Blackpower .303 eh?

[Driller640]

As anyone tried black powder in their .303 British? I made some the other day, 185g Lee RN, LLA , shot as cast, 55g by volume/40g by weight of pyrodex RS, cci 200, fed brass. shoot to point of aim to 100m, smack rocks and tennis ball all day. Shoud have seen the looks I got from all that smoke, doin't know what speed they were doing but bet it would take a deer if I did my part, but no matter, fun fun fun to shoot eh.

[SharpsShooter]

Hey

That sounds like fun to me. I have been tempted to work up a loading for my 30-40 Krag just for giggles. Don't forget to clean your brass with soapy water after you decap.

SS

[Idaho Sharpshooter]

You been hanging around Steve Garbe, haven't you? Editor of the Black Powder Cartridge News Magazine, and a serious former National Champion black powder cartridge rifle silhouette and Schuetzen shooter. He is getting old like the rest of us and looking for a lighter recoiling cartridge. He mumbled something about chambering a HiWall in 303 British recently, since it was originally chambered by a US gunmaker as a black powder load. His thought was about a 1:10" twist with a 235-145gr RN bullet pushing 1600+fps.

Rich
DRSS

[Harry Eales]

As anyone tried black powder in their .303 British? I made some the other day, 185g Lee RN, LLA , shot as cast, 55g by volume/40g by weight of pyrodex RS, cci 200, fed brass. shoot to point of aim to 100m, smack rocks and tennis ball all day. Shoud have seen the looks I got from all that smoke, doin't know what speed they were doing but bet it would take a deer if I did my part, but no matter, fun fun fun to shoot eh.

Hello Driller,

Black Powder in the .303" British isn't anything new. The first British government issue ammunition for this rifle was BP propelled. The powder was in the form of a compressed pellet. Just how this was done I'm not sure, as you can't compress powder in a bottleneck case. Perhaps the pellets were formed and inserted into the case before the forming dies applied the bottleneck shape to the case.

Black Powder in any calibre is fun.

Harry

[martinibelgian]

Harry - you're right there: the compressed pellet was inserted before necking the case, and after priming. Unless I am mistaken, it also was a cored charge - a little hole in the middle. They got something like 76grs of BP in there! Pressures were actually higher than with the 1st cordite load...

[KCSO]

B/P and the early cordite loads had the powder inserted in a unit and the case was then necked down. Remember that the B/P 303's were METFORD rifling and that the enfield rifling will gumm up fast with a full load of black. In 3-4 shots the gun will be fouled out with regular FFg. That is why the 32 special had different rifling than the 30-30.

[junkbug]

Driller;

Thanks for the report. I have considered this more than once, but wondered if smokeless type cast boolits would hold enough beeswax bases lube. Evidently, this is not as important as I thought it was.

Pyrodex and Lee liqiuid Alox. I will have to try that with a .303 and some boolits cast from a Lymann 314299.

Did you use a gas check?

Thanks again.

Sean

[Driller640]

Hey, Junkbug,
No, I didn't use any gas checks, eh.

[martinibelgian]

If you look to history, there were more BP rounds like these - small calibre and large case capacity. They were even in military use, so obviously they can be made to work. 303 brit is only one, 8x60R Kropatschek is another. 9.5 Mauser was a bit bigger, but close.

[KCSO]

Yes they can be MADE TO WORK, after a fashion. Use the 32 Specila and the 303 as an example. The rifling is different, modern rifling does not like black powder the quick twist and rifling form are not designed for black powder. Yes you can get a 30-30 or a 303 to go bang with black. Yes if you swab every shot you can get good accuracy, but if you intend to go out and shoot a box of shells before you clean your gun you will have shots 7-20 all sideways on the target. Now f you take a 32 special or a Lee Metford, you can get good shooting and good groups to a point. The second problem is that for the most part we do not have ANY quality black powder today. I have shot Dupont, Curtis and Harvey, and fie grade pre war German B/P and I can assure you what we shoot today would not rank better than about class3 powder by 1900 standards. Ned Roberts shot 125 shot from his 38-40 with the last shot shooting as good as the first using Curtis and Harvey and he complained that Dupont was too crusty and barely good for 50 shots. Grab a can of Goex and give that a try.
So..
Play and have fun but don't expect anything like the results that they got in 1888 'cause it won't happen.

