I want to start loading black powder cartridges

[grizzly]

I have been reloading for 30 years. Recently as noted in another post I got myself an 1874 and an 1885 45-70.

I really want to explore BP loading. But seems reading on here is sensory overload. I am not interested in competition. I'm most interested in composing a BP cartridge together from one of my bullets and taking a deer or bear. I want this to be an economical as possible.

I have brass that is annealed and fire formed Starline. I have large rifle magnum primers. I need to get black powder. What type? Goex and Pyrodex is available locally. I have Lee .457 340 gr RFN bullets.

What's the best way to measure? I have a Pact scale. Do I need something different?

Lube??? Currently I have been powdercoating all my 45-70 with great success. I need to lube these. How? I do not have a lubrasizer.

Sorry for the 20 questions. Just trying to find out what additional things I need to purchase. Looking for a BPCR starter kit.

[country gent]

The SPG manual is good on loading Black Powder as is Randy Wrights Book Loading and shooting the paper patched bullet a beginners guide ( this deals with Paper Patched bullets but does transfer to grease grooves also. I use a Belding & Mull measure for BP and weigh charges to set tube. I have been getting really good results with Olde Ensford Powder. GoEX is true BP while pyrodex is a substitute. As to lube pick up a shallow cake pan 1 1/2"-2" deep and pan lube the bullets with spg and use a fired case for a cake cutter to remove when cooled. Drill out the primer pocket to 1/4" for a pin to push bullets out. Shoot as cast if possible. Loading black powder is pretty straight forward. Measure how deep the bullet will be in the case and fill a case .030 more than that from the mouth. This is starting point. Weigh and set measure or make a dipper for this. You want a wad to protect the bullets base on top of the powder so add a .030-.060 cardboard, felt, veggie fiber, cork, Napa ruber fiber gasket, or LDP wad. This protects base of bullet and powder charge. Compress to depth needed for bullet if you have a compression die. I also use 2 tracing paper wads on top of the main wad also. Hand seat bullet into case and lightly size around it to just light tension. For compression a wood dowel can be made to match your bullets length and profile + .030 - .060 long a washer spacer of the same thickness made and the seating die used to compress powder with this plug. The washer raises the die so if its set to crimp its not going to when compressing. Goex, Olde ensforde, swiss are all te nlack powders and work very well here. WOrk up load adding compression and things should become sweet real quick for you.

[Remmy4477]

In my opinion and experience if your just loading for a hunting round, Pyrodex will work fine. If goex is about the same price buy that.

Lube, there are many recipes for Black powder lube online. Or you can buy SPG online, well proven and works well, you can pan lube your bullets or use the messy fun finger lube way if you just need a few rounds!

Measuring powder, with my 45-70 I use Remington brass, full length resized and am able to get 60 grns of goex FFG with 1/8 inch of compression on the powder under a 535 grn postel. I weight my powder on a scale then drop tube it into the case (you can make a drop tube out of a round curtain rod).
i then place a polyethylene wad between the powder and base of the bullet, then seat the bullet just below the top of the last lube ring.


This works for me quite well in a rebarreled original rolling block. I am able to hit rams center mass at 600-700 yard with these loads.

For hunting rounds you could just load the bullets without the wad. Would still use a drop tube and about 1/8th powder compression.

With black powder/pyrodex fouling is the enemy so you want to use a good lube designed for black. Compression is also a factor to fouling, the more the compression the more fouling you will get. 1/8th works for me.

For a hunting round I would compress a bit and give it go, figure out what you max shooting distance will be and experiment with building rounds that work for you rifle. Hunting, maybe 3 rounds would be used so fouling would not be a huge issue.

Experiment and have some fun with it. Blacks a bit frazzling when you first start out with it!

Enjoy!

[Don McDowell]

I have been reloading for 30 years. Recently as noted in another post I got myself an 1874 and an 1885 45-70.

I really want to explore BP loading. But seems reading on here is sensory overload. I am not interested in competition. I'm most interested in composing a BP cartridge together from one of my bullets and taking a deer or bear. I want this to be an economical as possible.

I have brass that is annealed and fire formed Starline. I have large rifle magnum primers. I need to get black powder. What type? Goex and Pyrodex is available locally. I have Lee .457 340 gr RFN bullets.

