super compressed 80 grain 45-70 load

[craveman85]

i was chit chatting with an old man who saw my 45-70 keychain today and he told me he used to use a bp load in which he could fit 80 grains of powder. he took a primed 45-70 case and dumped in 10 grains of powder. he had a metal shaft with a .357 casing on the end that he put down the shell and tapped it with a hammer. he repeated this till he had 80 grains in the case and could easily seat a bullet. seems like that much compression would be a bad thing. i loaded one but i have no intention of firing it. my 405 grain bullet seated nicely to proper depth on 80 grains of 2f and if i seated it out more i could have gotten 90 in easily. would it even burn good with that much powder in it? i did this in my lee loader with the priming rod and a 357 case on it.

[NickSS]

It will go off and probably not damage anything though I do not think that either accuracy or velocity will be very consistent.

[craveman85]

i may fire it off through the chrony just to see how quick it goes.

[craveman85]

i did have a cartridge that i accidently loaded over a spent primer. i pulled the bullet and started scraping out powder so i could reload it and the top of the load was very hard and the powder down near the primer was still quite soft. maybe the consistant compression would be better?

[northmn]

Some claim too much compression literally makes a 1f powder out of the load as in 1 grain per load. The old 303 bitish had a super compressed load right before smokeless. I read an article where the 45 70 was tested for the military at one mile. They found no difference in performace between 70 and 80 grains. I believe that some powders like GOEX will compress better than others. Swiss supposedly doe not adapth as well to compression. Saying that, someone will chime and claim they compress Swiss as much as GOEX. Shot a bit of GOEX in BPC, just not Swiss.

Northmn

[martinibelgian]

Before getting my #2 Musket, I routinely used my 45-70 for LR with a load of 80grs of Swiss 1 1/2Fg - and a 520gr bullet. Worked perfectly, even shot quite decent scores. I still routinely use 76grs in that rifle, without undue compression. fireformed and unsized cases, of course.

NorthNM, do read the report of those Sandy Hook tests better - they DID find a difference, which was why they changed the bullet for the military 45-70 load from 405 to 500gr.

[bigted]

im genuinly interested in this as all the dope ive read consider 70 gr of 2 f powder as almost unachievable due to the new cases. some one please do the velocity tests with thier crony [i would but dont have one] and report back on this very interesting load. im interested in the vel. as well as accuracy. 80 gr of 2f pounded into the case sounds a little dangerous but im just starting so id like some to chime in on this practice as well before i pound myself into the next room.

[craveman85]

i can easily get 70 grains of 2f in a load. use a drop tube. mines made from an aluminum arrow shaft thats 24 inches long. leaves about 3/8's inch room

[littlejack]

As caveman stated, 70 grains of black is very achievable. I loaded some 75 grain loads a while back, and had room for probably 6-8 grains more. I use my handy self made """"vvvviiiiiiibbbbbbrrrrrraaaaaaattttiiiiiiinnnnngggg gg""""" drop tube. It works great.
JJJJJJJaaaaaaaccccccckkkkk.

[martinibelgian]

No pounding needed, just don't size your brass - that will alreade help you gain quite a few grains. Use a bullet that doesn't have to be seated deeply into the case = more powder capacity. Seat the bullet out to the rifling, the same...

[craveman85]

i had to pound mine. the h&r buffalo classic has a short throat so you have to seat it pretty deep.

[bigted]

littla jack,,, do you vibrate the case n all or just the drop tube? also how accurate are these over 70gr loads?

[littlejack]

bigted:
Yes, I vibrate the whole case. It sets in a drilled recess in my drop tube base. The drop tube
itself sets inside the case mouth about 3/16" +or-. I turn on the little electric shaver and
everything is vibrated as the powder is being poured down the drop tube. The tube is made
from a aluminum arrow shaft.
Just this last Wednesday. I fired one four shot group at 100 yards. All shots can be touched
with a quarter. Another group was a little bigger, but I was letting the barrel get fouled to
see what would happen to the groups. A blowtube was used with these loads. I was using
the 457125 bullet with 20-1 alloy. The bullet was seated to just touch the lands. There was
one grease groove exposed. I used on .030 card wad. I use Goex ctg. powder.
Jack

[mustanggt]

I learned from a guy who's done very well in the BPCR game over the years and we loaded 80grs in a case with the 1st grease groove exposed engraving the rifleing with a Postell bullet. I fireformed all cases. No resize, no case flare. Just thumb seating the bullet over a .030 wad. Powder is 3F Swiss. Yes it can be compressed with positive results. Only drawback is over time it will spring back a hair and make closing the breach impossible. So after that we cut the charge back to 75 and all is well. It's a great way to get 45-90 performance out of a 45-70.

