Dave Markowitz
Member
I've been on vacation this week and despite the crappy weather forecasts, made it to the range a couple times. This post has pics from yesterday. On Wednesday I shot my Cimarron 1860 Henry with .44 Henry-equivalent BP loads, which turned out to be not very accurate, so no pictures of them.
The traditional blanket case was from October Country by way of Track of the Wolf. I bought two of them, one for the '73 and one for the Henry and highly recommend them.
Yesterday I shot my Cimarron Firearms 1873 Sporting Rifle in .44-40 WCF with two types of handloads. The first target was shot with loads containing a 200 grain soft cast bullet sized to .429 from Desperado Cowboy Bullets on top of 8.5 grains of Alliant Unique powder, sparked by a Federal large pistol primer, in Starline brass.
The second group was loaded with home cast 219 grain bullets from an Accurate Molds 43-215C mold sized to .429 and lubed with a 50:50 mix of beeswax and mutton tallow. I used a 1:20 tin:lead alloy, so they are pretty soft, about 8 or 9 BHN. Powder charge was 35 grains of Swiss 3Fg black powder, with the same brass and primers.
I think the flyer was the first shot. I did not swab the bore between the strings of smokeless and BP rounds.
POA for both targets was 6 o'clock on the black.
I managed to capture the smoke cloud from one of the black powder rounds. It was hot, humid, and with little to no wind, so the smoke just hung around.
Cleanup didn't take very long using patches wet with a mix of Ballistol and water. The thin .44-40 brass seals the chamber very well so no fouling gets back into the action.
After cleaning the 1873, I also spent some time banging the 25 yard plate rack with my CZ P09 Duty and my 9mm reloads (mixed brass, 115 grain Berry's plated bullets, 4.5 grains of Hodgdon Universal Clays powder, and CCI small pistol primers). No pics of that, however.
Sure beats working.
The traditional blanket case was from October Country by way of Track of the Wolf. I bought two of them, one for the '73 and one for the Henry and highly recommend them.
Yesterday I shot my Cimarron Firearms 1873 Sporting Rifle in .44-40 WCF with two types of handloads. The first target was shot with loads containing a 200 grain soft cast bullet sized to .429 from Desperado Cowboy Bullets on top of 8.5 grains of Alliant Unique powder, sparked by a Federal large pistol primer, in Starline brass.
The second group was loaded with home cast 219 grain bullets from an Accurate Molds 43-215C mold sized to .429 and lubed with a 50:50 mix of beeswax and mutton tallow. I used a 1:20 tin:lead alloy, so they are pretty soft, about 8 or 9 BHN. Powder charge was 35 grains of Swiss 3Fg black powder, with the same brass and primers.
I think the flyer was the first shot. I did not swab the bore between the strings of smokeless and BP rounds.
POA for both targets was 6 o'clock on the black.
I managed to capture the smoke cloud from one of the black powder rounds. It was hot, humid, and with little to no wind, so the smoke just hung around.
Cleanup didn't take very long using patches wet with a mix of Ballistol and water. The thin .44-40 brass seals the chamber very well so no fouling gets back into the action.
After cleaning the 1873, I also spent some time banging the 25 yard plate rack with my CZ P09 Duty and my 9mm reloads (mixed brass, 115 grain Berry's plated bullets, 4.5 grains of Hodgdon Universal Clays powder, and CCI small pistol primers). No pics of that, however.
Sure beats working.
