50-70 Gov't

[blackpowder man]

Welcome to the forum. Everytime I get brass for my .38-55, .40-65, or .45-70 it is always a bit small at the mouth for the first loading. Even using fhe expander it is more of a squeeze than I like for soft bookits. I don't size them after they are fired and my boolits are a press fit that doesn't require a seating die. If I am hunting I use a different boolit with a flat nose and crimp them so I don't loss a boolit. Also if you load them into the rifling the boolit will stick if you unload the rifle. For target shooting and plinking this is not an issue. I think you'll find a lot of bpcr shooters here not sizing their brass and depriming with a universal decapper. Good luck, that should be a fun and rewarding journey you're starting. Lots of knowledge to be learned here.

[Washington1331]

I use the lee 515-450 mold for my trapdoor in 50/70. I think that I have the RCBS dies for it. The first time I fired the brass, I just used the regular expander die to the point where I didn't see a lot of lead shavings. My 50/70 loves 1F Goex, and a load of 70 grains ensured ample bump up to the bore diameter. I headed to the range and just had fun blowing holes in a target at 50 yards. After the inital firing, I just used a universal decapper die and didn't bother sizing the brass anymore since they were fire formed to the chamber. I use the expander die as a compression die to compress the powder and vegie wad to the appropriate depth of my boolit and just finger seat it. I put a very slight crimp to just prevent the boolit from backing out under normal handling conditions. I saw a massive increase in accuracy and was holding about a 5" group at a hundred yards.

Later I tried the NOE 515HB mold. If you go that route, I learned that you really have to get the hollow base pins hot to get good quality boolits. The extra efforts were well worth the results as I found that my groups decreased to about 3".

Just remember that when you're dealing with black powder you don't want any airspace under the boolit and compressing it a bit will decrease your fouling. Also make sure that you're using black powder lube on your boolits. SPG is really good, but expensive. I've had good luck with emerts lube, which I make myself using beeswax, crisco, and cooking oil. I've had good luck with 50% beeswax, 40% crisco and 10% olive oil (by weight). That mix seems to keep the fouling soft for me.

The 50/70 is a fun round. I find that I started taking my 45/70s to the range less an less in favor of the 50. Best of luck with your endeavor. PM me if you have any additional questions.

[StrawHat]

Every time I see someone recommend a wood dowel to pound a ball down a bore I cringe. As a part time gunsmith, I can tell you when the wood dowel breaks, it is a bitch to get the pieces out. A long flat pointed drill helps. It's your bore but I recommend an aluminum or brass dowel a bit under bore.

Kevin

[Ed in North Texas]

Welcome to the club. I have two NYSM RBs, one as issued with a perfect bore and pretty darn good exterior and the other a "shooter" with perfect bore, brown exterior and the butt replaced many years ago by the look of the wood. And the guy who replaced it never finished the rough shaped replacement other than fitting to the receiver, guess one of these days I ought to rasp and sand it down, finish it and find a buttplate for it). Apparently it isn't terribly unusual to find the NYSM RBs with really good bores, which is sort of surprising given that they served from 1872/73 to 1895 with the NY State Militia. Mine are both far more accurate than these old eyes can shoot with open sights.

Edited to add:

Here's the best my old eyes can do with the NYSM, 7 shot group - Blew one and wish I had included a ruler:



70 grains KIK 2f, .030 card wad, Lyman 515141 sized .515 w/home brewed lube Did not clean between shots.


2d Edit: Forgot to add that I bought a set of Lyman dies a few years back. Found the M die body too small to allow the .50-70 case to enter without sizing it down. Sent it back and Lyman sent a new die which worked perfectly, no problems with the expander at all.

[montana_charlie]

... sounded off on the wrong subject ...

[krems]

Lots of good advice given here. I can see where STrawHat is coming from when he talks about using not using a dowel to pound a slug down the barrel. You do need to be careful. I make my own hunting arrows so I always have wooden dowels shafts lying around. I use 3 different lengths when pounding a slug down the barrel. If you use a dowel Keep them as short as possible when starting out then use the longer ones as the bullet slides down the barrel. Careful not to whack the muzzle if your pushing from muzzle to chamber. Short controlled blows with the heaviest hammer work best. I'd use one of your 40-1 bullets rubbed down with bullet lube. I'd even whack the bullet once to increase its diameter a bit to be sure it's larger then the bore. The hardest part is getting the bullet started if going from muzzle to chamber. I even like to run a wet patch with a little gun oil down the barrel prior to pushing the slug through. Be careful when the bullet exits as you don't want it to fall on something hard and ruin the slug. Once you get the bore dimensions and a couple of fired case dimensions you can tweek your reloading dies and methods to turn that rifle into a shooting machine.