[bigted]

prusing back looking for a recipe for bp lube i ran across this post again. the velocity never was stated for these 80gr loads. for that matter...the 70gr loads were never posted as for the velocity either. im still to load my first bp carteidge so this is all "new" news to me. id like to hear about the diferent velocitys gotten with the diff loads of black.

i fooled around with my remington cases last nite and found that just pouring the powder into them unsized i was able to get 70 inside without a droptube and around 63gr with leaving around 3/8 inch for compression with the 400gr boolit. but here i found happily that the 500gr rn boolit has less inside the case then the 400. that struck me as good and also strange...[lyman moulds]. there seems to be around 1/8 inch less boolite needing to be inside the case from the 500 [125] boolits giving the whole greese grove inside the case..then the 400gr boolits i cast with the same lyman moulds....so i would gather that im gonna be better off loading the 500's and trying to just touch the rifling in my winny hiwall.

another problem im having is the ww boolits i cast are small... .4575 to .458ish. this is too small for the grooves of any of my rifling on any of my guns. can i take this 500gr mould and install a stud into the base of it and use valve grinding compound to enlarge my mould? i cant even use my cases as fired for loading as the boolit just slides in and out with hardly any touching of the neck on my 45/70 cases. therefore i get NO friction on the boolit at all. or can i enlarge these boolits with just alloy?

i know...questions questions???

[Bullshop]

.4575 to .458" diameter are not too small for a barrel with a .458" groove or .459" for that matter, especially if you are shooting black powder.
Consider this if you will. A 45 cal muzzle loader with a .458" groove barrel will accurately shoot a . 451" diameter boolit. Think about it.

[martinibelgian]

If I reverse 1 of my 45-70 cartridges loaded with BP, the bullet will just fall out... No issue there, after all, it's a single shot rifle. My bore is .461, and a .458 bullet shoots just fine.

[Doc Highwall]

One thing nobody mention about heavily compressed loads is, if the inside of your case is rough it could split the case in two and shoot the forward piece of the case into the barrel. Also it is not just the amount of powder in the case but also how much room is left to seat the bullet.

[montana_charlie]

another problem im having is the ww boolits i cast are small... .4575 to .458ish. this is too small for the grooves of any of my rifling on any of my guns. can i take this 500gr mould and install a stud into the base of it and use valve grinding compound to enlarge my mould? i cant even use my cases as fired for loading as the boolit just slides in and out with hardly any touching of the neck on my 45/70 cases. therefore i get NO friction on the boolit at all.
I rely on lube suction, instead of neck tension, to keep grease groove bullets from falling out of the case. But, if you want some neck tension for holding onto those bullets, you can size just the neck down by backing your f/l sizing die out of the press about six turns.

Your cases will still be (essentially) of 'fireformed' dimensions, but the neck will be small enough to be expanded to the diameter you want for the bullet.

The case neck, and the bullet, will both be a tight fit in the chamber throat (at firing) before the bullet even starts to move.

CM

[Lead pot]

I once ran a test with the ,40-70SS to see what the compression verses velocity to see if there is a point were there is no gain.
I started with no compression to very heavy compression that it would bulge the case wall.
The powder used was 2FG Goex exp. Here are the numbers.

58 gr 1205 fps
60 1224
62 1247
64 1270
66 1295
68 1306
70 1324
72 1351
74 1363
76 1389

[bigted]

interesting....so these boolits need no tension on them to hold them in the case till the primer is struck? seems like the boolit will "travel" back n forth as the rifle is tipped up and down. also how would a person transport these "lose" boolit loads while hunting? i can see doing this at the bench so maybe ill have to try the "neck" size with my rcbs full length die turned out 6 or so turns to use for hunting. i hunt pretty rough real estate so the rifle and x-tra rounds take somewhat of a beating before i get to shoot.

thanks for the replys and i look forward to your further help for this thickheaded newby.

[martinibelgian]

Bigted,

How can those bullets "travel back and forth" if they are touching the rifling? Seems pretty hard to me... Transporting while hunting is another issue, there a bit of necksizing might help.

[bigted]

Bigted,

How can those bullets "travel back and forth" if they are touching the rifling? Seems pretty hard to me... Transporting while hunting is another issue, there a bit of necksizing might help.


yes i can see that if the boolit is loaded out to touch the rifling then it would be trapped between the powder and the rifling but as you state...hunting is different so ill try the "neck" size only thing so i could take some blackpowder loaded loads with for moose hunting. thanks didnt recon on the rifling holding the boolit in place...see....a numb brain afterall...lol[smilie=s: