Mr. Murphy's Laws of BP strike again, but I fought back!

[peacemaker45]

I've been working around, getting things together for a while to shoot BP at SASS matches. Powder and .44-40 dies finally showed up, but still didn't have any BP-lubed bullets. That was irritating, but I got stubborn and decided I'd lube 'em meownself. Melted them off in the oven, but not all the lube came off. Tried boiling them in my (mineral heavy) well water. What a mess! After wiping each one off individually, I finally got to the pan lubing stage. After a couple of false starts, I finally figured out to use a cut off .45-70 case like a cookie cutter to punch 'em out. I also used a cut off .303 as a cutter for the .38s.

After spending most of the day horsing around, I finally had bullets! Now for the loading. I built dippers out of dowel rods, cartridge cases, and duco cement. I had a small brass funnel, and a loading block. Ran a bunch of cases through the first two stages of the Square Deal, transfering them to the block. Charged with powder, then started seating bullets and crimping. The trouble was that I had so much lube on the bullets, that it built up in the seating die. Started sucking bullets out of the cases. I rigged a hex wrench through the hole to poke them back down, and that seemed to work.

Then I noticed that about every third one was crimped like it hadn't been seated at all. There was enough air pressure trapped by the seating, and enough lube on the sides of the bullets, that they were popping back up. Had to sit there and "pump" the air out of each one. Oy.

After I finally got the .44s done, I started on the .38s, as pistol loads. I was expecting troubles after my previous experience, but everything went smooth, there.

Then proceeded to the shotgun, and everything went smoother yet. I don't think that there's a great deal that one can do to slow down the operation of a Mec Jr, so charging with a dipper was no real hardship, there.

Ok, finally, I had all this stuff loaded, so I cruised over to the range to make sure of function. Boy, am I ever glad I did. Turns out that all 100 .44s were too long for the action of my '73. ARGH! So, back I went, baked, lubed, loaded, pumped, wiped, etc, until I had a hundred that actually did fit. Pistol stuff, once more, was fine.

Then I discovered that my rounds weren't clearing the bottom leg of the bolt in the rifle. Evidently, when I was setting up the short stroke a couple of weeks ago, (in the absence of ammo) I hadn't gotten the timing right. After a good deal of filing on the carrier lifter, I got that sorted out. However, the inevitable Mr. Murphy wasn't done yet. The bloody thing still wouldn't feed. After taking it apart, watching it feed, putting it together, watching it feed, about 40 times, I finally tracked the problem down to a burr in the carrier window, which was snagging the case heads. Needle file to the rescue!

I tell ya, I was beginning to question whether BP was going to be worth all this trouble! As it turned out, thoughI had everything ironed out.

So, this morning, I headed down to Circleville, OH, to shoot with the club down there.

After the first stage, or heck, even the first shot, all my troubles were forgotten. Fire, smoke, and that deep BOOM that only comes from wholly black powder!

Of course, after the first shot, I couldn't see the targets, either. I was just shooting into a fog bank. Evidently, I've got a decent visual memory, as I only missed one. "Shoot where you last saw it, they ain't movin'..... much."

I was even competitive, I didn't really lose much more than a second or two per stage. I was pretty jazzed, not only did I have a blast, (literally) but even shooting full case FFFg loads, I was able to snag second place overall.

I tell ya, there are few things, (if any) more fun than a blackpowder repeating rifle. I used to think muzzleloaders were nifty, but there was always sort of an element of, "Well, that was fun, but now I've got another 5 minutes work before I can do it again," to them. With a '73, however, flick that lever, and ya can do it again in two tenths of a second. YEEHAW!

Also, cleanup was a lot easier than I expected. I'd made sure to degrease all the guns and then relube with Ballistol, before I went. It sure paid dividends. Sprayed on the moose milk, let set a few minutes. The scattergun came sparkling clean with just one pass (per barrel) of the boresnake. Rifle only took 3, and there wasn't a lick of fouling in the action. Was actually cleaner than my usual .38 rifle is, with smokeless. Pistols were a little more work, but mainly because of all the nooks and crannies in the cylinder window, as well as the ratchet.

