1873 Calvary Carbine Ammo Question

25-20 WCF said:

No, thou shall not...not today anyway. 70 grains of black will not fit in modern cases due to the thick brass solid head case. Original cases were thin copper with folded rims - they gave poor extraction performance and failed Custer’s troopers at the Little Big Horn. The suggested load of 63 grains (post #4 above) is about all that will fit in modern brass.

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Not today perhaps. Not without a drop tube and a powder compression die anyway.

However, these instructions are an excerpt from the:

Book of Armaments,
Chapter 2, verses 9 to 21,
Holy Loading Instructions of Antioch,
For Ye Springfield musket with breech loadeth casing, which containeth thy holy black powder and ball.

A very old instruction manual......

carbine85 said:

Cabela's has some HSM Cowboy Action 45-70 on hand that I can pick up. I'm thinking this is good to go isn't it?

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Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will find the specs for their 45-70 ammo. The Cowboy action is rated at 1300 FPS, which should be OK. Since most manufacturers don't put this info on the box, it always worth checking out on their websites

https://hsmammunition.com/by-caliber/

Cheers

Check out Midway for quite a selection of .45-70 ammo. They very obligingly publish the bullet weight and velocity for each loading, so you can choose a traditional loading at 1300 FPS with a 405 grain lead bullet.

HSM and Black Hills Cowboy, and Winchester Super-X seem good.

https://www.midwayusa.com/45-70-government/br?cid=22388

Shanghai McCoy said:

While that is true the recoil from the standard 45/70 rifle load was found to be tough on the troopers in the light weight carbine.

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When you think about it though, back in the 1870s some troopers were probably short and wiry guys of 5' - 4" who weighed 140 pounds. So it is no wonder that the carbine load would have been adopted.

When I looked through my book "Packing Iron", which is about belts and holsters used by civilians and military in the Old West, I noticed that some of the photos showed men with Colt SAA revolvers.
Oddly though, the revolver appears larger than the Colt SAA appears today.
That is, until you realize that it's a matter of scale.
The gun was not larger obviously.
It's just that many men were small in stature back then.