In my 50-70 I use a mix of Rcbs and Lyman dies. My load with a 485 gr FP bullet is 63 grains Swiss 3F, rem 9 1/2 primer, no wad, SPG lube, .511 bullet 30-1 alloy, very slight compression, and minimal neck tension. I neck size only. I also like to keep all grooves within the case and just enough crimp to get rid of the bell mouth. I use this mainly for hunting. I had to use 3f to get the velocity as my bullet sticks in the case more. I also like a lot of lube grooves on BP bullets as I hate cleaning between shots.......got a blow tube yet?

Keep us posted on the progress.

[GWM]

Later I tried the NOE 515HB mold. If you go that route, I learned that you really have to get the hollow base pins hot to get good quality boolits. The extra efforts were well worth the results as I found that my groups decreased to about 3".

Unfortunately that mold is out of stock and not available at NOE, until a group buy is organized. If 5 people would be interested it could get produced eventually. http://noebulletmolds.com/NV/product...roducts_id=437

[Jokester]

First off, I would like to thank everybody who has posted in this thread.

blackpowder man: Thank you for the input. I was told to not resize my brass. So I actually have been using my Lyman expander die with the decapping rod screwed in to decap the fired brass that came with the rifle. No contact with the brass and still being decapped.
Washington1331: Also thank you. I actually purchased a .50 caliber compression die from BACo and will use that to copmpress my powder, if need be. Also, a few people mentioned SPG lube so I picked some up and used that to slug my bore.
StrawHat: Couldn't find any aluminum or brass dowels so I used 7/16 hardwood dowels that fit sung in my bore and it went fine. Thank you for the advice!
Ed in North Texas: Thank you for your reply! My rifle has an outstanding bore, save for some VERY minor pitting in the last few inches before the muzzle.

Krems & Jugulator:

This is where it gets juicy. I went out today and picked up 7/16" hardwood dowels, hornady .530 round balls and a set of RCBS calipers.
Ran a patch down the bore dripping with birchwood casey. Slathered my roundballl in SPG and rammed her home from breech to muzzle. My calipers measure .506.
I was...not trusting of this reading as I had heard most military rifles had a wider bore and required larger bullets. So I slathered one of my own .515 bullets in SPG and got the same result.
I was still not convinced! Took one of my .515's squished in a vice till it was .540 and slugged her again.
.506 at the thickest...

Is this...normal or did I mess up somewhere? I can clearly see lands and grooves so I think the slugs were big enough. However that seems very slim..



In the first picture the calipers are on the land of the second grease groove.
Is this definitely my bore diameter? Could anything else be mucking up my measurements? If so should I size my bullets to what .510? or .508? This changes everything.
Thank you!

EDIT: I was able to push the .515 slug through using my hand and just pushing on the dowels, like loading a muzzleloader.

[jugulater]

if the .515 slid through easily then something is very wrong. was there any tight spots? did you spin the slug around and look for the fattest part?

if theres any tight spots in the bore, or if it gets tighter towards the chamber you may have a fouling/lead buildup, something pretty common in a old gun with a oversized bore. if its such you will need a sturdy rod, a scrubber, and a really good fouling remover.

if none of the above causes a change, then im freaking stumped..

[Jokester]

if the .515 slid through easily then something is very wrong. was there any tight spots? did you spin the slug around and look for the fattest part?

if theres any tight spots in the bore, or if it gets tighter towards the chamber you may have a fouling/lead buildup, something pretty common in a old gun with a oversized bore. if its such you will need a sturdy rod, a scrubber, and a really good fouling remover.

if none of the above causes a change, then im freaking stumped..

The hardest part was pushing the bullet from the chamber into the barrel. But when I inspect the bore there doesn't seem to be any build up, and I can clearly see the rifling.

Once I actually got into the barrel was when I could just push it through myself.
Maybe my calipers are a lemon? I checked them on the .530 roundballs and they were accurate.
Also the bullet I cheched the calipers with was the .540 slug

[jugulater]

Try driving from muzzle to chamber, and see if it tightens up, i dont think a tight spot of .005 or so would be all too visible, especially if its a hard clump of lead.

spin one of your slugs between the jaws of the calibers and try to find the fattest spot you can. ive never heard of one of these guns slugging below .512ish and mine slugs somewhere between .515 and .516

[enfield]

Not a big fan of digital calipers, I prefer the outside drum style micrometers for measuring . As far as the earlier question about unsizing brass, I load with BP and a over powder card, drop in the bullet ( the case expands quite a bit in the chamber so the bullet is a loose fit ) then I use the Lyman sizing die with the decapping pin removed and just press the case into the die enough to squeeze it against the bullet so its not too loose ( not a crimp , but it keeps the bullet from falling out ). This way your not working the brass too much and theres no real need for a crimp in the single shot anyway.

