Screened powder will work in cartridges.

[Desertbuck]

Compression is the key to getting screened powder to work with sufficient power and for the powder to burn cleanly. Here's how I did it.

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/ddbd2d0a8d94e8a58ea544250651cae0.jpg
7.62x39 case used as a compression die

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/53df454139cb23ccbd51c1dd9c136be2.jpg


Fill case to top level it off with a card of some kind.

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/d5d690add992f4c7ac68d6e9fde310d3.jpg

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/39ed8891f39502b84f1a5b2fb664e9a9.jpg

Compress to premade mark on the 7.62 case. In the 45 colt first compression is 20 grains.

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/374283a9eeeab8f29be430dc218a7795.jpg

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/89abe80d68c32363faac7d28b7d2e571.jpg

Fill case again this is giving me another 6 grains

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/e537fc368d43acc999de71462a9714e5.jpg

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/1459bbb39a93c20f94183fe00c21f8f2.jpg

Compress to second premade mark for the depth you are setting your boolit.

[Desertbuck]

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/bfefbce9b5fde93b5100361e96499417.jpghttp://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/fc35d0ec33acb08240bfed7e3d7bd0ad.jpghttp://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/87ba8a9626698c4f003977042d162d24.jpg
Small grease cookie.
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/995c79ec7c2290c0ccea2ad4c1d4de29.jpghttp://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/7008ee500f66dfb416cbeff661f61678.jpghttp://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/681644bc1199fc3443b34ec02a158af1.jpg works for round ball too. My load works out to be around 26 grains by weight. I was using 23 grains for the 200 grain boolit to start with but it's looking like it will work just fine with 26 grains a universal load for both. And yes that is the absolute max that I feel one can get in the case well 45 colt anyways. Don't know the velocities though but from what I can tell just my feel and shooting they are accurate! And fast enough to do the job I can't really tell the difference between my powder when loaded this way from factory.
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/06/dc42576c281ec21177eaa5f57bf77aba.jpg
Wish I could post a video I have of my wife and I both putting a full tube of round ball through this rifle.

[Desertbuck]

Gentleman I am sorry I made a mistake:( After getting off work today i sat down at my desk and begin reading my notes I realized that the data I was looking at is the actual weight of factory ffg powder the data I gave you gentleman!
I am so sorry! My total load by weight was 26gr of screened powder, or 20gr + 6gr. It won't happen again I swear, I feel like complete Nimrod when I give out faults loaded data. I am going to edit the post above!!!
And the sad part was is when I wrote this post the numbers did not sound right in my mind, but I thought that's what my notes said!

[ogre]

Nice pictures and write-up. Which is your preferred primer?

[Desertbuck]

Cci #300

[Boz330]

That might work OK in a 45 Colt but I tried doing a 40-65 that way and accuracy was way less than satisfactory. I had to load and compress 3 times to get the powder that I wanted for velocity. With corned I don't have any problems with accuracy or velocity. Of course that was my results and if it works for you, have fun.

Bob

Bob

[montana_charlie]

Compression is the key to getting screened powder to work with sufficient power and for the powder to burn cleanly. Here's how I did it.
How are you defining 'screened powder'?

CM

[Desertbuck]

How are you defining 'screened powder'?

CM
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/09/9223fa4c44472a0f7c1930925d676fd7.jpg

Homemade black powder that is granulated not by Corning, but by adding a binder in this case dextrin aka cooked corn starch, the powder is then dampened with water then you simply force it through a screen to granulate.

[montana_charlie]

Ahh! ...

[Texantothecore]

Another method might be to make delrin fitting which has been drilled to width of the inside diameter of the case. Place it on top of the round, dump 26 grains into the assembly and using a delrin rod marked for the compression you prefer push it down and compress all of the powder at one time, which seems to work better than two compressions. Then proceed as usual with wad, grease cookie and bullet.

I use a variation of this but will be trying it on my .45-70 after I get my itsy-bitsy lathe.

It seems to me that it would be worthwhile to try.

