low powered were the primers in the old days. Modern primers are more powerful and there is a theory that they may disturb the powder train as it goes off...(I have experiemneted with bit of cigarette paper over the primer to weaken it. )
Then there is compression- some powder likes to be compressed more than others depending on the cartridge and the weight of the bullet. And while you always have to have the bullet seate din contact with the powder, the amont of compression can be varied and tested to see if the rifle shoots better with more or less compression. For example with my .44-40 I use a lot of compression 0.2 of an inch in that little case.
You could load your 45/70 with 60 grains of powder, or you load it up to 70 grains and compress it heavily and see how it goes. If you can get more in the case and still seat a bullet, then go for it.

But - how are you going to compress it? If you compress it with a soft lead bullet you will deform the bullet itself in the seating process. So yu either use a compression die, or you compress it with a jacketed bullet in an unsized case, then size it and seat your lead bullet.

But, do you even resize your cases? In the old days they often didn't. In black powder single shot rifles you didnt need to rezise the case if you could chamber an empty fired case, you simply loaded it again, pushed the bullet on, and then give it a little crimp to hold, it, or maybe you didnt even need to do that.

And then, there is the bullet again. What size bullet is not as significant as it is if you are smokeless reloading, in this case the bullet must be a bit oversized if you are using hard cast bullets, but with black powder it doesn't mater so much, because soft lead in the sharp explosion of black powder will "bump up"and seal the bore. Thats why they didnt worry so much about what diameter the bore was as they dd once smokeless powder was invented.
But, how much tin you add affects the hardness of the bullet and some loads will shoot better with a different mix, you must experiment. In the old days they would recommend that the .44-40 be loaded with 1% tin or none at all, just pure lead. Bigger calibers like the .45/90 sometimes for more tin, up to about 8% from memory.

And then there is lube- is your bullet carrying enough lube. Of the right kind of lube? Softer the better with blackpower. Avoid like the plague commercial lubes that come on the bullets you buy off Trademe or from a shop. It is only for smokeless and even then I dont think its much good. Scrape if off and put some of your own on. Just Chefade fat on its own is better than those horrible hard rubbery lubes. There are many recipes for lube in the net. (Even then if you are shooting for serious accuracy you can always swab the bore after each shot.)

And then there is paper patching....

And then there is duplex loading with a smokeless priming...

Black powder loading is a different world and you must forget what you know about smokeless as it mostly does not apply. Even cleaning the rifle is done differently.