Dumb Q?

[2ndAmendmentNut]

I am sure this is a stupid question, but I still have to ask. Can you safely fire a 45-70 in a 45-120? For that matter can you safely fire any of the shorter 45s in a 45-120?

[Don McDowell]

Of course you can fire them in a 120 chamber. Accuracy will be non existant, leading will be horrific, and you stand a real good chance of ruining the chamber.
IF you have a 120 just buy the 45 basic brass, load it mild and go on with life. If you haven't bought the 120 then might want to do some real soul searching to see if you want to invest that much into just the ammo for the thing.

[texasmac]

Don,

I can understand how accuracy may be affected and the possibility of increased leading, but why or how could the chamber be ruined and what type of damage would result? I've seen some pretty good accuracty from firing a .45-70 in a .45-90, and the leading was minimal. I could possibly envision a problem if one fired numerous shorter cartridges then a longer one without cleaning the accumulated lead. I'd like to get a better understanding of the mechanism that would lead to a ruined chamber. Thanks.

Wayne

[Don McDowell]

Wayne the 45-70 case is fully 1 inch shorter than the 120. That means that while the 45-70 case is down to the .480 diameter, the chamber for the 120 is still heading that direction. The bullet from a 70 is going to have to swell to .480 plus for a distance of over an inch before it can hit the rifling and squeeze back down. That's not going to do anything positive for the gun itself.
So what you can get over time is a gas cuttting in that chamber, or possibly pitting.
How many rounds will it take? I don't have a clue, could be one could be a 1000, its just much simpler to fire the proper brass in the proper chamber. Also recall from the Shiloh board where Kirk says he has a 110 that had 45-70's fired thru it, he reports you can still fire 110's in that rifle but you need a steel rod and a hammer to get the empties shoved out.

[texasmac]

Don,

Thanks for your response. Good points, and I did read all the comments on the subject on the Shiloh forum including Kirk’s. It's my opinion there's just too much conjecture and speculation and not enough or, for that matter, any subjective data to substantiate if direct chamber damage can result. Kirk’s comments are the closest to anything subjective in Shiloh thread, but even then it’s not clear to me how the damage was done. He said, “I have an original 45-110 that some one run quite a few 45-70's through and it just torched a big wallow ahead of the 45-70 case from the flame sliding around the bullet.” If he doesn’t know who did it how does he know it was caused by firing .45-70’s in the rifle. But even if the damage was caused by firing .45-70 in his .45-110, there are other indirect causes that could result in the damage he reported. Due to the emotional trend that the thread was taking by the time I read it, and the personalities involved, I was not about to add fuel to the fire by tossing in my opinion and questions.

I’ve seen more that one chamber ringed with the proper length cartridge because someone shorted the powder charge or used the wrong type of filler material. Consider this, the base of a bullet in a typical .45-110 cartridge, when chambered ends up at about the same distance down the chamber as the mouth of a .45-70. Loading that .45-110 cartridge incorrectly can certainly result in a ringed chamber, which could easily be misconstrued as being the result of firing .45-70 in the chamber. It's been my experience that if ringing does take place it usually is right at the bullet base. Also, if there was a lot of leading and it was not cleaned out, corrosion and other factors can come to play in creating the damage. I don’t dispute that it can’t happen as Kirk suggested, I’m just not convinced that it does. If I had a .45-90 or larger .45 cal. chambered rifle handy and was willing to take the chance of damaging a barrel I’d definitely run a controlled experiment. I do have a high quality bore scope to monitor the condition of the bore.

Using a bore scope I’ve monitored bore erosion due to flame cutting in rifles chambered for high-power smokeless ammo. The pressures and velocities were much higher than in a BPCR and the bullets were copper or brass, which do not bump up and tend to seal the bore like soft lead alloys. So I’m not convinced the “wallow” Kirk reported was due to flame cutting. Without subjective data I’m just not prepared to agree with the conclusions presented.

Repectively,
Wayne

[RMulhern]

Hmmmmmm.....Without subjective data I’m just not prepared to understand why these type questions arise! :confused::confused::???::holysheep

[NickSS]

I built a basket case RB several years ago. The original owner had bought one of those kit guns that you have to finish. He got tired of the project and I bought it and finished it. He told me that it was chambered for 45-70. I shot 45-70s in it for several years and got really good accuracy with both bp and smokeless powder. I had several other 45-70 rifles so when a friend of mine was getting started in BPCR shooting and looking for a rifle I sold it to him for what I had into it. Several weeks later he told me that he tried to load bullets out to touch the lands and could barely get a 535 gr postel bullet to touch so he did a chamber cast and found that the rifle was a 45-90. I had fired many targets at 200 yards with it at my club and it liked to shoot into 1.5moa. My friend got some starline 45-90 brass and got it to shoot into 1moa. Neither he or I ever detected a problem shooting shells that were .3 inch short in that rifle.

[Don McDowell]

There are exceptions to everything . What might happen in one gun won't happen to the next one in a million years.
Flame cutting and chamber reaming are two very excellent examples of the will or won't stuff.
I have a CIJ sharps, that while stamped 45-70 is actually a short 45-90, there doesn't seem to be any problems with the chamber pitting yet, but there's nothing that will confine the leading and accuracy will go plumb to pot in 10 rnds,without some serious fouling control and bore cleaning. I've not shot much smokeless in it so that may account for the lack of damage to the chamber.
I do have a Ruger BH 45 colt that in its nearly 40 year life span has seen a lot of use, with some of the "ruger" only loads, and it has several gas cut lines in the top strap.
Look at the long drawn out battle on chamber ringing in Garbe's magazine. What one writer claims is a guaranteed non fail chamber ringer load, the next guy claims 1000's of rounds of the same load no problems.
So as I said before you might get away with shooting 45-70's in a 120 chamber for ever, I'ld be sorely tempted to call anybody that said they got excellent accuracy from that combination a damned liar, as I can see no way a bullet is going to slide across a 1& 1/4 inch of .480+ free bore and hit the lead into the rifling at anything even remotely close to the same spot and angle on every shot.
With the relative ease of finding brass longer than the 45-70 these days, I can see no reason to use the short brass in the long chambers.