Smokeless in large cartridges can ring the chamber

[jh45gun]

Read with interest the thread on using fillers and those that said that the brass on some of the larger cases like the 45/70 ended up being ringed. Well a couple of weeks ago the following happened. I have had 3 people tell me to use black powder for large cases like 45/70 than use smokeless charges that try to approximate black powder loadings. Powders like Unique ect. They said over time you could slowly ring the chamber. Now we are not talking fillers here folks just smaller charges of fast powder to imitate black powder loads. Who were these folks? Well my gunsmith started the conversation and told me to switch to black then I emailed Steve Garbe he told me the same and then a buddy who shoots a lot of black in every thing from muzzle loaders to cannons. So from now on I will shoot black in my 45/70 Roller just to be safe. I figure Steve Garbe is pretty much a expert on the subject of shooting older guns that use large cartridges like the 45/70 so I do plan on heeding his advice even though I know some of you will say they have been shooting Unique or powders like it for years with no problems. I still plan on using 2400 for my bottle neck cartridges, but I will switch to black for my 45/70. Since my gun is a roller it will be easy to clean and I own 4 muzzle loaders now so cleaning up after black and its substitutes is kinda old hat. Jim

[StarMetal]

jh45gun

Simple solution, don't use fast pistol/shotgun powders in your 45/70 use a rifle powder like for example H4895 that I use in mine with cast. It fills the case up very well and none of those cronies are going to tell me that "that" will ring my 45/70 chambers. They are just dyed hard in the wool blackpowder lovers.

Joe

[45 2.1]

My My, it's a wonder that the factories, that produce smokeless blackpowder equivalent loads, can do that while your friends are telling you to use blackpowder. Maybe the factories, with excellent ballistic labs, know more than all your friends put together. Waksupi made an excellent point on another forum after warning someone that they were overloading an 8X57 mauser, he said that you should understand what your doing or don't reload at all. A very good point to understand, excellent advice there Ric.

[StarMetal]

Yeah 45 2.1, I had forgot to mention in my post that apparently the factories don't know crap about loading the 45/70...why my God, they put smokeless powder in the it..to ring our chambers.

Joe

[JohnH]

I imagine one could write a thesis on the number of times a 45-70 rifle can be fired with 15 grains of Unique and not get a ringed chamber.

[jh45gun]

SO it can ring the brass but not the chamber? Funny that Buckshot can say it may ring the brass and that is ok since he is one of the good old boys here. Some one else says something and he knows nothing. Of course Factory loads are safe and I suppose they ALSO use a bulky powder as was mentioned not Unique or some other faster powder. I just offered it out for food for thought. I did not post it to take a bunch of crap over it just offering what was said. In their own way they are right but then so would be useing a bulky smokeless too. So since you folks all know more than this beginner at the game what would be a good bulky powder. I have been using 3031. Maybe you guys should realize when your new at the game some what, and every one offers advise it sometimes is hard to figure out what fits for you and that there is more than one way to do things though some may be better than others.

[StarMetal]

jh45man

We're not picking on you, just the fellows that you mentioned that told you that. If you read my post I use H4895. Your 3031 is a good powder to use too. As for Buckshot ringing just the brass, don't forget that the brass doesn't fit the chamber tight and he said the rings were barely visible. The ole Buckeroo has been at this a long time and has done just about as many crazy things with guns and reloading as I have.

Joe

[Willbird]

OK now untwist your knickers..........

It will all be just fine.................take a deep breathe.

Some of the same guys you talked to would not like that I shoot my trapdoor with smokeless, unique even.

they would not like that I shoot my Krag..........

and would puke at the thought of me shooting my 1,000,000 plus serialed SA 1903 springfield.

I avoid the use of fillers in other than straight walled ctg. and even then would only use one that fully fills the case. We all have opinions, and make our own decisions, and live with the results.

Bill

[45 2.1]

You stated you are a beginner, so don't state somebody elses opinion without personal knowledge of whether its right or wrong. Allot of old geezers out there that shoot big bores, find one and learn from them. Technique in loading big bores has more to do with any problems that arise than you think.

[Leftoverdj]

When I ring a chamber, I'll let you know. Until that time, I am gonna keep right on shooting Unique in my .45-70s. I'm shooting Handis and a hundred bucks for a new barrel ain't gonna break me.