[Desertbuck]

Another method might be to make delrin fitting which has been drilled to width of the inside diameter of the case. Place it on top of the round, dump 26 grains into the assembly and using a delrin rod marked for the compression you prefer push it down and compress all of the powder at one time, which seems to work better than two compressions. Then proceed as usual with wad, grease cookie and bullet.

I use a variation of this but will be trying it on my .45-70 after I get my itsy-bitsy lathe.

It seems to me that it would be worthwhile to try.


I had the exact same idea shortly after I made the photos I just haven't got around to doing it yet' maybe I should this weekend.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

This sounds good for a fairly short straight case. I think with longer ones there would be a tendency for it to compress a varying amount of the distance down from the mouth.

Gunpowder can actually grip the sides of the case quite tightly. Dr. Mann, somewhere around 1910, found that if a partial black powder load is topped up to the bullet base with sand (in an attempt to investigate the effect of a 100% load from the effects of different amounts of energy-giving powder), it would rip off the neck of the case and send it down range with the bullet. Even more surprisingly, I once found that RL7 loads for the 8x60R Portuguese round only about 2/3 filled the case, so I topped up with the rather indifferent black powder which was available in the UK in the 1980s. It did exactly the same, wrenching off the case neck, which was never seen again. Any granular substance in a tubular container is likely to be inconstant in its behavior under longitudinal force.

For a very long case, such as the .45-110 or the very elongated little Stevens rounds, it might be possible to compress the powder into short cylindrical pellets, just big enough to let the flame penetrate around the outside, of which you would use several to make up a load. If it were done with a concave punch, it would penetrate and produce ignition between each pellet and the next, too. I think a reloading press would make them acceptably quickly, using a cheaper home made version of a bullet swaging die.

In the first .303 British round, although it was known that a smokeless powder would soon be available, a single black powder pellet was used as a temporary stopgap. It was so temporary that the sights were graduated for a higher velocity than this would give. As the case was bottlenecked, it had to be necked after insertion of the pellet, and couldn't be reloaded with the same pellet. But it does suggest that large pellets aren't something to dismiss.

[Desertbuck]

This sounds good for a fairly short straight case. I think with longer ones there would be a tendency for it to compress a varying amount of the distance down from the mouth.

Gunpowder can actually grip the sides of the case quite tightly. Dr. Mann, somewhere around 1910, found that if a partial black powder load is topped up to the bullet base with sand (in an attempt to investigate the effect of a 100% load from the effects of different amounts of energy-giving powder), it would rip off the neck of the case and send it down range with the bullet. Even more surprisingly, I once found that RL7 loads for the 8x60R Portuguese round only about 2/3 filled the case, so I topped up with the rather indifferent black powder which was available in the UK in the 1980s. It did exactly the same, wrenching off the case neck, which was never seen again. Any granular substance in a tubular container is likely to be inconstant in its behavior under longitudinal force.

For a very long case, such as the .45-110 or the very elongated little Stevens rounds, it might be possible to compress the powder into short cylindrical pellets, just big enough to let the flame penetrate around the outside, of which you would use several to make up a load. If it were done with a concave punch, it would penetrate and produce ignition between each pellet and the next, too. I think a reloading press would make them acceptably quickly, using a cheaper home made version of a bullet swaging die.

In the first .303 British round, although it was known that a smokeless powder would soon be available, a single black powder pellet was used as a temporary stopgap. It was so temporary that the sights were graduated for a higher velocity than this would give. As the case was bottlenecked, it had to be necked after insertion of the pellet, and couldn't be reloaded with the same pellet. But it does suggest that large pellets aren't something to dismiss.