[Jokester]

Try driving from muzzle to chamber, and see if it tightens up, i dont think a tight spot of .005 or so would be all too visible, especially if its a hard clump of lead.

spin one of your slugs between the jaws of the calibers and try to find the fattest spot you can. ive never heard of one of these guns slugging below .512ish and mine slugs somewhere between .515 and .516

I slugged her from muzzle to chamber and got the same .506
Then I did 4" from the muzzle, then driven back out to the muzzle.
Then I did 4" from the chamber and back out through the chamber.
When the calipers tightened down, not allowing the slug to spin both were .506.
When I spun the slugs, the muzzle end slug pushed the calipers to .508 and the chamber end pushed them to .507.
So I'm just gonna assume leading, right? I ran a patched jag with Hornady One-Shot Muzzleloader through, followed by dry till it was white.
Should I look into a de-leading agent and a good brush?

Okay so when I let the slugs spin freely they read .508. Then when I push them back down its .506.

[jugulater]

Calipers aren't perfectly accurate, but they work, but they will give funny measurements if you press on them. for best results use the looser measurement.

how did the slug driven 4" from the muzzle measure?

we could have a couple things going on here, it could be the calibers reading funny, or a leaded barrel.

How many Rifling grooves can you see?

[Jokester]

Calipers aren't perfectly accurate, but they work, but they will give funny measurements if you press on them. for best results use the looser measurement.

how did the slug driven 4" from the muzzle measure?

we could have a couple things going on here, it could be the calibers reading funny, or a leaded barrel.

How many Rifling grooves can you see?

Sorry left a key bit of info out.
The muzzle end pushed the calipers out to .508, spinning freely.
The chamber end pushed the calipers out to .507, spinning freely.
On the slug there are 5 grooves.
On the muzzle end of the barrel there are also 5 grooves.
HOWEVER on the chamber end there is 5 grooves but one is noticeably shallower. Also I'm not sure how deep the grooves should actually be but all of them are very shallow.

[jugulater]

Did the previous owner make any mention of the boolit size used and accuracy? obviously if he ran .511s through it and got 8" groups at 25 yards the barrel probably has lead packed in it. it has to be leaded to slug that small, because that barrel would have never passed inspection.

it might be time to run a brush down it and see if you can rake out some lead, if you do youre in for a fight.

i still think having the measurements checked with another measuring instrument like a Micrometer or a set of Dial Calipers just to make sure a wacky set of calibers isn't the issue is a good idea.

[Jokester]

Did the previous owner make any mention of the boolit size used and accuracy? obviously if he ran .511s through it and got 8" groups at 25 yards the barrel probably has lead packed in it. it has to be leaded to slug that small, because that barrel would have never passed inspection.

it might be time to run a brush down it and see if you can rake out some lead, if you do youre in for a fight.

i still think having the measurements checked with another measuring instrument like a Micrometer or a set of Dial Calipers just to make sure a wacky set of calibers isn't the issue is a good idea.

No mention of accuracy but the previous owner sized his bullets to .512 and used low power smokeless loads.
I've never de-leaded a barrel but I'm hitting it with a 20 guage brass brush and some bore solvent, some good sludge coming out.
I'll try and borrow a pair of micrometers or another set of calipers to double check though.

[jugulater]

Now we are making progress! if you start getting little shiny bits you got leading.

im looking forward to seeing what the issue is, either way we should be on our way to a good answer.

[Jokester]

Now we are making progress! if you start getting little shiny bits you got leading.

im looking forward to seeing what the issue is, either way we should be on our way to a good answer.

Okay, calling it a night for now. After destroying 2 20 guage brushes and using what little bore solvent I had, I slugged the barrel once more.
The last slug read .511 to spin freely. I locked the calipers to .511 and spun the slug and there are still spots where it's a little bit tight. Going to pick up some real lead remover and some better brushes and go at it again tomorrow!
There wasn't many pieces of shiny bits but definitely a few chunks.
Very happy to see I don't have a freak rifle. It just needed some tlc.

[jugulater]

Awesome! looks like maybe some nasty hard fouling build up was the cause of the issue.

Hopefully you can get her all cleaned up and slug it again to get your real measurements, then you are on your way to success.

old guns usually need a good bit of cleaning and care, some even have special needs, hopefully all your old timer needed was a good scrubbing.