M1895 Nagant FUN!

[Okie73]

So the fun began when I ordered my Nagant revolver along with a Yugo Tok for my birthday. I also ordered some PPU ammo for the Nagant not knowing how poorly it was going to shoot. After slugging the bore (.313) I realized it wasn't any fault of the ammo but a to large for caliber bore. That poor little "J" word (.308) must have gone down the barrel like a pinball.
After I had emptied the cases of their powder and projectiles at the range I began the search for load data.

It didn't take me long to figure out from the posts that I had read that BP was the way to go with this little gas seal revolver.
I only have one shop locally that carries real black and they won't get one cent of my money any more so I went with 777 3F. The load I came up with is as follows:Lee TL314-90-SWC cast from dead soft sized at .313 and pan lubed with my home made BP lube,CCI 550 primers and 1.0 cc of 777 3f. I shot 30 of these last time out with no leading or major fouling.

The PPU brass did require some work to except the .313 boolits and still chamber. I was able to have a reaming/sizing fixture made at work to perform this task. With the ID reamed to .311 there is enough neck tention to hold the boolit in place.

These rounds have chronographed right around 950-1000 FPS
I have had a lot of fun with this project and would like to thank everyone that contributes to this great forum!

[Nobade]

Congratulations on finding out what fun revolvers these are. It is impressive how much better they work with black powder than smokeless. The Russian corrosive military issue ammo isn't too bad, but the commercial stuff is pitiful. Enjoy!

-Nobade

[Joe504]

As a side note, my local Academy sports has nagant ammo in stock. $30 for a box of 50

[Okie73]

Nobade it's because of you and nwellons that I went down the black powder road. Thank you for your posts.

Joe504
I had seen the same at my Academy but was able to order it at better price. Thanks for the heads up.

[texassako]

I had to go the same route with a little pocket pistol in the same chambering. Mine doesn't gas seal and I use my .32 ACP die set to reload the PPU brass with the little Ranchdog .32 ACP boolit I use in my .32, and smear some lube over the case mouth just like a cap and ball pistol.

[Okie73]

What kind of primers are you guys using?

[Nobade]

Whatever small pistol I happen to have open. Winchester mostly. I haven't noticed much difference in any of them, even home reloaded ones.

-Nobade

[nwellons]

I worked my way from small pistol to small pistol magnum, small rifle and finally small rifle magnum.

As I worked up, my velocities went up as you would expect but more important, my velocities (standard deviation) became much more consistent. It was amazing how much difference I saw.

This is for a full case of Black Powder (3f Goex.) Smokeless will require care in starting with lighter loads every time you move up to a hotter primer.

Chronograph

With small pistol primers 202 Average; 225, 267, 176
With small rifle primers 223 Average; 168, 194, 216, 330, 192, 202, 280
Small Magnum Pistol primers 736 AVG 1247, 470, 1227, 297, 405, 286, 1220
Small Magnum Rifle primers 1248 AVG 1253, 1237, 1241, 1255, 1256, 1249

[Okie73]

I have tried CCI SP and SPM. The weird thing that I noticed was that the SP's seemed to create more pressure because the cases were more difficult to eject. I don't have that problem with the SPM.
Anyway after that little experience no more SP's and 777!