Ball Powder in 45-70?

[lawboy]

Hi,all. Lately I've been enjoying lobbing 517-grain cast lead boolits at the steel gong with my Marlin 1895 Cowboy with receiver sight added. I'd worked out a very easy shooting load using 25 grains of Re7. Well, damn if I didn't use up all the Re7! BUT, a look in the cabinet revealed:

WW 748 Ball powder (1lb), WW 760 ball powder (1lb), IMR 4198 (1/4lb) and Accurate No.7 (1lb).

Anyone used any of these powders in the 45-70 for reduced loads?

I am seating these long boolits to standard SAAMI OAL to function in the 1895 so they are seated very deeply, ie., not a lot of excess powder space when using light loads, which is a good thing, I think. I am looking for some direction here before I start working up from the bottom with the ball powders first. Regards.

[sundog]

Pony up and git some more Rl7. Save the ball powders for stuff that needs pressure. Personally, I don't care for Rl7 because of the flavor (odor - on firing), but it do work. sundog

[Scrounger]

Pony up and git some more Rl7. Save the ball powders for stuff that needs pressure. Personally, I don't care for Rl7 because of the flavor (odor - on firing), but it do work. sundog

About 20 years ago several friends and myself were at a shooting match in Phoenix and happened to meet the owner of Thunderbird Cartridge Company, which dealt in surplus ammo and powder. We bought a hundred pound keg of 4895 and he gave us a bunch of surplus powders to try. Among them was one he called T-Ven, salvaged from pull-down Venzuelan ammo. The stuff looked like and turned out to have the burning speed of Reloader 7. We ended up buying three or four hundred pounds of it from him (there were 6 or 7 of us using it). I still have 15 or 20 pounds of it in California. I haven't been down there in two and a half years, just can't face that traffic anymore.

[Maven]

Scrounger, TVEN was one of my favorite CB powders, but my lot had virtually the same burning rate as IMR 4198. I wish that powder was still available!