What's the best way to measure? I have a Pact scale. Do I need something different?

Lube??? Currently I have been powdercoating all my 45-70 with great success. I need to lube these. How? I do not have a lubrasizer.

Sorry for the 20 questions. Just trying to find out what additional things I need to purchase. Looking for a BPCR starter kit.

You will do well to forget the magnum primers. 2f Olds Eynford powder works very well. .030 fiber wads under the bullet. Be sure to compress the powder enough to seat the bullet without distorting the bullet nose when seating the bullet. The Saeco 645 bullet cast from 20-1 is a good place to start.

Sent from my VS985 4G using Tapatalk

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Black powder can be about the least finicky sort of reloading, if only a moderately powerful hunting load is wanted - and with the .45-70 on deer, you can afford to be moderate. While all you have been told about wads and so on is true, you will do pretty well without, and any medium-hard alloy at a velocity of 1300ft./sec. or so.

If you only want to zero the sights and shoot a deer or two, you can get by with powder coated bullets just as well as with smokeless. If the bore fouls, clean it. For greater volume of shooting you need a softer lube than with smokeless, to soften the fouling, or the expense of a smaller diameter mould to cast paper patched bullets. Pure beeswax isn't bad, but you will find various receipes here to soften it slightly. You can use a fired, unsized and beheaded cartridge case to cut the bullets out of a solidified pan of lube. You might need a mould with bigger lube groove than some for smokeless, to hold more lube.

You can also float some wax on a bowl of hot water to make a sheet of even thickness, and use the same case to cut out discs when it has solidified. One of these and a card wad next the powder will be extremely useful.

Either black powder or Pyrodex require more cleaning, with water followed by enough heat to dry it off, than smokeless. Many people report Pyrodex as being a lot worse than black. I have just bought a .32 Webley revolver which, being rimfire, is unlikely to have been fired in many decades. There was still caked fouling in the chamber mouths, but no pitting under it. That is not a thing to count on, but even less so with Pyrodex.

You will find some extremely high expertise on this website, on alloys, wads, hardness testing, water dropping etc. Very useful it is, when you need to extract optimum performance from a cartridge. But you don't need to start from there.

[oldred]

I have just got to ask again, why Pyrodex? Pyrodex may be ok for using as a sub for black in a firearm that must use either black or a sub but honestly what's the point in using it if a person just wants to experience the fun of BP? Pyrodex is nothing at all like BP shooting, it loads, shoots, smells, looks and basically does everything differently including being more corrosive and harder to clean so it is simply not the BP sport! If someone wants to shoot the stuff I am certainly not telling them not to but doing so will result in having to deal with all the mess & fuss of the fouling and very corrosive nature requiring thorough cleaning of both the rifle and brass and for what, the shooter STILL has not experienced BP shooting! The stuff may be ok for when BP or a sub is REQUIRED but it is quite simply a third kind of shooting and is not the true BP sport at all so why expose a nice rifle and good brass to that messy stuff? Real BP for sure for several good reasons, nostalgia for the way it was done way back then, being the correct propellant for the BPCR sport and even having that authentic smell, Pyrodex is none of those things and harder to clean to boot so why bother?

Besides real BP is just way more fun!!!!

[rfd]

welcome to the dark side, it's a nice place to be.

in a super small nutshell ... fire formed brass, standard LR primers, weigh the REAL BLACK POWDER on a digital scale, make up a simple drop tube and use it to compact the powder, use tubing punched out wads from milk cartons and newsprint, use a press mounted compression die for uniform compression - you want no air in the case anywhere, push in the lubed lead alloy bullets, crimp a tad if need be, achieve a good OAL for yer gun. yeah, yer gonna hafta to do some cartridge OAL trialling, but fire formed brass loads come apart real easy. that's the quick and cheap version.

bullets - if yer casting, dip lube using any one of the simple bp lube formulas ... if you have lead alloy bullets with smokeless lube, melt it off and dip lube. some of the better bp lubes can be rubbed into the bullet grooves (gato feo is one such lube) and you don't need a lubrasizer thingamajig.

lotsa ways of cleaning the gun and brass, from stupid simple water to ultra-sonics. not rocket science. these cartridges have been in yeoman service since before the invention of that white stuff.

all of the above will get you shooting well enuf to kill critters at typical distances ... getting more pin point real long distance accuracy will take it all up a few notches.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I'd agree there are only two good reasons to use Pyrodex, and possibly the other black powder substitutes too. One possibility is an old gun that you don't consider strong enough for smokeless - although with appropriate caution many are - and the other is difficulty in getting real black powder locally. People like Track of the Wolf will ship it to you, but I don't know about minimum quantities or hazmat charges.

