by Paco
First we have to understand, I really don’t like black
powder because of all the reasons in the title of this article. But darn
it....it is fun to shoot. Back in the late 1960s the Richmond Police Shooting
Team was one of the hottest in the country. Five of the eight shooter’s
including me, were positive we were going to the Olympics someday...we did
make the Nationals two years in a row. Came in second the first time and
fourth the second time....but life and work and families...etc....But the
point of the story is we had a team mate that was different.
Stewart was tall, dark and...well he had two out of
three. He was gawky, and unsure of himself, but he could shoot handguns. And
we all really liked him, but cops have a funny way of showing their fondness.
They tease each other sometimes rather hard...but it’s a point of misplaced
manliness I guess. And hell we were young.
Stewart had a favorite 45 ACP 1911a1 for the centerfire
matches. The gun was totally rebuilt by Gil Hibert (sp) the custom gun guru of
the 1960s....Gil was a master especially with 45s. Stewart would shoot his
fine 45 in practice and matches and then would immediately clean it, even
before he left the range. He never put it in his shooting box...in case the
box was ever stolen. Never mind that he had about five other expensive and
special handguns in the box, and the whole thing was insured...he just
couldn’t take it if something happened to his ‘baby’....
Naturally all this affection directed the attention of
those of his friends..on to this special gun and his over zealous fondness.
Now I won’t mention who was behind all this, the statute of limitations will
never run out in Stewart’s mind.....
But one day during a Richmond City match...somehow a 45
ACP round loaded with fine grade black powder got into one of Stewart’s
match clips....and during the first fast fire phase about three shots in,
during a fusillade of everyone’s autos going off with light Bullseye match
loads...suddenly there was this deep thunderous roar...and a long plume of
orange fire and thick gray smoke pouring out of Stewart’s gun. Stewart
already pumped up about the match with his concentration really focused,
immediately thought his gun blew up! He threw it 20 feet from him into the
grass and began to run away counting his fingers.....
When he finally got a hold of himself, stopped and
looked back...half the team was missing from the firing line...when he
returned he found us rolling over in the grass laughing to death.......
Black powder will rarely hurt a gun...certainly it
didn’t hurt Stewart’s 45, though I do remember him taking a real long time
completely striping the gun and cleaning every part inside and out.
I have fired black powder in a number of guns over the
long years since that time...Pyrodex which is supposed to be a black powder
substitute has a little more energy and is advertised as being cleaner. I have
never found it to be cleaner...but it does seem to shoot with less fouling. As
for a substitute for black...well I think it still is black with some kind of
additives or some such.....but I have used it and like it better then
black.....and all the Pyrodex listed loadings are by volume not weight....I
use an adjustable black powder measure, to get the proper charge
weights....take care with old guns with these loads.
Also be careful of using the old recommended trick of
using cardboard for wads...they can ring some guns. I use 1/16th polyethylene
wads in the rifles...Pyrodex comes in pistol grade shown as P, and in rifle
grade shown as R, with the load amounts. And where I use black powder I use
the designation BP.
45 long COLT
Probably the greatest of all handgun/black powder rounds
is the 45 long Colt. I’m not sure what the original loading of some fine
grade of commercial black powder was...but I suspect 40 grains under the
original 255 grain bullet. Keith used around 35 grains under a very heavy 300
grain bullet...he also had an old Colt SA come apart on him with this 300
grain load. He talks about the loading gate blowing off and lacerating his
thumb...also the chambers and a top strap came off his old black powder Colt
with this load.
Soon he changed over to the 44 specials...around
1927...and smokeless powder. But he used the old SA 45s from about the age of
18 to 28. He had a 38-40 at the age of seventeen that he thought failed him
with a big Elk he shot several times at point blank range with black powder
loads. Though he is very candid that commercial bullets and bad placement
didn’t help. His heavy 40 caliber reloads with cast bullets and heavy
charges of black put the animal down, so he went to the 45 Colt. It is one of
the exciting stories Keith tells that I am re-typing so John Taffin can put it
up on sixguns.com.
All that to say I could only get 37 grains of black
powder into modern R-P cases...under a 255 grain exact copy bullet of the
original. This out of a 7.5 inch barreled Colt clone they gave 912 fps and
around 10000 psi. The same amount of P-Pyrodex (by volume remember) gave 961
fps with 13600 psi...and the R grade gave only 921 fps at 12000+ psi. All very
mild loads. I have a few old balloon headed cases in my collection. So I
loaded up five with BP and they did take 40 grains with a little room left
over...giving an average of 880 fps and 10,000+ psi.
I had to try it....I took a 300 Gould bullet and loaded
it over 35 grains of BP...with a bit of a squeeze...BP or Pyro doesn’t
compress well. Crush the grains and you actually have a finer grade of
powder...with faster burning characteristics.....I got 813 fps average...but
the pressure was above 15,000 psi. I guess Elmer’s old gun was just
tired. Out of a 20 inch Winchester levergun, the 37 grains of P-Pyro under the
255 grain bullet gave 1233 fps...which I thought was pretty good for a BP
round...but I know little of handgun BP rounds in rifles..... With BP pushing
a 255 grain bullet at just under 1000 fps from handguns...in the old western
days of the 1870s thru the turn of the century..it was a powerful handgun
load. Elmer himself said in the late 1920s that the commercial 45 long Colt
loadings were the best in power of any of the handgun caliber commercial
loadings, at that time.
