43 spanish load data

[Tomeguns]

Hi all
Trying to educate myself on the black powder cartridge reloading for 43 Spanish, I have reloaded modern cartridges for years but this will be my first time reloading BP , I have several pounds of Goex 2FG and plan on using that with Lyman, .439" diameter, 370 grain bullet mold. From what I have found so far suggest 70g of 2FG Black powder, For those of you who reload for 43 Spanish can you please share load data. also do you use a card over powder and compress the powder? sorry for all the questions as BP is new to me.

[Don McDowell]

I don't load for the 43, but I do for the 44-77.
You're probably looking at closer to 75 grain of 2f. Slow pour the powder thru a funnel with a 4 inch drop tube. Put a .030 fiber wad on top of the powder and compress it enough that the loaded round will chamber with ease, but not so much that puts the bottom of the wad below the base of the neck. Nice thing about grease groove bullets quite often the expander die can double as a compression die.

[curator]

My experience with the .43 Spanish cartridge using FFg Goex was without compressing the powder. I use a drop tube to get the powder settled than a tuft of Kapok fiber to keep it there. 70 grains does not fill my Buffalo Arms reformed brass cases so the Kapok acts as a filler. I suppose Dacron would work as well. I load a 1/8" thick bee's wax disk under the Lyman bullet as it does not carry enough lube in my opinion for Black powder loads. A guy at my gun club who also shoots a .43 Spanish rolling block rifle, dips his loaded rounds in melted SPG lube (bullet only) to deal with the fouling issue. It works but is pretty messy. I run a damp patch down the bore between shots to keep the barrel from accumulating a lot of fouling.

[Nobade]

Mine would hold about 80 grains of FFg, droptubed but not compressed. A grease cookie, and a paper patched slick from a homemade mould, to duplicate the original bullet. No loading dies used, bullets were sized to be a slip fit in a fired case. Either wipe between shots or duplex with about five grains of smokeless for all day shooting.

[John Boy]

72gr DuPont FFg / 5gr 4759 or 5744

[John in PA]

I would suggest slugging the bore before deciding on bullet diameter. While .439 is nominal bullet diamater for the .43 Spanish, many Peabodys, and possibly some Remingtons, have bores considerably larger, and will easily and more accurately handle .44-77 (.446 bullet), which cartridge is identical to the .43 Spanish except for bullet diameter. And bullet needs lube, either a cookie or a design that has more lube groove capacity, than the 439186 Lyman holds, as mentioned by poster above. Once you fire the cases, no need to full-length resize. Just do necks, or size only enough to get decent bullet pull. Old Eynsford or Swiss, in 1.5F or 2F granulations, will burn cleaner and give maybe 10% greater velocity than GOEX grain for grain.

[Nobade]

Those have five groove barrels, so slugging the bore won't work unless you have a V anvil mic.
In the case of my two rifles, the groove diameter was bigger than what would fit in a fired case. So it really didn't matter, I just used slip fit soft bullets and that big charge of black powder bumped them up just fine. They both shot considerably better with paper patched bullets than with grease groove ones.

[Argentino]

Lyman #439186 will be the natural choice for .43 spanish but as others said before I would suggest to slug your bore first and then decide what to use: I know a couple of cases were bore dia. was around .442" to 0.444" and therefore Lyman #446110 (intended for .43 Mauser) seemed a better option (when properly sized).

If you are intending to shoot only BP loads, you might want to cast your boolits from soft lead. This is important since it will allow boolits to bump up and engrave the rifling properly, even in case they are a little bit small to bore dia.

Depending on the distance you intend to do your shooting yo may want to use a filler for a lighter load. Using a full BP load of about 60 to 70 gns could be stout on the shoulder (specially with those darn iron butt plates) and I don´t find it necessary for distances such as 50 yards. In those cases I prefer to use a lighter load and fill the empty space either with cornmeal or felt wads. Lighter recoil and reasonable accuracy too (around 2 to 3 inches for a 10 shot group).

For shooting a longer ranges (no more than 150 yards in my case) I use a full BP load but honestly I´ve never been quite happy with accuracy from my 1866 Argentine Contract RRB: it tipically places 10 shots on a 8in. circle at that distance, even when firing from bench and cleaning between each shot. I guess that better groups could be obtained, I just don´t know how to improve them. YMMV.


Argie.