[oldred]

I'd agree there are only two good reasons to use Pyrodex, and possibly the other black powder substitutes too.

--- the other is difficulty in getting real black powder locally.

That is often cited as a reason but is that actually a good reason? Think about it, you STILL would not be shooting black powder nor experiencing any of the reasons we shoot it in the first place! If a person wants to shoot black instead of smokeless then why choose something completely different than either? We shoot black for the nostalgia, the pomp and smoke of days long gone but what does Pyrodex do? Smoke? Yes I suppose it's smoke alright but it is not even close to the same being very obviously different in appearance and the smell is not even remotely similar. It not only looks and smells different but loads differently and performs differently, one of it's manufacturer stated attributes is higher velocity (and thus higher pressures?) than real black so how is it like shooting BP? About all it really does similar to real black is take black's soft fouling and moderate corrosive nature of the residue to much higher levels, less but harder fouling and the residue is MUCH more corrosive and generally harder to clean. There are those of course who will defend the stuff and claim it's no harder to clean than black but even if that were true so what, that still doesn't change the fact that it's still not even close to being the real thing and is simply a third kind of shooting that is not like either BP or smokeless!

My first exposure to Pyro was with black powder 45 revolver loads, I wanted to try BP just for fun but after shooting just the first cylinder full of those things it occurred to me that this was not at all like the BP rounds I had shot a couple of days earlier in a friend's original Colt revolver, I asked myself "why am I doing this?", it just didn't make any sense at all! It had occurred to me that all I was doing was to expose my new revolver and brass to that corrosive stuff for no real reason. The Pyro was messy and not nearly as good as the smokeless rounds plus it meant that I had to take extra precaution with cleaning to protect not only my brass and the bore but the external finish of the pistol also, and all for what? I still was not getting to experience ANY of the reasons why I wanted to shoot BP rounds in the first place! Sure Pyrodex is generally easier to get than real black but what's the point of doing so if it's just as different as shooting smokeless, and it IS just as different than real black in as many ways as smokeless plus being quite different than smokeless to boot!

[rfd]

this thing about issues with getting real black powder is a thread/post theme that's never ending.

i don't care what anyone else thinks, black powder is simply far better than any bp sub, for bpcr and trad ml's. so just do it right from the get-go.

right now, i find no reason that most anyone in the states can't acquire real black powder.

but oh geez, no local black powder due to too many fed and state regs on vendor bp storage? so ya think yer forced to using a bp sub? nonsense. be resourceful. this means at the very least, buying in 25# quantities or more via a group buy, and eliminate the hazmat fee whilst drastically lowering or eliminating the shipping fee.

[oldred]

With the prices of Pyrodex I have seen locally this year even ordering smaller amounts of BP still makes sense, even if a person ends up with a couple bucks more per pound it's still a minuscule cost relative to most everything else related to shooting.

[rr2241tx]

If you really are just interested in doing it so you can say you did it, here's a way that won't break the bank.

Buy one 1# can of Goex. 1F, 2F, doesn't really matter which. Scoop or pour a case full of powder in your brass, weigh it, use the average of a dozen as your "load".

Get a 7/16ths bolt and a pair of nuts and adjust the nuts to have enough bolt exposed to equal the length of your bullet to the first driving band, build up the exposed threads with epoxy putty and cure in a greased case. This will be your compression tool.

Pick up a beeswax mix lip balm stick for lube.

Fireformed cases are easiest to load for your single shots, just prime with your LRM primers, weigh and dispense your Goex, compress with the bolt until there is room for the bullet, grease your bullet with lip balm, wipe the base dry and insert into the case with thumb pressure until it rests on the powder.

I wouldn't expect match grade results, but inside 100 yards, you should have no trouble with a deer sized target.