[Driller640]

I shot over 40 rounds using pyrodex and I had NO keyholes, good gp's and hit what I shot at. Rifling wrong or not my p-14 likes it eh!

[BerdanIII]

Driller640:

You got the kind of results I was looking for (and didn't get) when I tried Pyrodex and Clear Shot in the .303. I used a commercially-cast 200-gr. gaschecked bullet (it looked like the Lyman 311299) and the same charge of powder as you. Some loads keyholed, some loads grouped poorly and only the Pyrodex CTG load was any good, but still not in your league. I even tried a duplex load of CTG primed with P. How much compression of the powder did you use?

[KCSO]

Now try some REAL black and see what happens.

[NickSS]

I shot quite a bit of black powder from a 1916 vintage SMLE and it worked fine. I did not use cast boolits though but jacketed ones. I put 200 rounds down range and still had good accuracy. Lots of noise and smoke though.

[Driller640]

BerdanIII
I used a .314 bullet I cast , my 303 mikes .312 eh. Don't know if that is your problem. I put enought powder to fill to bottom of neck then seated bullet eh'

[curator]

I loaded 20 rounds of .303 british for my Martini Enfield MkIII with a full (to the neck) case of Hogdon's 777 (FFFg granulation) seated Lyman's 210 grain #314299 gas checked boolit lubed with LBT blue. Shot a few over the Chrony to see how fast--1870 fps (+ or - 22 fps). Accuracy was very good at 100 yards with three five-shot groups of between 3" and 4". No signs of high pressure and the cases extracted with little effort. I did not experience the infamous "crud-ring" that sometimes occurs using H777 in black powder-era cartridges like .45-70. Nor did I have to wipe the bore between five-shot groups. Not a lot of smoke either. This is as close as one can come to original .303 british black powder loads.

[Cloud9]

Shooting Lee 185 grn lead bullets. A friend of mine gave me a quantity of 4350 IMR powder. I wanted to shoot it in my Enfield. Not wanting to risk one of my better guns, I chose a No 4 Mk1 that had seen heavy use. I spent several days cleaning this rifle and had finally got past the gunk down to the rust and pitting in the barrel. I started off with a load of 43.3 grns. I was shooting a gas checked lead bullet cast in a Lee 312 mold. The bullet weighed 185 grns, and was cast out of wheel weights. I had slugged the barrel and it miked out at .313. I machined out a .313 lubricating and sizing die and lubricated and sized 50 bullets. I set up a steady rest and shot 20 rounds. The targets were a disappointment. The barrel was thoroughly fouled and the grooves were full of lead.

I cleaned the rifle. I took a wax candle one inch in diameter and six inches long. I melted it in a soup can and stirred in one heaping teaspoon of petroleum jelly. I laid out a strip of aluminum foil in the bottom of a regular dinner plate and poured the mixture out and let it cool. Once it had cooled, I separated the thin wax sheet from the aluminum foil. The sheet of wax was about a tenth of an inch thick. I neck sized and primed my cases. I loaded 33 grn of IMR 4350. I took the charged case and pushed the neck through the wax sheet inserting a wax wad. I then seated the bullet and crimped the case using a Lyman 303 die. I loaded ten rounds of 4350 using the wax wad and ten rounds of 45 grns of Pyrodex using the wax wads.

The groups were very good. The Pyrodex group at 25 yards was spectacular. The rifle showed very little fowling and very little leading.

I found it necessary to soak the spent brass in a quart jar of mineral spirits to get the paraffin out of the cases.

[Ricochet]

The 7.62x54R Russian Mosin cartridge was also originally loaded with black powder and a 208 grain round nosed bullet. The Russians didn't put smokeless powder in them till they went to the 147 grain spitzer bullet in 1908. I don't have any information on the original black powder charge or velocity. I suspect I'm pretty close to the original blackpowder ballistics when I load 200 grain cast boolits to around 2000 FPS with a case full (uncompressed) of IMR 7383.

[Razor]

I gotta give this a try...
I've got GEARHEART-OWEN ffg..
and Lyman 314299..
40 gr (wt) of ffg sound 'bout right ??

Razor

[martinibelgian]

40??? That's downright puny! just fill the case, compress the powder , add a wad, seat the bullet and let fly! You should get at least 60 in there! And even more, if you can!