45/70, smokeless, and wads/cards

[hornsurgeon]

i have reading about folks using wads/cards behind their boolits in the 45/70. i have been loading plain base boolits using trail boss, unique, etc and using a 3/7 grain tuff of dacron filler and getting ok results. have any of you tried this? should i look into using a wad or card directly under the boolit? what would you use to cut out the card?

[405]

Well, I've spent the last year or so pursuing the highest level of accuracy possible in my Sharps 45-70 with smokeless under cast bullets. Trailboss and Unique have not been the powders of choice. I've pursued accuracy on paper.
I've found the fast pistol powders to be fairly squirrely within a pretty narrow band at their upper limits so I opted for the more forgiving, slightly slower powders.

So I may not have the angle you're looking for in the 45-70... depends on the goal? Two powders have provided the most consistent results for my goal in this cartridge with my guns, namely 5744 and 4198.

The use of low density filler material like dacron is not for eveyone but I've found it to give the most uniform ballistics when low pressure- low velocity is the objective and the (smokeless) powder charges are kept at the very low load densities. The use of any hard wad IS NOT recommended for any such smokeless loads... they are for full density blackpowder loading. There was quite a good thread on the subject of chamber ringing not long ago.

My recipe for accuracy has been medium/fast smokeless using the two powders mentioned above along with a well designed grease groove bullet of about 430 grains. The bullet is sized to .001 over groove diameter. The bullet is gas checked. The bore twist is 1:18. The muzzle velocity is between 1150 and 1250 fps. The filler is dacron fluffed to minimum density and sized to fill the space between the powder and bullet. The bullet hardness is BHN 10.5-11. The lube is modified Felix.

My gun is fitted with vernier tang aperture and globe front. I have achieved consistent 5 shot group sizes of about .75" @ 100, with all under 1" @ 100 with this combo. The last group I shot was .24" @ 50. The only other lead bullet loads I've shot that have matched this accuracy potential have been swaged, paper patched over blackpowder if wiped between shots.

Pic of last group shot while load testing thru chronograph (target just a paper plate with spray painted bull, aka the "Bullshop" special :))

[Bret4207]

I'd go to a slower powder too. I think I use 3031 in my 45-70.

[Wayne Smith]

I believe the card wad idea originated with the BP folks to protect the base of the boolit from the flame front. Special veggie wad material is available from Buffalo Arms, but they can be cut from waxec cardboard such as milk or OJ containers or from the plastic containers Chinese food comes in. It's a matter of trial and error to see what works in your rifle.

[Boerrancher]

I like Bret have had good luck with IMR3031 out of my 45-70 Sharps. I had to load what would be considered an excessive load to make it shoot really well with condom bullets, so I will not list the load here. As to card wads, I have used them over the years with cast boolits and smokeless powder, but I always made sure I used the boolit to seat the wad, and the wad was a tight fit in the straight walled case. For low load density loads I would generally tear up toilet tissue and use it as a filler.

I tend to agree with everyone else that Unique is fine but will not produce the accuracy that you can get out of some of the faster burning rifle powders. It just depends on what you want to do with your rifle. I use mine to hunt and plink with so minute of paper plate is fine with me at 200 yds.

Best wishes from the Boer Ranch,

Joe

[Larry Gibson]

I shoot lots of 5477, 3031 and 4895 in my 45-70 trapdoors. I use a 1 1/4 gr dacron filler with all. As 405 mentions, I've also found the faster powders to be "squirrily with all but bullets lighter than 300 gr. Then with those I now use Bullseye exclusively with no wad, card or filler.

Larry Gibson