Black powder in smokeless cartridges?

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Just for grins, I invested in a 3-foot brass tube and made a drop tube for loading .35 Whelen cartridges with black powder.

My first attempts seemed rather unsatisfactory.  Velocities ranged from 1400 fps to 1600+ fps.

My load technique was to fill the case with Swiss 2f using the drop tube (4cc Lee dipper threw roughly 65 grains of powder).  Then I pushed a 3/8" card wad on top of the powder with an unsharpened pencil.  Next I loaded a cast Lyman 195 grain roundnose bullet lubed with 50/50 beeswax/deer tallow.

From a clean gun at 50 yards it put three shots in about an inch.  After that things went downhill.  Shots 4 and 5 flew three to four inches wide.  I thought maybe I had to swab every three shots.  But a spit-soaked swab run through the bore didn't seem to help.  All subsequent shooting produced "patterns" rather than groups.

I saved the last few shots for over the chronograph and was impressed to see the bp pushing velocities in the 1600 fps range.  Not bad for a 195 grain pill.  Certainly deer medicine.  However some loads were down around 1400 fps and of course a number in between.

Am I missing something here?  Do bottleneck cartridges and black powder simply not mix?  I thought that a .35 Whelen appears similar to some of the "slightly bottlenecked" cartridges of yore that were intended for bp loading.

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. 

[John Boy]

Do bottleneck cartridges and black powder simply not mix?

Yes they do mix and shoot well with the proper load and loading procedures.  The 45-75 is a tapered shoulder case (bottle neck) caliber for the '76 Winchester when there was no nitro powder.  And the reloads shoot better than my eyes.  I also load and shoot black powder in my 25-20.  Nice groups

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Thanks John Boy,

So what am I omitting from my loading procedures?  I know, I know, it's not like you were right there looking over my shoulder to see what I did or didn't do.  But there's got to be a starting point where we can discuss this.

Do people compress the charge even after using a drop tube?  I think somewhere in my reading I recall someone describing a compression procedure.  I wasn't sure if this was in-lieu-of or in-addition-to dropping the powder through a drop tube.

How important is compressing the powder - other than using a drop tube?

I'm not looking for 1 MOA or any kind of record-setting accuracy, just minute-of-pop-can type shooting.

Oh.  I should also add that the bullets used were cast from wheel-weight alloy.  I don't know if that changes anything.

[John Boy]

But there's got to be a starting point where we can discuss this.

Yep!
BJ, here are couple of sources for your reading pleasure to raise your learning curve ...
http://www.ssbpcrc.co.uk/Resources/Introduction%20to%20BPCR%20Loading.pdf
http://www.goexpowder.com/images/LoadCharts/Cartridge-Rifle.pdf

GENERAL starting points advice for a 45-70 case and a relatively short bearing surface bullet, example Lyman 457125 Govt bullet:
Case:  annealed - primer pocket and flash hole reamed - mouth chamfered with a 45 or 22 1/2 degree reamer - neck expanded for 0.001 to 0.002 tension based on the diameter of the bullet
Primer:  BR2 or 150M
68 to 70gr FFg powder compressed no more than 0.30
0.060 LDPE or 0.030 Fiber Wad
Newspaper wad on top of the wad used
457125 (1:20 alloy) bullet seated so the nose of the ogive touches the leading bore cut in the rifle's leade ... you will have to pre-measure the COL of the round specific to the chamber dimension of your rifle
Light crimp to remover the case bell only
That's all there is to it for this example bullet and the general principles apply for all bullets:  bore riding (longer COL) and non bore riding.

Of course, there are many bullets including the ones for the 35 Whelen, which I do not shoot or never have owned this caliber

And let me be candid - BPCR reloading is not a process that can be learned, step by step, on a forum.  Would recommend you buying the series of books on BPCR loading and shooting by Paul Matthews:
http://www.riflemagazine.com/catalog/detail.cfm?productid=1247&subcategoryid=88
http://www.riflemagazine.com/catalog/listing.cfm?subcategoryid=88

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Ok.  now i've got something to go on.

Sometimes it's just a matter of reading to get fodder for questions.

Such as, I noticed you're seating the projectile out far enough to contact rifling.  Is this a "big difference maker" or one of those things that just shrinks the groups just a little bit more.

With smokeless, copper-clad bullets you can generally get adequate accuracy without this - which is why factory ammo works.

[Lead pot]

Black Jack.


The BN black powder cartridges are excellent shooters but a little difficult to learn how to load for.

I shoot bottle neck .44-90BN Sharps and I also shot the ,35 Whelen and I think the bullet your using. I'm going to say that it is the Lyman #358430, that is the cast bullet I used for a reduced load in my .35 Whelen.

The .35 whelen has a fairly short neck and the bullet is a little to long to accommodate a load of a over the powder wad and seating that bullet in that case  with out having the wad and bullet base up in the neck and still being able to chamber that round with undo pressure closing the bolt.

Here is what is going on.
With the wad and bullet seated below the case neck the bullet gets upset beyond the dimensions of the case neck from the detonation of black powder before it even starts to move. Now the bullet's base is wider in diameter than the case neck and bore/groove of the barrel and it was to swage back down to bore/groove diameter again, this will raise and lower your velocity's from the variances in uneven pressure.
Your first 2-3 shots that printed close was still fron a un fouled bore then the fouling took over (powder and lead) and that will give you a pattern instead of a group.
This is what I would try, a 150 or 158 grain bullet and omit the wad if you have to to keep the bullet base above the case shoulder of a slightly compressed load of 2F powder.

[Black Jaque Janaviac]

Thanks Lead Pot

No, I measured things out and I don't think the base of the bullet was seated into the shoulder.

I used the 4.0cc Lee dipper which usually brings the powder right up to the bottom of the neck.  I then used a card over the powder so the card wasn't really thick.

I'm not sure what you mean by the .35 Whelen having a short neck.  It's not the longest I've seen but not really short either.  It looks like when I seat the bullet up to driving bands the bottom of the bullet is right at the base of the neck.

It sounds like we are using the same bullet.  Are you saying you have loaded the Whelen w/ black powder?

I mean, if it can shoot accurately at 1600 fps that would make it a pretty sweet BP gun.