I don't blame the folks shooting high dollar guns for being more cautious. Lord knows I'd cry if I messed up a couple of mine.

[Buckshot]

..............Buckshot, a 'good ole boy" hehe Hey I can screw up just as well as anyone at anytime. Hey, hold my beer and watch this (been there, done that).

The point missed in what I said was:

"............I do have an instance to share where I did ring some brass cases. The particulars were that I had been loading 45-70's with Unique, cast boolits and a Dacron wad. That was no problem."

That WAS not a problem. Been doing it for years. The problem I mentioned, which seemed ot be missed in the whole thing was:

"...............I then got the dazzeling idea to forgo the Dacron and to use an actual CARDWAD OVER THE POWDER. These were punched out of tablet backer cardboard and were pushed down on top of the powder with a wooden dowel. The edges of the cardwad were angled up as the interior casewalls tapered inward."

So it wasn't just the simple matter of a small charge of smokeless. The problem was that dad blamed cardwad. Whether it acted as a piston to trap air between itself and the boolit's base, with the pressure increase there ringing the brass, or the actual impact against the boolit's base and radial expansion of the cardwad, who knows?

The fact remains though that up until I had that half baked idea of substituting the cardwad, everything was just ducky.

Re: Factory ammo. It is really a frustrating fascination to me that the factory can produce the accuracy in the 45-70 they do. I once bought a box of R-P factory 405's (for some dis-remembered reason) and form my H&R TD carbine they punch out a 50 cent piece hole at 50 yards. A couple broke doen cartridges had what appeared to be 3031, but it could have been a blend as the weight didn't match 3031 book loads for a 405gr.

Anyway, whatever it was it was accurate, and it was sure sloshing around in that big ole case.

.................Buckshot

[Linstrum]

Hey, there, jh45gun, how ya doin?

Thanks for the information on fast powders and the association with chamber ringing in large case capacity cartridges. I’m sure that it will help some folks out there who are new to the cast boolits and reloading game who don’t know about some of these pitfalls that can cause unnecessary grief! I’d sure hate it if I got some 405 grain pills for a newly manufactured replica Trapdoor and then used loading data from an old Lyman 46th edition reloading book that says using 11 grains of Unique is okay when in fact it has the POTENTIAL to cause harm in even newly manufactured old design replica rifles that are ALSO made from low alloy steel that lacks the strength necessary to keep from getting ring damage to the chamber. There are booby traps like that out there, so thanks for taking the time to pass along their observations!

Last year I wrote up the following short article about the problems associated with ring damage in some rifles and why some get it and some don’t. I hope that it is helpful as well as interesting.

From September 20, 2004:

I have read lots of threads on chamber ringing and when it happens it is usually a rather vague phenomenon that when it comes to explaining what did it no one can put an exact finger on it. It almost always involves a fast powder used in conjunction with card wads or sometimes fiber filler. Of course the small amounts of fast powder require the card wads and fiber filler to help with uniform ballistics from one shot to the next. So, which is it, fast powder or card wads and fiber filler? A horse and cart type thing. Maybe chicken and egg. But for sure it does happen and has caused lots of chamber damage. The part about chamber damage is undeniable.

What comes to mind is two guys comparing their cars. One guys says he can drive his car 80 mph all day for years and years, and the other guy says no way, if he drove his car 60 mph for a mile even one time the engine would be scrap metal. So who is right? Are cars unbelievably reliable? Or unbelievable pieces of junk? Same goes for rifles. The originals as well as far too many of the repro .45-70's are made from "steel" with around 65,000 psi yield strength. The "modern" rifles (starting with Winchester well over 100 years ago) use iron alloys much more deserving of the name "steel" and yield strengths of the various alloys can run up as high as 265,000 psi yield strength for alloys like full heat-treated ASI 4340. The norm is more like 220,000 psi yield for the more commonly used steels in the class of steel centered around ASI 4130 and ASI 4140. So which of the alloys were the rifles made from that had chamber ringing? I hear .45-70 a lot (but never its over-grown brother the .458 Winmag), which is a good indicator right there of what is going on.

Buckshot holds part or even most of the answer here.

