Black Powder Rifle

[Denisha Simcoe]

Asa group, we handloaders had basically forgotten what our forebears learned and applied to the loading of blackpowder cartridges. Interest in cowboy action shooting spurred historical research that changed the way we now manage blackpowder ammunition.

Olin proposed a ballistics research project on blackpowder cartridges and needed my new (expensive) .45-70 Krieger pressure barrel fitted with a PCB piezo-electric transducer (also expensive). I let him use my equipment.

Peak pressures with blackpowder were impressive. Some types of blackpowder exceeded 20,000 psi, about the same as modern .45 ACP ammo pressures. The effects of granulation were far more apparent than any changes in primer type. With all other factors equal, substituting the same volume of the smaller-grained Goex 3F for Goex 2F increased pressures 4,000 psi and pushed the 524-grain bullet 100 fps faster, from 1,050 to 1,150 fps. Yet pressures stayed under 21,000 psi, a number most researchers find appropriate to the 1873 Springfield action.

This was something Olin applied to the tests he conducted. He built a compression die to let a steel punch do the compressing while the case body was supported to prevent its swelling under the force. This seems to be one key to better burning and uniform performance.

The Mossberg 500 Pump Action Shotgun is one of the most popular home defense shotguns on the market. Joseph Von Benedikt shows his custom 500 and how well it shoots. Make sure to watch till the end. Who knew wild turkey's were so stupid!?

Then I punched out a paper cap with the hole punch and put it into the steel cap cover that goes on the back of the swivel breech. Then I rotated the breech in line with the barrel and BAM! The ball went through the skyscreens at 745 f.p.s.

Now the breech swiveled closed. Ready to shoot shot two. BAM! My neighbor, Denny, texted me that he heard that one in his garage. I also noticed a LOT of sparks and fire coming from the muzzle this time.

Shot three took another 20 minutes to load. And I had the shave off the tip of the ball again to get the breech to align. And the velocity? ERROR 9. This is the first time in 16 years I have seen that error code.

By this time in the test I was removing the swivel breech from the gun and cleaning it before loading every time. That cut the time to load back to five minutes, because I was also getting the buckshot deeper into the breech. But I messed up the first ball and had to remove it and load again. I used that opportunity to dump out some of the powder to make more room in the chamber.

Shot 4 went through the chronograph at 162 f.p.s. At first I doubted the reading, but since I had dumped out some of the powder I figured it was probably right, what with the ball also swaging down inside the barrel.

From this point on, I cut back on the amount of powder I used. Instead of a 3/4 charge (the chamber 3/4 full of powder) I cut back to a 2/3 charge. That gave me a little more room to ram the ball. And the steel punch rammed it very deep when I hit it with the hammer. Now I tried aligning the breech before loading the cap. If it aligned, I put in a cap and was ready to go.

It was the sparks and flame from the shot that were messing up the chronograph. Now that I know that I think I know what to do about it, which is to shoot with the muzzle from much farther away from the first skyscreen.

Oy vey! From something that looks encouraging to something discouraging. Maybe this has a steep learning curve to get it to consistently work right? Then again maybe this is why there are scarcely any muzzle loading bore smaller than .36 caliber. Comparatively the rimfire reloading seems more consistent.

Just beautiful work in my eyes. It is function over form anyway which is something you scarcely see nowadays. What 25gr pellets are you using that requires a sizing die? By all means please bring this discussion to the current blog so a lot more can appreciate and comment.

There is no problem because this is a very tolerant place for discussion. Especially so that this is the weekend. If you ever bother to backread some of the comments on previous blogs the discussions really went out to ranging to aircraft, cars, etc. So a blackpowder rifle being discussed in the current blog is not much. Especially so when Tom always compares airguns to blackpowder behavior. So far I have not seen anybody vilified for discussing anything off topic in all the years this blog has existed. Just keep the discussion child friendly.

I can well imagine that most could not afford one. If the design had caught on and due to numbers became more affordable, spare breeches would have been much more common, especially amongst the gentry.

Paco

I remember it being Eastwood, but I think a different movie. Seems to me he was playing a traveling preacher in a gold mining area.

I guess they could have used the same guns in different movies, tho.

Ed

Way back when, the measurement for black powder was the dram. It was a volume measurement. Typically, many muzzleloader rifles would use a maximum of one hundred drams. Now, to determine the maximum load for a rifle, the shooter would lay down in the snow or lay a white sheet in front of them and shoot. If there was any unburnt black powder on the sheet or snow, the load was too large and they would cut back until there was no unburnt black powder left. Any more was a waste.

When I was shooting my Navy Colt, I would fill the cylinder to the top and then cram the ball down far enough to clear the end of the cylinder. That long barreled pistol was very accurate. I could turn a feral soda can inside out at twenty-five yards all day long.

When metal cartridges came out, they used black powder and the dram system. The .32-20, the .44-40, the .45-70, the .45-90, the .50-110, etc. all used drams of black powder, the size of the casing determining the volume. Many of the old buffalo hunters would not load the bullets they would use the next day. They would clean out the old casings and put in new primers. In the field they would insert the bullet in the chamber and then scoop the casing full and insert it into the breech. If I recall correctly, BB has done similar with his Ballard.

On an airgun note, Harry has quite the population of purple martins, tree swallows, and blue birds on his farm. As per the recommendations of persons on this blog I was able to steer him towards the purchase of a 177 Marauder for pest control purposes. According to him it has worked out very well for that purpose. Thank you!

My dad would of probably done the same as your buddy. I would of had a hard time refraining from going somewhere with that situation. But thinking more maybe she has kids and something happened in her life recently and she needs something to eat for her and them and she is panicking. Who knows. What can be said when something like that happens. Like you said. Strange.

I with ya on this. This gun makes the Edsel seem like a good idea.

It would be as if a Detroit engineer decided that to save 10 lbs on all new ICE vehicles they should revert to a hand crank. Dumb, dumber and dumbest; you pick?

By the grace of this blog and a little help from YouTube, I was able to summon the courage to take my PCP pump apart and get it back to working order. Took only 2 O-rings and about 5 ml of silicone oil to get it working again. I had purchased it 4 years ago as a back up and only used it once before putting it away. Been filling up the PCP using a scuba tank. Fast forward to today with no place to fill the scuba tank and returning to PCP after concentrating on break barrels and multi stroke pump rifles that I find the pump inoperative. Lesson learned. Always have a strict rotation of equipment before you find them in an irreparable state.

I think the revolver cylinder is the best black powder design without using a caseed cartridge. I always thought the space between the cylinder and the barrel was a big handicap. Then I found out my low pressure pellet gun would still fire a pellet over 200 feet per second with a 1 1/2 inch space between the barrel and the valve seal. Maybe black powder burns slow enough that it can maintain the pressure all the way down the barrel. One of my colt navy revolvers has a significant space between the cylinder and the barrel. It seems to shoot with good power though.

I guess my rambling was me wondering why they did not use a cylinder on this gun even if it had 4 shots or even one or two and had to be indexed by hand. It also needed a ball seating lever built in. Like many guns and other things I think this gun was a good idea. It just needed to go to a 2nd or 3rd redesign. Reminds me of the Dragonfly multi-pump it had all the features but poor quality control on the barrel and bad pump optimization.

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