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Thread: Confused About Measuring Black Powder

  1. #41
    Boolit Master
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    Quote Originally Posted by pietro View Post
    Smokeless powder is never loaded by volume, only by weight.

    A rotary powder measure doesn't actually measure the powder charge, it's merely a device that delivers consistent consecutive amounts of a select weight of powder, after it's calibrated with a scale.

    Anyone who simply sets a rotary powder measure to a setting w/o first verifying the setting via weighing the initial setting/charge is simply asking for trouble.


    .
    Many, many people who only reload shotshells don't even own a powder scale. They just use whatever volumetric bushing is called for in the chart.
    Also, the original Lee Loaders were designed to reload from only what came in the box; no scale. Regular Lee dies carried on that tradition for a long time. Like the Lee Loader, they included a single dipper and a chart of load data using that dipper.

  2. #42
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    Quote Originally Posted by country gent View Post
    A lot make their own measures. I believe most purchased measures are graduated to 2 f granulations and will be slightly different with different granulations or different brands even. A very nice measure can be made with a little hard wood some brass tubing and time. A piece of tubing with ID close to rifles bore dia. a piece of hard wood fitted to the tube snug, glued and small nails to hold it in place . finished to make a handle or lanyard holder. leave tube long when fitting the end in. I leave the full 1 foot length of hobby tubing. Pour the measured charge into tube and measure down to the powder with a loose fitting dowel and mark dowel. remove pour out powder and cut tube slightly longer than marked dowel. Now file end square and to where it throws the desired charge by volume.

    You can get fancy with this adding rings of other metals woods or materials. Brads blued dark in a brass tube stand out a polished brass tube with backend nails and a walnut end finished up can really be nice. Remember to break all edges and polish up the surfaces for comfort your handling it alot
    Quote Originally Posted by pietro View Post
    Or...…… black powder = volume; smokeless powder = weight.

    The real difference is that black powder burns differently than smokeless powder .







    That difference can also be expressed as explosive power






    The more powerful smokeless powder is also more sensitive to changes in charge size than black powder.

    Ergo, BP has a "fudge factor" that allows safe loading by volume - which is also quicker than weighing charges.


    .

    These graphs are interesting, however, there are there are many different smokeless powders with different burn rates. Is this a burning rate for a handgun? It would be nice to see two graphs for smokeless. One for fast burning smokeless and another for slow burning. Is slow burning closer to BP? I would like to know, how big is that difference.

  3. #43
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tracy View Post
    Many, many people who only reload shotshells don't even own a powder scale. They just use whatever volumetric bushing is called for in the chart.
    Also, the original Lee Loaders were designed to reload from only what came in the box; no scale. Regular Lee dies carried on that tradition for a long time. Like the Lee Loader, they included a single dipper and a chart of load data using that dipper.
    Yep. 100% correct. I don't know when or even if the powder measure manufactures stopped issuing volumetric conversion charts. The last measure I purchase new was a Harrel in the early 90's. That came with a conversion chart and a recommendation to verify on a scale. Same for the Lyman 55's. The old ones came with a chart for the slides.

    Black powder has been used in firearms long before scales were owned by the common man. More recently look at the early reloading kits of the 1860's thru 1900. Most didn't utilized a scale. Scales were not needed for BP, Semi-smokeless and Bulk smokeless. With the advent of nitro based powders scales became a much move valuable tool for the reloaders but depending on application even in the 50's and 60's lots of reloaders only used volume measurement. I still know a couple of older gentlemen that have never owned a scale. They started reloading in the late 40's or early 50's.

    On the other side of the coin long range BP competitors have been using a scales for a very long time. Volumetric powder dropping is still the standard for 99 plus percent of ammunition. Every single round of factory ammo has it's powder charge volume dropped. Most factory ammo is loaded to a specific velocity and pressure specification. Each lot of powder is tested and if needed the weight/volume is adjusted to achieve the specified velocity/pressure.

    In the factory QA will used a scale to check but the guy setting up the press will be selecting a volumetric based bushing much like shotshell loaders use.

    Since scales have become readily available and cheap scales offer an additional layer of safety but they really are not a necessity unless you needing/wanting the ultimate in accuracy at longer ranges. In the 70's and 80's a lot of the benchrest competitors had no idea was the grain weight of the charges they were using. They simply went by the clicks on the measure. I believe it was the Lyman #55 with a "Culver" conversion that started this trend.

    Back to the OP's question.

    Quote Originally Posted by Alstep View Post
    Black powder loads are always described as measured by "volume", not weight. What is the volume of, say for example, 50 grains by weight of powder? Are all the "volume" powder measures calibrated to the the same standard? Why not set your measure by weight? What am I missing here?
    Before the BP sub's BP volume and weight were one and the same. With the advent of Pyrodex developed by Dan Pawlak in 1976 the volume verse weight no longer were one and the same. Since volumetric was the standard for BP Dan opted to use volume for the his new powder.

    Some like Blackhorn 209 have data for both weight and volumetric http://www.blackhorn209.com/wp-conte...loaderdata.pdf


    https://leeprecision.com/cgi-data/instruct/Dippers.pdf

    http://www.curtrich.com/BPConversionSheet.htm

    http://forum.accurateshooter.com/thr...thods.3891476/

    Personally I weight everything for 600 yard or longer regardless if it's BP or smokeless. Everything else is dropped. For smokeless it's confirmed with a scale. For muzzleloaders volumetric measures are more than adequate. For BP cartridge same as smokeless drop with a measure and confirm with a scale.

    That being said if I only had Lee dippers I would not give up reloading but I might give up long range competition.
    Last edited by M-Tecs; 06-30-2019 at 01:39 AM.
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  4. #44
    Boolit Master

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    Looks like I provoked a lot of thought with this one. All your comments provided some interesting reading. Never stop learning here. Exactly why I like this site so much.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check