Largest Bottleneck Case loaded ?

[.30carbnut]

Hello all, I have a question. What is the largest bottleneck case that you have loaded successfully with black powder and a cast boolit. I should add how did it shoot.

(Edited to add) The reason for asking this is I have a 338 barrel that I thought about building a BP and lead rifle out of. I have a lot of older brass that would be great with the lower pressure BP loads. The lapua case is large (117 gr H2o) and I was wandering if any one had any luck with large capacity bottleneck cases and black powder.

All input is appreciated.

[Don McDowell]

44-77 Sharps.

[Lead pot]

.50 BMG. That is a .50-2.5 along side. :)
But my regular BN is a .44-2-5/8 BN that is a great shooter.

http://i704.photobucket.com/albums/ww43/Kurtalt/th_IMG_0359.jpg (http://s704.photobucket.com/user/Kurtalt/media/IMG_0359.jpg.html)

[martinibelgian]

577-450 Martini...

[Mk42gunner]

.43 Spanish, the pencil necked brother of the 44-77 Sharps.

Robert

[Dan Cash]

.577/450

[.30carbnut]

.50 BMG. That is a .50-2.5 along side. :)
But my regular BN is a .44-2-5/8 BN that is a great shooter.

http://i704.photobucket.com/albums/ww43/Kurtalt/th_IMG_0359.jpg (http://s704.photobucket.com/user/Kurtalt/media/IMG_0359.jpg.html)
WOW a 50 BMG, ok you have my attention!! could you give me some details on the load, how did it shoot and was it very accurate?
I have a .338 Lapua Magnum that I shoot smokeless and powder-coated lead in. The reason for asking this is I have a 338 barrel that I thought about building a BP and lead rifle out of. I have a lot of older brass that would be great with the lower pressure BP loads. The lapua case is large (117 gr H2o) and I was wandering if any one had any luck with large capacity bottleneck cases and black powder. Thanks all for the reply's so far keep them coming.

[BrentD]

Another for the 577/450. That was big enough for me.

[Nobade]

I doubt you'd be very happy with the 338LM and black powder. The fouling would be horrendous. My own 375 H&H works passibly well with BP, but needs to be heavily duplexed or I have to wipe after every shot. If I were to do a 338 and black, it would be a 33-40. (32-40 case on a 338 barrel) Now there's a good BP cartridge!

-Nobade

[Earlwb]

I have owned and shot some rifles in .45-70 using black powder and those are fun to shoot albeit the recoil might bother some people more though. I did try both a 577/450 and the 577 Snider too. Then I helped someone with a Sharps rifle and cartridges for it in a monster .50-140 size. That is 140 grains of black powder and if I remember right we were using 500 to 600 grain bullets with it. With this gun it doesn't take long to empty a one pound can of black powder either. Also it eats up several pounds of lead in short order when casting the bullets too. But it was pretty fun to shoot though. Recoil was a bit stout so you didn't want to shoot it a whole lot in one day. But some of these aren't bottle necked cartridges though.

Oh yeah, I have a rifle chambered for the .43 Egyptian round, but I haven't done anything with it yet. I have to fix the stock first, and then make a chamber cast to ensure it is really in that caliber or not.

[Lead pot]

WOW a 50 BMG, ok you have my attention!! could you give me some details on the load, how did it shoot and was it very accurate?
I have a .338 Lapua Magnum that I shoot smokeless and powder-coated lead in. The reason for asking this is I have a 338 barrel that I thought about building a BP and lead rifle out of. I have a lot of older brass that would be great with the lower pressure BP loads. The lapua case is large (117 gr H2o) and I was wandering if any one had any luck with large capacity bottleneck cases and black powder. Thanks all for the reply's so far keep them coming.

It was a bust. To much powder pushing a lead bullet to hard and to tight of a twist. It wouldn't stay on a SR target at 200.
When I was shooting my .50 he asked me if I would load some for him so I just loaded 20 for the guy that had the BMG.

[Huvius]

The 461 No.2 Gibbs and the 450/400 3-1/4" have pretty long necks and can shoot very well.
I agree that you may be chasing your tail with a .338" barrel and a big volume case but making something off of a 348 Win. would get you a pretty overbore BPE cartridge.

[BRUCE MOULDS]

huvius,
2 most interesting cartridges.
are you shooting them dirty, and if so do you like the long necks to hold some form of wads?
keep safe,
bruce.

[Huvius]

I do shoot them dirty to about ten rounds but I patch to bore.
The Gibbs has Metford rifling and the 400 has Henry rifling. I think these rifling forms let go of fouling more easily than Enfield and modern rifling with sharp lands.
I haven't loaded the Gibbs to full power - don't really know why - but when it was developed, the longer neck was to allow for more powder than the No.1 Gibbs so I did use more wadding than it was originally designed to take. Just taking up space in the neck and I didn't feel the need to compress the powder.
The bullets in the British cartridges seem to be seated deeper than a lot of their American contemporaries too so a lot of neck space is taken up by the boolit.

