Brass cartridge thread got me thinking...

[batjka]

What do you think about making a steel cartridge for a C&B revolver for smokeless powder use?

Say, cut a steel rod of .450 diameter to give you enough room to sit a bullet on top. Drill a hole through the middle to allow, say, 5gr of bullseye to be loaded inside. Cover one end with nitrated paper. drop this contraption into the chamber and sit a ball or a conical on top. A blast from the cap will ignite the charge. Thick walls of the steel tube will reinforce cylinder walls to contain the blast. The only problem I see would be the tube extraction.

Opinions?

 

[Pulp]

As a friend of mine told a co-worker after co-worker wrapped about 100 feet of house crane cable around a revolving scum scooper,

"Pardner, you're on your own this time."

 

[Oyeboten]

Extraction might just take care of itself...( or worse, the 'Tube' ending up partly jammed into the Forcing Cone).


Pressures realized with Bullseye or other Smokeless Powders, are quite variable, depending on the volume of Air Space between Powder and Bullet.


I am sure that in the 1890s and early 1900s, people did try using Bullseye or Unique or other early Smokeless Powders in Cab & Ball Revolvers...be it informedly or naively, and with whatever results, be it success or damage or disaster, depending.

Large Air space for the Charge would let pressures be lower...all of this could be worked out with some simple arithmetic, for loadings to equal BP pressures in effect, with no 'Tubes' or Liners for the Cylinder, and no stress for the Arm.


Superficially, this notion would scare most people familiar with the larger subjects of Reloading...even if in theory, it could be done safely I think, so long as fairly precise charges and fairly precise Air Space behind the Ball or Bullet were acheived according to right calculation.

Smokeless Powders are routinely used for special Loading of Metallic Cartridges for early Black Powder Metallic Cartridge Arms.

I see no reason why the same technically careful particulars as those require, could not transfer to a Cap and Ball Revolver.


The pressure realized by a Smokeless Powder type used traditionally for Revolvers, such as Bullseye or Unique, will be a function of the amount of Powder, and, the amount of Air space it has to start off with, between it and the Bullet, assuming the projectile behaves normally thereafter and does not occasion unusual resistence to being accelerated.


Black Powder of course is to be compressed by the Ball or Bullet, where no Air Space is permitted to be present.


Being as Black Powder is so charming, so easy to use, and so fail safe, I personally do not feel any draw to try Bullseye in a C & B Revolver far as my own interests or ambitions.

 

[BHP FAN]

Heck, my brother and I are experimenting with loading black powder in modern cartridges...I prefer black powder.

 

[Oyeboten]

I do too!


Funny you would mention that.

BP is sweet in .38 Special...and no slouch, either...FPS as good or better than Factory off-the-shelf Smokeless of same weight Bullet.

 

[rcflint]

For one thing, the steel cylinder you use would have to be at least 4140 or 4150 grade steel, not your garden variety Ace Hardware cold rolled bar stock.

Secondly, the moment the ball moves forward of the insert, the pressure is applied to the cap & ball grade steel in front of the insert.

Kirst and R&D conversion cylinders are made of modern arsenal grade 4140 and 4150 steel, so the pressure is contained safely for the length of the cylinder's bores.

Those shooters and gunsmiths who have converted cap & ball cylinders by cutting the breech and chambering for 38 cartridges use ONLY black powder, because of the grade of steel in a cap & ball cylinder. Though a modern made replica has better steel than an original 19th century revolver, it is for economic purposes and ease of machining (note the lower price) not the same steel the maker would use for smokeless cartridge gun.

Though many of the British SASS shooters are shooting smokeless cap & ball, they are doing it in cylinders designed for it, and using shotgun primers, not caps to set them off.

Smokeless would drive a fired cap back hard enough to recock the hammer.

 

[Smokin_Gun]

Jus' have one question, why?
Get a convertion and shoot cowboy puff loads instead or Warthog BP loads in your C&B Rev's...I jus' buy C&B Revs to shoot BP in or out of.

 

[Jim Watson]

There is some activity in England with smokeless powder muzzleloaders. But they make complete new cylinders and do not try to adapt the C&B cylinder.