Fouling control and cleaning is easily accomplished with a little Murphy's Oil Soap or water miscible oil in water and a wet patch during a shooting session.

[Kevin Rohrer]

Start off by buying and reading the Lyman black powder manual. The SPG manual isn't bad, either.

[rfd]

croft barkers bpcr silhouette booklet is excellent, best i've read on the subject.

[gandydancer]

I have just got to ask again, why Pyrodex? Pyrodex may be ok for using as a sub for black in a firearm that must use either black or a sub but honestly what's the point in using it if a person just wants to experience the fun of BP? Pyrodex is nothing at all like BP shooting, it loads, shoots, smells, looks and basically does everything differently including being more corrosive and harder to clean so it is simply not the BP sport! If someone wants to shoot the stuff I am certainly not telling them not to but doing so will result in having to deal with all the mess & fuss of the fouling and very corrosive nature requiring thorough cleaning of both the rifle and brass and for what, the shooter STILL has not experienced BP shooting! The stuff may be ok for when BP or a sub is REQUIRED but it is quite simply a third kind of shooting and is not the true BP sport at all so why expose a nice rifle and good brass to that messy stuff? Real BP for sure for several good reasons, nostalgia for the way it was done way back then, being the correct propellant for the BPCR sport and even having that authentic smell, Pyrodex is none of those things and harder to clean to boot so why bother?

Besides real BP is just way more fun!!!!

Listen to the man. He speaks with straight tongue. Real Black Powder is the only way.

[bigted]

If you really are just interested in doing it so you can say you did it, here's a way that won't break the bank.

Buy one 1# can of Goex. 1F, 2F, doesn't really matter which. Scoop or pour a case full of powder in your brass, weigh it, use the average of a dozen as your "load".

Get a 7/16ths bolt and a pair of nuts and adjust the nuts to have enough bolt exposed to equal the length of your bullet to the first driving band, build up the exposed threads with epoxy putty and cure in a greased case. This will be your compression tool.

Pick up a beeswax mix lip balm stick for lube.

Fireformed cases are easiest to load for your single shots, just prime with your LRM primers, weigh and dispense your Goex, compress with the bolt until there is room for the bullet, grease your bullet with lip balm, wipe the base dry and insert into the case with thumb pressure until it rests on the powder.

I wouldn't expect match grade results, but inside 100 yards, you should have no trouble with a deer sized target.

Fouling control and cleaning is easily accomplished with a little Murphy's Oil Soap or water miscible oil in water and a wet patch during a shooting session.

This works well. Not an entire mystery unless pin point looong range accuracy is desired. Then the many

[Lead pot]

Loading a black powder cartridge is not as complicated as some make it out to be.

First you have to determine what you want to accomplish. Just for a few shots when your at the range shooting your hand gun of high power rifle and take a few shots at steel swingers or bowling pins with the BPCR now and then then you can get by with just the simple basics. A box of bullets if you don't cast yet and a couple cans of black powder, I would stay away from the substitute if all possible. Some of those with out proper cleaning procedures can brown a good bore. A die set for the rifle and a empty case trimmed to the amount of powder where the bullet base makes contact with the wad over the powder for measuring the powder charge. A scale would make it more uniform when you fill the case or scoop and put it in the powder pan and if you need a little more to balance the scale just put some in a bowel and sprinkle a little in like you would do with salt with your fingers, or take some out if you don't have a trickle.
A wad is beneficial but not necessary over the powder just for a few shots. No need for Mag primers, but they will work.
Now for serious match shooting this gets a little more involved, but not as complicated as what you will read on these forums. Sometimes I wonder if some of the replies I read on and off if they really ever loaded a black powder cartridge.
Keep it simple and you will find what you need to make it work.
Some things to avoid.
1/2 filled case with powder and a wad on that powder load. Never do this!!!
Avoid a hard roll crimp with a lead bullet unless you need one for a tube magazine lever rifle. A crimp degrades the accuracy. You can get by with a very light taper crimp to hold the bullet from falling out.

When I started I went out to the machine shed with Mom's powder sieve and sifted the blasting powder we used for blowing stumps of splitting big cottonwood or maple logs so we could handle them to cut fire wood and filled the case for the $13. Rolling block rifle and stuck a bullet in the case right on the powder and that was good enough for getting a fox for it's bounty money.