Black powder cartridge guns / loads... who plays...

If you want to shoot blackpowder slugs out of that Norinco '87, I would suggest you get yourself a 3/4" hollow punch from Harbor Freight, a Lee Load-All press, a Lee .690" round ball mold, some cardboard, orange 1 1/8 oz trap wads, and of course, empty shells, blackpowder, and primers. The open cylinder choke barrel is needed for this, which is what the Chinnese guns normally have. Punch out a bunch of cardboard wads from cereal boxes or other decent sturdy carboard (nothing corrogated!). Load your shell as normal, using a 70-80 grain BP charge, put a cardboard wad on top of the charge (this helps keep the plastic wad from leaving fouling crud in the barrel), put a .690" round ball (made of soft lead, of course) inside the shot cup, and put it all together and crimp it up as a normal shotshell. You'd be surprised how accurate (and devestating to the target) those big punkin balls are!
 
I would suggest you get yourself a 3/4" hollow punch from Harbor Freight,
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Track Of The Wolf sells cardboard over-powder and cardboard nitro cards for something like $7.50 per 1000, what you would probably pay for that punch.

You can calculate the weight of a roundball in grains by cubing its diameter in inches and then multiplying the answer by 1503.

A .690 round ball weighs .69 X .69 X .69 X 1503 = 494 grains
 
50-70

Lots of good info in this thread.
I load 50-70s also. I load BP shotshells also - both with shot (used them this morning) and with slugs (used them this afternoon.). I have a Martini in 577-450 and in .310 cadet.
Two ideas which have not been mentioned about the 50-70 and BP: If you ever follow BP cartridge rifle competition you'll notice that virtually all the competitors use more than a cardboard wad between the bullet and the powder. They use some form of "grease cookie" - two thin fiber wads with beeswax between - to reduce and to soften fouling. Just an added idea.
The other idea is that you can form cases for the 50-70 from .348 Win brass.
Shotshells - factory loaded BP shells are available from Black Dawg and from Republic Cartridge Co. The Republic cases are paper. Very nice. The Black Dawg cases are plastic.
I use paper cases, brass cases, and zinc cases. The last were made by Alcan. Brass cases: I have a box of cases made by BELL that are easily 25 years old and still going strong. Magtech cases are as good. The one "need to know" thing about those cases is that, because they are thinner-walled than "normal" hulls, they are larger than 12ga. inside. Regular 12 gauge components are too small. You need to buy 11 gauge wads, etc. for best performance (available from Circle Fly and from BPI). I have another set of hulls made by Rocky Mt. Cartridge Co. I use them for hunting with some old doubles - they can be used with either smokeless or BP. The RMC cases are lathe turned (the others are drawn brass) and are true to gauge so normal 12 gauge components will work. They are primed with #209 SG primers (the others use large pistol primers). They are also pricey. I have only ten of them - all I could afford at the time - $6 each in 2007.
Slugs - 0.690" round balls work, so do 0.715" RBs. I load .715s over 2 3/4 drams of FFg BP -about 75 grains. Nitro card, a 1/2" fiber wad, a 1/4" fiber wad and then an overshot wad. I roll crimp when I can.
Pic of an Alcan hull:
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And left to right: an RMC lathe-turned hull, Magtech, Alcan zinc, Bell loaded with a slight crimp.
Note that the RMC hull is longer than the others (2 5/8ths inches).
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Pete
 
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I never ran the .30 carbine on BP but have run my .45acp; .45colt; .38/.357 & 9x19 on 3F real black. You'll have to adjust the load until you get it burning fairly clean. The load will determine when the chambers will need cleaning but I've run 30-40 through my 1911 before needing to wipe the chamber out. I didn't work the 9x19 load enough and it needs to be wiped after 15 rounds. The pistol barrels are short enough that a bullet with standard lube grooves usually carries enough lube to suffice.

One issue you're going to have is that bullet molds made for smokeless powder are going to drop bullets on the small side when using soft alloy because of the higher shrink rate. If the chambers and barrel are good, BP will run fine with bullets cast from straight WW alloy provided the bullets are the normal 0.001-0.003" oversize. If you have to use softer alloy, you can usually lap the mold enough to make up for the shrinkage.

Use a drop-tube to charge the cases and start with very little compression like 0.050" because often times too much compression fouls more and reduces accuracy depending on how the load interacts with the gun. With the small diameter cases, it's likely going to be that you'll find full-length resizing is going to be a problem with the BP loads. Depending on the combination of chamber and bullet size, you may not need to resize at all and if you do only the neck area should be sized and that only enough to provide enough tension to hold the bullet in place.

3F Triple-Seven did work fairly well in the .357mag under a 210gr bullet but only with very slight compression, anything more than about 0.050" and it became very inconsistent from shot-shot - had the same experience in the .45colt w/ 260gr bullets.
 
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