His high alloy modern steel .45-70 MAS 36 convert has ringing of the BRASS used in it! The yield strength of brass is not much AT ALL below the yield strength of the soft easily machined alloys used in original AND REPRO black powder rifles. The low carbon-low alloy steels used in far too many the European-made black powder repros is about the same as what was used originally 120-plus years ago, so when you buy a repro you are also getting a faithful reproduction of their low-strength as well! Today that class of alloy is typified by ASI 1005 or ASI 1010 low alloy steel, which is still stronger than the plain steels made by the old Bessemer converter process. If I had my way, those low strength steels would be outlawed for making firearms, except for maybe butt plates. The Italian and Spanish also go one further, which is they use free machining leaded steel (also called lead-blown steel), which cannot be heat treated to strengthen it. Even their so-called stainless steel they use for the old repro revolvers is similar to type ASI 303 stainless steel and about as strong as the free machining leaded steel. Those are the "steels" that are about as strong as cartridge brass.

You can do a very simple and easy test yourself to display the wide range of strengths encountered in commonly available steel alloys. Take a 3-inch long 3/8-inch NC carriage bolt and a 3-inch long 3/8-inch NC grade 8 bolt. Make sure your grade 8 bolt is not one of those counterfeits that are causing airliners to fall out of the sky. Pick one bolt and clamp the threaded part in your big bench vise then grab the head with a pipe wrench and start twisting. One will scare you how easily it twists off, the other will probably rip the sharp tips off of the teeth in your pipe wrench. One "steel" alloy is about the same as was used in old black powder rifles and modern repro rifles, and the other is the same or very close to what is used in all modern rifles. Which alloy do you want your reproduction rifle to be made from?

Fast powders often have extremely high initial peak pressures even though the powder is in very small quantities. The entire chamber is not subjected to the high pressure, just the area where the ringing occurs. It is probably caused by a combination of several factors working in concert to combine available energy as focused vector forces when a card wad or even just a compressed gas shock wave hits the bullet base, as was already mentioned. This creates Munro Effect conditions where the energy is focused onto a very small area, and after several repetitions the metal is displaced. Sort of like bubble cavitation that “eats” high strength metal away where there are no obvious high pressures or strong forces that would normally explain such mysterious things taking place.

When Winchester introduced their Model 1894 rifle, its barrel was made from a steel radically different from all previous Winchester rifles, or all other rifles for that matter, except for a few of the newest German and Scandinavian Mausers. For a few years after the model 1894 and 1895 Winchester rifles came out, gunsmiths from all over the country complained and swore they would not work on them and carried on like it was the end of the world. But Winchester had seen the handwriting on the wall after observing the experiences that other rifle manufacturers had with smokeless powders and went ahead and developed a totally new grade of crucible steel to make their barrels from. Of course the old gunsmiths couldn’t easily work with the new high strength steel because they couldn’t machine it, drill it, tap it, or saw it with the old worn out plain carbon steel cutting tools they had and they did not like the idea of needing to buy new expensive high speed steel cutting tools to work with the new super tough alloys (cutting tool high speed steel was also just newly invented then to deal with the new super alloys). The steel that Winchester developed had nickel and manganese in it and even by today’s standards is pretty tough stuff! Take a look at Roy Dunlap’s book “Gunsmithing” for a description of the various problems associated with the older soft and weak steel in guns as well as his experiences working with high strength nickel steel barrels.

So, a Model T Ford and a 1959 Chevy are both cars. If you ran them hard for a very brief moment, which one do you think you would have trouble with the rings in?

[StarMetal]

Linstrum

Now that we've had 101 on metallurgy let me say there isn't a rifle barrel that you can't cut in two easily with an ordinary hacksaw. That metal just isn't that hard. It's harder to cut that grade 8 bolt in two what you mentioned. As far as teh gunsmiths squawking the one thing I remember that stands out in my mind about them complaining is drilling and tapping a Jap Arisaka action...they charged the cost of the drill and tap extra because the actions were so hard they ruined those two items fast.

I don't know, but am going to investigate, but I can't fathom those replica guns made in Italy or Spain are soft steels as you say.

