Primers for Black Powder cartridge loading
I’ve been following BP cartridge loading since about the late 1970s when I saw a movie where some kids were given (or inherited?) a Sharps “Big Fifty” which they shot from one hilltop to the next, poking respectable size holes through an old junk car on the far hill. (Anyone know that movie name btw?)
Back then a young guy named Mike Venturino wrote some articles about the Sharps rifles, cartridges, and loading them in the American Rifleman. He later apparently became a gun writer of some repute. :razz: In his later writings he talked about drop tubes, card wads, SPG lube, and using the hottest primer possible (Fed. 215Ms).
Now, some 20-30 years later, I’ve read somewhere (sorry I don’t know who to give credit to), the better choice is to shoot the weakest primer possible, even going so far as to use LPPs with a thin card wad cut from a 3x5 index card in between the primer’s anvil and the flash-hole. The reasons stated are:
1. 1800s primers were weaker than modern day. (I don’t believe this is universally true because there were so many types and compositions of primers, but, maybe true in some cases.)
2. Most importantly, the writer said this technique of weaker primers eliminates the hard ring of BP fouling just ahead of the chamber. He suggests hotter primers eject the bullet from the case before the full load of powder ignites, thus causing some of the powder to ignite just ahead of the chamber against the bullet base, where the initial ignition creates this ridge of hard BP fouling.
Anyone tried this, tested this, heard of this? Thoughts?