I agree with you there gunpowder has an amazing ability to hold on to the wall of a brass case, I have tried making black powder pellets using 45 ACP cases. My gosh they were a bugger to remove! They didn't work as intended in any way so I abandon that idea.
That aside I wouldn't dream of compressing my screened powder that much in a case I intend to fire for that very reason. I would be taking a risk of turning the powder into some kind of an obstruction or it may try and take the case with it as you mentioned.
I'm just compressing to the point I start getting light resistance on the press, that's all.
And funny you should mention the 8X60R Portuguese, it being the only small bored bottle neck cartridge designed to use black powder is the round that encouraged me to learn how to load black powder in a more modern bottle neck centerfire cartridge.
I figured out how to get my screened homemade gunpowder to work in my 30/06 with repeated firings with accuracy so far 20 rounds without any cleanings in between no problem. They were just test rounds and I wasn't expecting much and my previous attempts had been failures. After 1 sometimes 2 rds groups were 2 ft up to telephone pole size! Lol
But this time Wow I was hitting a coffee can at 60 to 70 yards 80% of the time. What really caught me off guard was I'm used to the first shot being reasonably accurate second shot maybe, but 20 rounds without any loss of accuracy!
Humm I just might be onto something here, I think I may have accidentally stumbled upon how they did it in small caliber cartridges in the era of when smokeless powder was there but not fully matured so they continue to use black powder until suitable smokeless powder had been made for their purpose. as you mentioned the 303 British started off being loaded with black powder if my memory is correct I believe the 7.62X54 R was for a very short time as well.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

124701

Making any bottlenecked case work with black powder is likely to be uphill work, and really good performance unachievable. Not being able to neck down after inserting that pellet will iimit the amount of energy you can put in there. The rifling will be too fast, and therefore, if you imagine the body of gas proceeding down the bore, will be much more like fouling-trapping corrugations. If the rifle is made for smokeless powder, the grooves will probably be deeper too.

The .32 Winchester Special was heavily promoted as being better to reload with black powder than the faster twist .30-30. That is sometimes described as being for people who didn't believe smokeless powder was here to stay, but there was a lot more point in it than that. Some of the early smokeless powders were quite good, but it was hard to standardize the burning rate, and the major ammunition component and cartridge manufacturers were very cagey about encouraging its use by amateurs, who could easily give themselves a nasty shock.

I know no details of the .303 pellet, but solid fuel rockets, for business or pleasure, usually have a compressed charge with a tapering hole down the middle, to permit enough of its surface to start burning at the liftoff point. I am just guessing that the charge further forward may be solid, which should enable the rocket to change up into high gear once it is moving fast enough for stability. It is guesswork again, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Lee-Metford pellet was perforated as well.


Late black powder cannon "powder" often consisted of grains the size of plums, with single or multiple perforations. My picture is the Hundred Ton Armstrong Gun at Gibraltar, a rifled muzzle loader, which certainly did. It is a sobering thought that while the shell might have bounced off a Dreadnought battleship, it would be extremely dangerous to any present day warship. Just try jamming the guidance system. They had to be particularly careful not to have soldiers in the open in front of it, or nearly in front, since an unburnt grain could cave in someone's skull. Those near the bore surface were sometimes flung out at a considerable angle by centrifugal force.

I hadn't heard that the Russian 7.62x54R ever used black powder, but it wouldn't surprise me. Not many people now realize that late Czarist Russia was undergoing a technological revolution that Japan and China have scarcely equaled. Their greatest lack wasn't so much in the best engineers, scientists and(by WW1 standards) generals, but in factory foremen and sergeants who could read and write. But it was only six years since "chemical powder" for rifles had become a great state secret in France, with French soldiers threatened with ten years in jail if they opened a cartridge to have a look.

[Desertbuck]

I was always told that it can't be done or made to work reliably in this manner. But that never stopped me from trying, I aslo find extreme comfort in being completely self reliant if I need to be.
It's also just plain fun for me I can't get enough!
With the results I am now getting I am going to continue to experiment. The accuracy is also starting to look promising enough for me to pursue. And with black powder being a reasonably tame propellant WHEN loaded the way it has been for the past some 700 years since its use in what we know as firearms I feel reasonably safe.
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/18/5e78161240bbe038c7f7e4894511784f.jpg
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/18/0408139f3e8e2bf2cd35b8e7467beec7.jpg
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[Desertbuck]

http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/18/4e88ac7d59d0f7f75f75e7c8479e14d8.jpghttp://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/18/96f9baca815a3a65dc42f555a50b7810.jpg
BP 30/06[emoji41]
http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/14/12/18/106bab786e7b55670f07bba980798617.jpg

I did some work with the 7.92X57mm earlier this year loaded in the same way, it gave me very similar results.