[Lead pot]

The 577-450 with it's short wide diameter case and long neck looks like it should be a pretty efficient powder burning shell that would increase the velocity of the gases getting forced down like a rocket engine increasing bullet velocity.
My .44-90 Bn has a higher velocity with the same powder load of a straight wall case.
I never has a 577-450.

[martinibelgian]

Actually, something like no.2 musket or .45 Turkish are much better rounds when talking BN cartridges - but in spite of all its faults, the 577-450 is a pretty good round.... It just needs a heavier, larger bullet than original spec.

[mazo kid]

Largest I have loaded are the 45-90, 45-120, 45 Beaumont and 43 Mauser.

[Earlwb]

The largest bottle necked black powder cartridges go back to around the end of the buffalo hunting in the 1860's and 1870's. The .44-77 came out around 1869 and held 77 grains of powder. But later in the 1870's they had the .40-90 and .40-100 Sharps. There were also the .45-90, .45-100, .45-125 too. There were some others in this powder capacity range as well. Thus the biggest bottle necked cartridge with the most powder capacity was probably the .40-100 Sharps but the .45-125 Winchester did have a little bit of a bottle neck to it, so maybe it is the winner.

[Huvius]

Funny, I was stuck on thinking about your .338" barrel and forgot the bigger bore bottleneck cartridges I load for.
The 461 Gibbs is very close to the 500/450 No.2 Musket. Both have a pretty long neck.

The 500/450 No.1 Express is a bit longer with a shorter neck - more case capacity - 90 to 120grs of black depending on boolit weight.

I also shoot 577/500 No.2 which is really the biggest bottlenecked BPE cartridge I own. The original Kynoch load was 130grs of powder and a 300gr boolit. It is a wonderful cartridge with BP or H4198.

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg312/Huvius/Mobile%20Uploads/2015-03/63B89317-EC92-41E9-95C7-CC130898D934.jpg (http://s251.photobucket.com/user/Huvius/media/Mobile%20Uploads/2015-03/63B89317-EC92-41E9-95C7-CC130898D934.jpg.html)

[Earlwb]

I had forgotten about the elephant or big game guns in the black powder era. But they were mostly all straight case cartridge guns, just a few bottlenecked cartridges. But the videos are fun to watch. I don't think I have the fortitude to try shooting one myself anymore.

Shooting the big 2 bore rifle (1250 grain bullet with 12 drams of black powder) in a brass cartridge case.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXoa5zNn0TU

[Earlwb]

and of course a 4 bore rifle too


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsvizH4U26E

[Bad Ass Wallace]

58-95-620 or 577 Super Snider. In an 8lb rifle this one gets your attention!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v152/BAWallace/ClassicCartridgejpg.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/BAWallace/media/ClassicCartridgejpg.jpg.html)

620gn plain base minnie
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v152/BAWallace/140913PedLn_B_zps75553eae.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/BAWallace/media/140913PedLn_B_zps75553eae.jpg.html)

[martinibelgian]

Quite a few of the Brit express cartridges would surpass by far the 45-125... Quite a few were BN too. relation powder/bullet weight was around 1/3 to 1/2 on those... But then they had african big game to deal with.

[BrentD]

Gert, what was a "normal" load of powder for a 577-450? Seems like it would hold 120+ grains easily. I can't recall what I used but it was something close to that I think. And in a light rifle too. Maybe 8 lbs.

[missionary5155]

Greetings
50-95 is the most 3F I have stuck into a necked cartridge. If I am remembering you can get about 90 grains under a 300 grainer and 86 grains under my preferred 350 grain 40-1 cast. That gets you to 1465 fps in a 26 inch repro rifle.
Mike in Peru

[Lead pot]

I loading my .44-90bn right now with 100 gr of 1.5. I don't think the 577-450 will hold that much.

[sharps4590]

577/450 and 11.15 X 60R. the load I ended up with for the 577/450 was 80 grs. drop tubed and there was room for quite a bit more if I remember remotely close. I wouldn't guess how much but I believe it would hold 100 grs. I was able to get something less than 4 inch groups out of it even with those rudimentary sights.

The 11.15 X 60R is in a German double rifle I have and I ended up having to duplex it with 5 grs. of SR-4759 and I believe 63 grs. of black, (I'd have to check my records), to get it to regulate. It shoots better than the 577/450 did at 100 yards, hovering slightly above or below 3 inches, composite group.

[BrentD]

Oh yeah it will, Kurt. I put 107.5 in my .45-2.6. The 577-450 will hold much more

[Earlwb]

In further reading about it, the .577-450 appears to have used a 85 grain military powder charge. But depending on the case used, you could get upwards of 115 grains or more of black powder into it. They used paper cases, brass or copper foil cases, and brass cases. Then there were the brass shotshell conversions as well. Today some are made by turning on a lathe and those may be more thick and have less powder capacity. So it tends to depend on what the cartridge case is as to max capacity.

