black powder and boolit ?

[quickshot]

Hey guys! I will be acquiring a 45-70 handi or buff classic (haven't made up my mind yet) and will be loading it with black powder. Would ACWW be to hard of an alloy for this endeavor or do I need to find some pure? This will be my first venture into the world of black powder. And also do you guys have any good plinking loads for the 45-70? Please educate me.

[quickshot]

oooops I think that I posted this in the wrong place!!! DOH!!!!

[TCLouis]

the there are few options, you load so that boolit seats ON the powder and maybe even slightly compresses it with seating and crimping.

Otherwise a nice plinking load with RD's 378 cast is 22 gr. 5744 or 23.5 gr. of 4759.

NO recoil in my Rolling Block with HEAVY octagon barrel.

[44man]

Black powder works wonderfully with 1 part tin to 20 parts lead or even 1 to 30.
The load should be compressed BEFORE seating the boolit and the boolit MUST be against the powder or wad if used. If you try to compress the powder with the boolit as you seat, you can ruin or expand the boolit. You can get away with some compression if the boolit is hard. All of us BPCR shooters use a powder compression die.
You have to use a good BP lube too, not smokeless lube.
The strange thing is that WW metal will lead my bore with BP and the soft stuff doesn't even though the boolits are larger then my bore size. If you can put up with a little leading, WW's shoot fine.
Don't worry about where you post, you will find help anywhere.
Just remember, no air gap between BP and the boolit.

[shunka]

Howdy quickshot -
If this is your first sojourn into the 45-70 you might tinker with some smokeless loads first, as they seem to be more forgiving vis-a-vis lube selection and most certainly take BP fouling out of the picture.
When you decide to go BP, a bullet design with large lube grooves and a good "all natural" BP lube have always seemed to work best for me. You will find many lube recipes pinned on this forum, my favorite includes deer tallow and carnuba wax. And a lot of great advice for bullet choices. I mention "all natural" lubes because experience and research based on chemical analysis by Those Smarter Than I have indicated that petroleum based lubes react poorly with BP residue leading to nasty stuff in your barrel. Your mileage may vary.. good luck with your new rifle!

[Wayne Smith]

To answer your specific question, wws are fine and you don't have to buy any pure lead and tin anytime soon. Get it shooting and then refine one thing at a time. Alloy is one of the later items to work on.