44-40 WCF
Winchester brought about a family of cartridges in their
new leveraction rifles in 1873...the 44-40 and the 38-40 (1874) shared the
same case...and the small 32-20 was a new case all of it’s own(1881). Colt
chambered it’s Single Actions for these rounds. Why Winchester took over 100
years to chamber their rifles for the 45 long Colt round has been a bone of
contention and opinion for as long as it has been that way. Many of the
opinions I have read make sense...the one I go with is that the 45 Colt was a
proprietary and military round when it was first introduced and it was
patented. By the time that patent was over the other Winchester chamberings
were well established...also some real rifle rounds began to surface in
leveractions. Marlin beat Winchester to the punch with the first 45-70
leveraction in 1881...it took the big W till 1886 and a new rifle to catch up
with a 45-70 chambering of it’s own. Though Winchester did have some others
like the 45-75...which was a shortened version of the big rifle round so it
would cycle in the short actions of the 1876 leverguns.
The 44-40 was the most powerful of the trio...but not by
much. The 38-40 was a very close second. Since the 38-40 was really a forty
caliber and it’s loading was only 20 grains less in weight.
But I squeezed 35 grains P-Pyro into modern WW 44-40
cases and under a 200 grain bullet, jacketed and made by Winchester, I got 815
fps from a 7.5 inch single action and around 10500 psi...the R-Pyro load was
close with the same charge and 800 fps and 9300 psi. I didn’t have a 44-40
rifle at the time to test them in...the BP load of 35 grains went 770 fps and
around 8800psi.
44 SPECIAL....
The 44 special was really never a BP cartridge....though
black powder loads were available. Introduced around 1907 to take advantage of
the new smokeless propellants...I thought it would be neat to see what it
would do with black powder loads.
The 44 S&W American started it all around
1869-70...it was lengthened into the 44 Russian cartridge for a Russian order
of over 250,000 handguns and given a inside lubricated bullet. In 1907 the
case was lengthened again by about .2 inch and loaded with smokeless powders
of the times...Bullseye and Unique...probably non canister powders also. I was
able to get 30 grains of BP into the case which gave a 200 grain bullet 908
fps....and the 27gr/load under a 250 grain Keith bullet a surprising 820 fps
at 9800 psi...the 200 grain load was at a pressure of 9900 psi. Interesting
pressure readings on these loads...not what logic would dictate.
With 30 grains of P-Pyrodex under the 200 grain bullet
we got 995 fps and 12000psi...while the 250 Keith with 27gr/load went 894 fps
and 11000psi. The R-Pyro with the same loads gave the 200 grain 970 fps and
11900 psi and the 250 grain bullet went 830 fps and 10,000+ psi.
So though I don’t have any experience with the 44
Russian cartridge...the above makes me think it wasn’t bad for it’s time
and era......
38-40 WCF
The standard bullet for this cartridge has always been
the 180 grain blunt nose lead..then came the 180 grain soft nose jacketed....I
didn’t have any jacketed 401 caliber bullets...but do have a mold in this
caliber that drops a 184 grain cast bullet with 1 in 20 mix...dropped hot into
water to heat treat them..
I could squeeze 33.5 grains of BP into the sized down
44-40 cases...the 184 cast went 933 fps from again a 7.5 inch barrel. The
pressure ran a little over 9500 psi. The same amount of P-Pyro under this
bullet gave 1030 fps and around 11000psi...R grade gave 990 fps and 10,600 psi.
This by the way was the most accurate of the black powder loadings....though
the P-Pyro 45 Colt load came close to it.
32-20 WCF
As my readers know I like this round in modern guns and
with modern cases and smokeless powders. I also enjoyed it with BP. The recoil
was non existent, the accuracy was very good. I was able to get 18 grains of
very fine grade BP under a 110 grain bullet...like the others I used Mag-Primers.
And was getting around 10,000 psi and 825 fps. But I was getting only 1200+
fps out of the rifle, and accuracy went out the window........
Since I was playing around and had a lot of gun
cleaning to do...I went whole hog and tried a few rifle loads so you would at
least have a simple point of reference.....Out of my new 24 inch Marlin 38-55
levergun with a 265 grain bullet I actually got 55 grains of RS/Select under
it....it gave 1420 fps....and excellent accuracy, it was a fun load.....
With an old 1886 leveraction Winchester in 40/65 using a
400 grain bullet I got 60 grains of R/S under it and clocked out at1255
fps.......
Using my 45-70 Marlin...I got 66 grains of BP under a
475 grain bullet...giving 1377 fps and 64 grains under a 525 grain bullet gave
1177 fps. In my old 45-90 with 83 grains under the 475 grain bullet goes 1400
fps.....I like this load...I get more big old smoke rings with it then any
other...it tickles my old timey sense.......
So if you can get over the cleaning chores then black
powder and it’s brother powder Pyrodex is a lot of fun....I think everyone
should try it once a decade at least....that thought came after I finished
cleaning the guns!