I have a motor head friend in Frankfurt Germany (chevy fan!!! yea yea) that we were taking the difference between our cars in the states and the ones that run the Autobaun in Germany. He asked me if one of our hot cars, like a Vette, Z28 Camaro, Firebird,etc, could run a steady 150 mph and up and hold up. He knew the answer and thought I didn't, but I did. I said no, because the oil would become too hot and the engine burn up as most cars running the Autobaun have oil coolers. He said correct. Corvette did eliminate the cost of an oil cooler equipped car to Germany by going to Mobil 1 synthetic oil. That says alot for that oil. Anyways yeah, there's no comparision between a Modet T engine and a 59 Chevy as far as durability.

In finishing I don't think the fellows that have ringed their 45-70 barrels have done so in just old rifles.

Joe

[Bass Ackward]

Read with interest the thread on using fillers and those that said that the brass on some of the larger cases like the 45/70 ended up being ringed.

Jim,

Just like the story about starting GM cars a few years ago and having automatics jump into gear and the cars surge. When they changed the "flaw" to having to apply the brake before the tranny would go outta park, (keep your foot off the accelerator) the problem somehow disappeared. Now that doesn't mean that someone didn't actually have that happen, but we have to use some common sence.

Ringed chambers happen. Barrels fail. Thank goodness that neither one is a common enough occurance to worry about, especially if you avoid situations that you know "can" cause them. But there are a lot of large volume cases that shoot cast that have never seen black. And you never hear about a ringed chamber from any of them. So why doesn't the problem translate if it is real?

[w30wcf]

Linstrum,
Thank you for the technical information on the types of steel used in barrels.

Interesting topic. As was mentioned, the factory smokeless .45-70 cartridges have been loaded for years ..... going back as far as 1895. An early Hercules powder phamplet indicates that "SHARPSHOOTER" smokeless powder was specifically developed for use in black powder rifles.

It was THE POWDER used in loading the majority of the .45-70 factory cartridges from the late 1800's up until the early 1950's. It's burning rate was close to 2400.

In the 1970's, Winchester used their now discontinued 630 ball powder in their .45-70 400 gr. cartridge. It's burning rate was also close to 2400. These were some of the most accurate .45-70 factory loads I have ever fired.

I don't know about Unique, but the factories loaded millions of .45-70's with powders that were close in burning rate to 2400. If there was a problem with it, the factories would have never done it.

w30wcf

[drinks]

Off hand, it sounds as though Buckshot made a form of shaped charge with the cupped card wad.
I shoot .45-70 only with smokeless, using IMR 4198 and H 4895, I do put the dacron on top of the powder, just to keep it more uniform on ignition, if I were using BLC-2 or H4831, I would have a 90% or more loading density and would not use the wad.
I use Herco, 12gr, 1225fps, 25gr IMR 4227, 1410fps and 25gr H110, 1600fps with a 220gr gc and do use the dacron, have 0 problems with the brass.
This is my beer can special plinker, bet it would do bad things to feral hogs, javalina and the small deer here too.
I am using a H&R handirifle, 22" barrel
Don

[StarMetal]

Bass

With today's computor controled ignition and fuel systesm you keep your dang foot off the accelerator. You don't even hit the pedal once or twice either to set the choke cause there isn't any choke. An electronic computer controled rich mixture is your choke nowadays. That flaw wasn't just GM cars Ford had a similar problem.

Joe

[wills]

Possibly the problem is with reference to space between the card wad and boolit base. It has always seemed a given that space between the card wad and boolit base would cause the card wad to act as another projectile, the boolits an obstruction and result in a ringed barrel.

With black, the boolit is always seated firmly against the card wad on top of the compressed charge which fills the case. If you use a small charge of fast powder in the black powder case, and put a card wad on top of the powder, with space between the wad and boolit, according to conventional wisdom you can expect a ringed chamber. Solution is use powder that is not position sensitive, if you insist on using “white” powder.

[jh45gun]

Thanks guys for the replys and for the record I have never worn knickers. Nor do I ever plan to.

[StarMetal]

Wills

According to Dr. Forker, who does have alot of reloading knowledge and experience, said that in certain cartridges that are way too large in volume, such as the 38-40 Colt, non position sensitive powders become sensitive to position. Think about it, a small charge of powder in that gian 45/70 case. Alot of the primer flame has to be going overtop the powder laying in the bottom. Maybe that's the problem! The powder is not burning uniformly from one end, it's burning un-uniformly from almost all angles.

Joe