Oh man, what a blast!

~~~Mat

PS, sorry for the novel length post, but I just sort of felt the need to ramble about it.

 

[BCRider]

A nice read and not too long at all.

It's nice when a plan comes together, eh?

 

[Ratdog68]

Congrats on the placing... makes the hard work a little easier to do.

 

[SteveDS]

Always great when you can make things work. You may want to check out the first sticky in the Handloading Forum - Lead Poisoning --Valuable Health Information.... You DO NOT want to use the same oven or cooking utensils (assume you used a pot for boiled the bullets). An option would be to use one of the subs (777, American Pioneer, or Pinnacle) with the non-BP lubed bullets until you can get correct lube for BP.

 

[Pulp]

I've found the easiest way to remove hard wax lube from bullets is to just use a mini-screwdriver and scrape it out. Beats the heck out of boiling water and all that stuff.

I've just finished loading my first batch of Big Lube Bullets. I found out that excess lube (I use a beewax, Crisco, Bore Butter combo) will build up on the seating pin and give you shorter and shorter cartridges.:banghead:

My first test with the Big Lube Bullets and my homemade black powder convinced me that BLB's are the only way to go. Much easier to clean up after shooting.

 

[ClemBert]

I just went ahead and loaded up some BP 45 Colts with hard lube bullets. Half the people I ask about BP and hard lube say don't worry about it in a revolver. In a long barrel such as a rifle they DO say WORRY ABOUT IT. Anyhow, I loaded up a bunch of 45 Colt with 35 grains of BP and a Walter Wad. Then I loaded up a bunch with 30 grains of BP, a Walter Wad AND a lubricated Wonder Wad. We'll see how that goes. I can always alternate the cartridges with and without the lubricated Wonder Wad. I'm really not expecting any problems though with the hard lubed bullets in my 35 grain cartridges without soft lube.

 

[SteveDS]

Will be interested to here how your Walter Wad (assume this is a veggie wad) and Wonder Wad loads go.

Just have not had the time this week, but need to send off a ‘comment’ e-mail to Cabelas abut their version of a Wonder Wad. Typically I preload a group of cylinders for my 1858s before going to the range. Standard recipe has been powder, a wax card (punched from a milk or OJ carton), a ‘dry lubed’ felt wad all topped of with a round ball. This past week ran out of ‘dry lubed’ felt wads and substituted some of Cabela's Wonder Wads I had. How did they work? Not to good. Less than 24 hours after preloading my cylinders I dropped the hammer on the first one with the oddest result I have ever had from a handgun – a rather loud hissing noise and a shower of sparks hitting my hand (lasted a few seconds). To my surprise, I did not drop the gun and placed it as quickly as I could on the shooting bench. After letting it sit for a few minutes an inspection revealed what happened.
1. Cylinder was locked up.
2. Thick powder residue covered the business of the cylinder.
3. Found the ball stuck about an inch from the end of the barrel.
4. Managed to work the cylinder out of the frame (still had five live loaded chambers – and yes I always cap the cylinder after placing it the gun frame) – powder residue had bound it up.
5. The ball drove out of the barrel with little effort.
6. Wad and card were still with the ball – and appeared wet???
7. Removed the nipples from the cylinder and pushed out the remaining loads and discovered the problem.
8. Lubricant from the Cabela's Wonder Wads had contaminated the powder and caused a hang fire (even with the card between the powder and the wad).
9. Was able to confirm this as two of the remaining loads in that cylinder were made up with the old wads and showed no contamination.
10. Pushed out the loads in the remaining cylinders I had preloaded – one with Cabela's Wonder Wads had all the loads contaminated, while two with the old dry lube wads were fine.

 

[ClemBert]

It kind of sounds like the Cabellas wads where pretty "wet". I recently bought some Cabellas wads for my 1851. I haven't tried them out yet but my tendency is to load up and shoot within 5 minutes of loading so I'll probably be okay.

 

[higene]

Over powder wadding

I read with interest the entire thread. The only question I have relates to the over powder wad concept. I have shot ROA extensively and never used an over powder wad. It cut neat clean complete lead rings off of .457 round balls. I used Crisco or bore butter for a while but eventually gave that practice up as un necessary. I had extremely reliable ignition and never had a chain fire or anything like it.

I currently have a Uberti Walker and am just starting out shooting it. I shoot 40-60 gr fff Black powder, .457 round balls (no over powder wad), and a wonder wad on top of the ball to prevent chain fires (I may try Crisco or Bore Butter over the ball in the future.

With the Walker I am sometimes getting shavings off of the ball but I am not getting the neat little ring that I was getting with the ROA. The mouths of the chambers are more rounded on the Walker and I have put it down to that.

My questions are:
1.What is the purpose of the over powder wad
2. How important do people think that they are to safety


Higene

 

[arcticap]

My questions are:
1.What is the purpose of the over powder wad
2. How important do people think that they are to safety

1. In theory, there's a bunch of purposes for using the over powder wad or card:

1. To protect from chainfire
2. To take up empty cylinder space
3. To swab and/or lubricate (if lubed!) the bore
4. To increase velocity through added powder compression
5. To prevent migration of cylinder lube (if dry!)
a) To allow a lube or filler to be sandwiched.
6. To help seal the powder from moisture

2. A) On a scale of 1-10, I would rate their level of effectiveness to seal the front of each chamber from chainfire for an entire cylinder full of shots as a 10.
There are alternatives that may or may not be as effective.
B) On their level of importance for safety, I'd give them a 9 since I feel strongly that it's important that the front of each chamber should be effectively sealed.

 

[peacemaker45]

Ok, had round two, this weekend. I figured out a trick to pan lubing that makes the whole process about a thousand percent easier:

Get one of those little black plastic trays that come in factory ammo boxes. Place the bullets to be lubed nose down in the holes. Flip the contraption like a primer flip tray. Remove the tray, leaving the bullets neatly aligned in pretty little rows. Pour the lube and let it solidify. When it's solid, (but still slightly warm) put the tray back over the bullets, and flip again. Should now have a sheet of lube, containing bullets, pointing nose down into the tray. Poke the bullets out, (I used a pencil eraser) letting them fall into the tray. They come out bright, shiny, and perfectly lubed. No muss, no fuss. Faster than the cookie cutter method, and one whole heck of a lot neater.

~~~Mat

 

[peacemaker45]

As for the lubed wads in C&Bs:

The first general principle of black powder is that lube keeps fouling soft. Without such measures, it gets hard and crunchy. This destroys accuracy, when the fouling is in the bore, and causes guns to sieze when its in the mechanical bits. (prime spots on revolvers are the barrel-cylinder gap, and the base pin.)

The second is that bp has to be compressed to function properly. When using charges reduced beyond the reach of the rammer, the space has to be filled with something. Some use cornmeal, others use other fillers. But with a C&B, a lubed wad works very well.

I don't shoot that small of charges, so I generally lube the front of the chambers, rather than use the wads. Leaves more room for powder.

Also, I don't much care for straight crisco as a chamber sealant. It looks mighty nice, right up until ya pull the trigger the first time. Then it melts off all the rest of the chambers, and just leaves a mess of veggie oil dripping off the gun. I prefer Bore Butter, or crisco stiffened with about 20% beeswax. Lubes better, and stays where it's put, until its turn to go for a ride comes up.

~~~Mat