reloading and some black powder questions.

[soundguy]

ok.. some general musings.

I have a few black powder guns.. a knight inline, and a hawken flintlock.. also have a cap and ball gun.. lil single octagon bbl derrenger type..

have a newer production ( 80's? spanish? ) import peper box that came with a 380 cartridge cut down and mounted to a alen key inthe primer pocket.. anyway.. it's the powder scoop to use pyrodex or similar, and it shoots 22 cal.. dealer said that 22cal pelets put in upside down shoot better than 22 lead slugs..e tc.

in any case.. I don't do much smoke pole stuff anymore... still got all the stuff.. etc.

while cleaning some guns and rotating some stuff in a safe the other day i found a few antique rifles that were black powder cartridges.. not made for modern smokeless powder.. thus i left the tags on them from the dealers that stated they were sold as curio or wall hangers, designed for lower power black powder cartridges..e tc.. do not fire with smokeless powder.. yada, yada, do not fire untill checked by a gunsmith..e tc.

ok.. that said...

at least a couple, back in the day, I did run thru a good gun shop and had them cleaned up.. bolts checked.. headspaced..e tc. one had a bad extractor.. had that stuff fixed.. etc.. some chamber casts made..e tc..e tc..

so.. got them just wrapped in lightly oiled acid free paper and plastic to preserve them.

so.... what about relaoding for them.

anyone realoding using black powder?

just setting there the other night made me think about it... is it feasable? where would you get load data?


also.. thinking aloud. in all my black powder shooting.. we always used powder dippers or scoops and dial gauges or graduated gauges. IE.. a tube that had 10gr increments.. and you slit of the plunger tot he laod desired.. then fileld the cavity.. then dumped the charge.. added the patch and ball, charged the pan or added the cap and went.

kind of an un-science to it all, now that I am used to loading smokeless. IE.. when loading up some 30-06.. i'me setting there fidgiting with getting a perfect 46.5g 4064 charge for my loads.. back in the 50 cal ball days I'd rip the charge tube open to 80-100gr whatver looked about right.. laod and go.. o measure.. just volume dumps.... not like our chargers that we measure a weight then use the volume that goes with that weight for throwing from the powder dispensers. never thought about black powder being that so much more forgiving that a difference in 20g made little difference...

comments?