 

[BCRider]

I have to agree with Oyoboten about the risk of using a powder adapter that holds the smokeless. With a powder such as Bullseye the air volume at ignition controls the chamber pressure.

A while back I came across a deal on a big batch of reloading supplies that included about 5 lbs of Bullseye. So needless to say I'm using it for everything possible. I've reloaded both .38Spl and 9mm with it. And the charges are close to the same for both. But the peak pressures generated are over twice as much for the 9mm as the .38. This is because while the .38's have a little bit of powder way down in the bottom of the case the 9mm are almost filled to being barely able to take the bullet without becoming compressed.

So I would suspect that the very last thing you want is to confine a smokeless by using an insert tube. Besides, as mentioned above the tube won't confine anything. The ball is still pressed into the actual cylinder and the pressure of the charge will pass around the ball and be taken by the whole cylinder. So it'll likely explode due to the far higher max pressure that will occur due to the tube adapter taking up a lot of the airspace.

 

[Oyeboten]

Thanks for the affirm BCRider.


Good mention there with the .38 Special and 9mm conditions - their having differing volumes, with even identical powder charges, the resulting pressures can be vastly different.


I did not know about that untill fairly recently, and it is a very important thing to be apprised of if doing any reloading.

 

[batjka]

Well, this was just a thought. I'm not really planning on doing this.

That being said, once the powder is ignited and pushes the ball out of contact with the tube, the pressure will be reduced as the gases expand into the larger diameter cylinder space. So it might be safe.

Smokeless cylinders that are used in Britain utilize very similar principles - small chamber for the powder, large diameter chamber for a bullet.

 

[BCRider]

Having only recently gotten into reloading I've been reading everything on the topic and trying to meld all the information together. This next bit is what I've figured out so far......

For a smokeless cartridge when it fires there's a moment when the ball or bullet begins to move where the powder is still burning. At some point the bullet has moved some amount and the powder burned enough that the pressure peak is reached due to the amount burned being confined to a given space. From there the space opens up as the bullet accelerates down the barrel and the remainder of the powder burn isn't producing enough gas to make the pressure rise any higher. The greater the volume that is behind the bullet when the powder has mostly burned the lower the peak pressure will be. When looking at smokeless the smaller the air space prior to ignition the higher the peak pressure will rise. That's why the .38Spl only sees roughly 1/3 the peak pressure compared to the 9mm. It's becuase the cartridge design is giving the bullet a "head start" down the barrel due to the big air gap compared to the 9mm.

But with black powder we need to control the pressure build in a different manner. We do this by compressing the charge so it burns in a controlled manner from the point of ignition in a traveling face through the compressed charge from one end to the other. So the surface face of the burn is smaller and the pressure rises more slowly. And controlling the burn in this way is why the powder doesn't blow up the gun. This is also why it's so important with black to not have an air space. A space would mean that the powder is sitting flat and loose in the chamber or case and the burn can extend from the back up and over the top of the powder so it burns from both the rear and the exposed top face. It would also stir up the powder due to being loose and make more of it burn all at the same time. In effect it would burn much faster than when properly packed. So fast that the peak pressure would spike up far higher than a properly compressed load and we run into the risk of blowing up the gun.

In fact I noticed that on my .44 Colt replica the chamber at the nipple is smaller. This MAY be due to how it was made but if you think about it from the burn standpoint this is an excellent design feature. The smaller chamber diameter at the nipple means a smaller burn area. So right at the point of ignition and until the powder burns up to the larger cross section the amount of gas produced will be less. So the powder in the forward portion and the ball receives a "soft start" to its travel. Then the burn catches up to the powder and ball in the larger section and the gas production speeds up. But by this time the bullet has moved some amount and there's more volume so the pressure peak is slightly delayed while the bullet is already traveling. This means a bigger volume and reduced peak pressure compared to what you'd see if the chamber was a full .44 all the way back to the nipple.

Although I would never want to try this it's very likely that very small charges of smokeless can be handled as long as the "recipe" does not generate peak pressures that are higher than what a proper charge of black powder will generate. But the risk of even a slight overcharge means that this is not a great thing to be playing with.