[martinibelgian]

Brent,

Current brass will easily hold somewhere between 110-120grs of Swiss without any wads - and without any compression or droptubing, depending on make. Converted CBC 24-gauge will hold most.... I Use the LoC load, which is 85 grains - with air as a filler, and a thick grease cookie/wad column filling up the neck. And a 540 grain bullet.

[JTCoyoté]

Largest bottleneck, huh... for starters there was the 'scaling up' of the Westley Richards 500/450 #1... introduced by Alexander Henry in 1871, it was built on a drawn 2 3/4 inch 20ga. case... the neck down scaled perfectly to .577. It was packed with 6 1/2 to 7 drams of fg, pushed 620 to 650 grains of paper-patched lead, and was aptly dubbed the 20/.577 BPE... examples of which still exist.

There were other attempts during this time period to take on the big straight cased "Bore and Gage rifles" by necking their cases down a notch or two, lengthening out the smaller diameter boolit to close to the same weight as the Bore or Gage gun had, add about the same charge of black powder behind it, slide it in, close the breech, and see what you get on squeezin'...

A 577/450 MH scaled up on a 12ga. fits a 2 3/4" case at .577 boolit diameter perfectly as well. This scale up is rumored to have been toyed with at that time also... can't prove it's existence with examples or period texts though, only have this "I read about it somewhere a long time ago" recollection to go on... in any case the 577/450 CBC case will hold 125 grains of 1 1/2 Swiss under a 500 grain bullet with a .150 thick lube cookie and be just touchin'...

[ascast]

.577-450 or 375 H&H

[JTCoyoté]

If you would like to see a sweet example of an Alex Henry 20/577 double rifle built as a 12 bore in 1868, then re-barrelled to 20/577 in 1900 click here (http://www.sitemason.com/page/eUQIRW) . In any case these big bottlenecks were loaded well into the 20th century. There weren't a lot of them though, but a few still survive. I did a little playing around with these large bottlenecks a few years back to show their actual size... "Have I seen it all (http://britishmilitariaforums.yuku.com/sreply/12685/Have-I-seen-it-all)". This thing will swallow a 375 H&H case...

177540 177541
Vintage 20/.577 cartridge and headstamp

[Huvius]

Did you ever get around to building that 12-577?

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The 577-450 with it's short wide diameter case and long neck looks like it should be a pretty efficient powder burning shell that would increase the velocity of the gases getting forced down like a rocket engine increasing bullet velocity.
My .44-90 Bn has a higher velocity with the same powder load of a straight wall case.
I never has a 577-450.

It looks that way, but it doesn't. As a rather sweeping generalization, increasing the amount of black powder, above a rather modest limit, doesn't much increase the velocity, but increases the weight of the bullet it will drive.

I'd agree that the .338 barrel and something like the .338 Lapua case will produce fouling problems that aren't worthwhile unless setting some kind of record is all you want. Especially since you have a barrel, as it is probably too fast a twist. The faster the twist, the more it encourages the fouling solids to lodge. I'd prefer the shallow rifling you can get away with when you use black powder and smokeless, and that isn't suitable for the use most modern .338 barrel blanks get put to.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

If you would like to see a sweet example of an Alex Henry 20/577 double rifle built as a 12 bore in 1868, then barrelled to 20/577 in 1900 click here (http://www.sitemason.com/page/eUQIRW) . In any case these big bottlenecks were loaded well into the 20th century. There weren't a lot of them though, but a few still survive. I did a little playing around with these large bottlenecks a few years back to show their actual size... "Have I seen it all (http://britishmilitariaforums.yuku.com/sreply/12685/Have-I-seen-it-all)". This thing will swallow a 375 H&H case...




Sweet indeed, and that one has surely seen a lot of safe shooting in its 1900 form. If that is a refinish, I wouldn't judge it the way people do on cap and ball Colts, say. The first purchasers of guns like that sometimes brought them in for rebluing. Mr. Henry would have wanted it done.

But 1868 is a long time before they did all that really needed doing to the double-barrelled action - say 1895 or so. I would be very wary of doing such a conversion to an old gun today, as this particularly suitable example. The back-action lock leaves the action much stronger than front-action, and especially the bar-in-wood, with wood around the front of the lock, which was originally inherited from the muzzle-loaders. The rotary double grip underlever is also a source of strength - not in holding the barrels down, as the stress is in a longitudinal direction, but by leaving more metal in the action bar.

[heelerau]

577-450 martini henry

[heelerau]

Be like firing anvils downrange !!

[JTCoyoté]

Did you ever get around to building that 12-577?

Huvius,

All the design work's done, the barrel and reamers are built... I decided to test it in a Greener Martini first to wring the bugs out of this late 19th century wildcat on a known stable platform before plugging it into the '87/'01 Winchester clone.

The work stopped in 2009 as events beyond our control often turn things, and everything went into storage. Only in the last year or so has providence said "Okay, son... give 'er another shot." I will get back to it this winter...