Swiss Granulation in 45-70

[Themoose]

I am going to work up some hunting and Target loads for a 1874 Shiloh Sharps in 45-70. I use Swiss ff and fff in my muzzleloaders but see some use 1.5 for cartridges. I would like to learn about powder selection and welcome your thoughts.
Thanks
TheMoose

[Don McDowell]

Use what you have on hand, start with the bullet seated to just kiss the lands and enough powder under a .030 or .060 fiber wad to just give firm contact with the base of the bullet. Add more powder and compression from there.

[RPRNY]

FFg will likely work fine. When you get deep into the dark arts of BPC loading, you may wish to explore 1.5 Fg and hire an Exorcist. In the mean time, there's no better starting place than that described by Don above.

[country gent]

Another for start with no compression no air space and work up from there. This gives you one direction to go increasing charge and compression in each step. Compress with a die and not the bullet. As compression increases the soft BP bullets may be deformed with the pressure to compress and seat.

A simple dummy bullet can be made from hard wood aluminum or brass, this allows the seating die to be used compress powder. make it .010 under bullet dia so its easily removeable from the case. use the heavy wad under it to compress. When this is done and right the seaters setting for the bullet is the same for the compression plug. Make it slightly long and file polish bottom till its the same.

[Gunlaker]

I think you'll be able to find a good load with any of those granulations. I use Swiss 1.5 but just because use it in most of my rifles. It was pretty easy to find good loads for my .45-70 Shiloh Sharps rifles. If I wanted to shoot long range with the .45-70 I'd develop a load with Swiss FFFg.

Chris.

[Boz330]

Every gun is a little different but when I was shooting Swiss I found the 2F gave a little better groups than either 1.5 or 3 in my testing.YMMV
Swiss number granulations seem to be a little finer that the American made powders. This is me looking at the powders side by side, not actually sifting them through a screen. As Don said use what you got and see what happens.

Bob

[maxiblu]

I use 65.0 grains of Swiss 1-1/2 with a 525 grain boolit and a .025 card wad in a Pedersoli Sharps. Never tried any other powder granulation as this one works well.