Bottleneck or straight calibers for black powder repeating rifles?

A

Andy Griffith

New member
Just want to hear the experiences of others that have run real blackpowder through their rifles of various calibers.

I know those old blackpowder rounds such as .32-20, .38-40, .44-40 and .45-70 and larger bottlenecked or tapered calibers had to have been designed that way for a reason.

I know that most modern people go with modern straight walled cases for ease of reloading, but are they more problematic when shooting a full magazine of cartridges loaded with holy black?

I'm thinking I want a nice new rifle in .44-40, likely a Uberti 1860 rifle.
Any reason I should not get one in .45 Colt for blackpowder?
 
44-40 is better for cleaning afterward, you don't get any fouling in the action from it. The case mouth is thin and expands to seal off the action from blowby. The 44-40 is a little trickier to reload but once you understand why and get the hang of it it's just as easy as anything else. The original 44-40 used a .427 bullet. Most modern 44-40's use a .429. The problem with reloading is most modern dies still size to .427. Trying to stuff a .429 bullet into a .427 case usually results in a crushed case. Cowboy dies size to .429 but I usually just take a wad punch and bell my cases a little bit. To clean after shooting a rifle just leave a fired case in the chamber when cleaning the bore and you keep the fouling out of the action.
 
Many of the early bottlenecked rounds were designed that way so that they would fit in the gun's action.

The Winchester 1873 and 1876 models simply couldn't handle long cases. The togglelink mechanism was just too flexibile, so to make the action as stiff as possible, but to get decent performance out of the cartridges with blackpowder, the rounds had to be bottlenecked.

In the 1876, in order to get cartridges that were on par powerwise with the .45-70 and the .50-70 government rounds Winchester came out with the .45-75 and the .50-95.

It wasn't until John Browning joined Winchester and redesigned the rifles, starting with the 1886, that the actions could handle the .45-70 and longer cartridges.


With single shot rifles of the time, for which there were no case length issues, companies often offered two versions of each cartridge, one in a straight case version and the other bottlenecked, simply to pander to those shooters (and there were apparently many of them) who preferred one over the other.
 
Mike, I don't mean to rain on your parade but the 1876 Winchester was originally chambered for 45-75. Later it was chambered for 40-60, 45-60 and 50-95 Express. Perhaps you meant the 1866 and 1873.
 
"the 1876 Winchester was originally chambered for 45-75."

Uh, yes, I know that.

The .50-95 followed a couple of years later, in response to requests for a heavier cartridge, and a number of years before the 1886 was designed.

I'm not seeing a problem here.
 
FWIW, I have a Uberti 1873 winchester, 1860 Henry, and 1876 rifles. The 1860 and 1873 are both in .44-40. I love them. Have taken several deer with both. With "real" black powder they will shoot all day with no hang ups, and clean up is pretty much just the barrel. The 1876 is a .45-60 (no bottleneck). I've had no problems with this gun either, although it gets slightly dirtier. I prefer the .44-40 in a Henry or 1873, but there are people that love their .45 cal. versions too.
 
The 44-40's today with the sizing die for smaller bullets ,.427 ,and the barrels rifled for larger ones,.429, can be solved easily by getting an expander to change out in the expander die to expand it more for the .429 instead of for the .427. The C&H Tools in Mt. Vernon Ohio makes any size expander you can ask for...within reason. Others make them also I guess.
I have an expander in one of my 45/70 die sets that carries an .458 expander since I haven't gotten a Meacham Tools bullet alignment seater yet.
The .458 expander lets the bullets goin the case straighter. You ever look at factory ammo like Winchesters 45/70's? There is a bump on one side of the cases where the base of the bullet is because the bullets going n crooked because of shoving them into a case too small for them.
I'm under the understanding the bottlenecked cartridges Sharps made rifles for were problematic. They aren't (bottlenecks) preferred today.
 
"I'm under the understanding the bottlenecked cartridges Sharps made rifles for were problematic."

In what way were they problematic? I've never heard that before, but it does seem that, in America at least, straight walled cases were somewhat more popular in the larger cartridges.
 
In one book an expert states that in comparable rifles the bottle necks can't be made to shoot as consistantly accurate as a straight wall. ......Sharps thought so too since by the mid 1870's was dropping the bottle necks for the straight walls.
That said I know there were International Long Range shoots won by bottlenecks. The bottle necked 44/77 was a popular round for the buffler hunters out west. The 45/90 straight wall eclisped it once it was out.
I thunk one problem was the shoulder of a bottle neck made the round not chamber after a coupla shots due to blackpowder fouling in rifles without the camming affect to the action.
Repeaters....with black.....that could be a problem with their levering affect to the action if fouling shortened the chamber where the shoulder is. The 45/75 isn't known for great long range accuracy I don't think. 300gr. bullet and 75gr. powder. Like an express round not known for great accuracy but good enough for hunting at distances shorter.
I think there's more but I'd need time to leaf thru a bunch of books and older Black Powder cartridge News magaznes.
I just,in my simple mind, cataloged bottle necks as potential problems because of what I've read.
That said.....I'd like the challenge of getting an 1876 Winchester to fire 45/75's well or the same challenge in the 44/77 or 43 Spainish in a Sharps.
I don't believe there's a problem really in 1873 Winchesters firing 44/40 or the 38/40.
 
I would have to look through a bunch of old articles, but I too remember something about bottle necked cartridges having a fouling problem with black powder. Even the popular bottle neck rounds from the black power days didn't have as much bottle neck as say, the .30-06 did.

Tony
 
Even the popular bottle neck rounds from the black power days didn't have as much bottle neck as say, the .30-06 did.
Click to expand...

.30-06 was never a black powder round. It was developed on 1906 to replace the.30-03 round, that was the first chambering of the 1903 Springfield rifle, that replaced the .30-40 Krag round that the U.S. adopted in 1896 as it's first smokeless cartridge, and used in the panish-American war. All were smokeless rounds.
 
I never said the '06 was a BP round. I didn't say but implied it was developed after the BP era ended.

As I recall the .32 Winchester special was developed for people that insisted on loading BP long after it was no longer practical. The .32 has less neck down than the .30-30 and is supposed to work better with BP.

But it proves my point that bottle neck rounds became more popular after smokeless powders were phased in...

Tony
 
As I recall the .32 Winchester special was developed for people that insisted on loading BP long after it was no longer practical. The .32 has less neck down than the .30-30 and is supposed to work better with BP.
Click to expand...

Winchester's story is that the cartridge was developed to fit between the .30-30 and .30-40. Supposedly it would be more powerful than the former without the recoil of the latter. I don't think that Winchester would be inclined to produce a cartridge just to facilitate reloading - they sold ammo, after all.

Certainly, though, it could be loaded with black powder and Winchester even advertised that, but I just don't think that the company would create a cartridge just for that reason. I think that it's more likely a fortunate byproduct of the slower twist rate that allowed for less fouling.

Of course, as it turned out, the .30-30 ended up being a whole lot more popular.
 
"I don't think that Winchester would be inclined to produce a cartridge just to facilitate reloading - they sold ammo, after all."

Actually, Winchester did sell components.

As today, they recognized that there were going to be people who rolled their own no matter what, so they might as well grab that part of the market instead of relinquishing it to Ideal or Lyman.

"Certainly, though, it could be loaded with black powder and Winchester even advertised that, but I just don't think that the company would create a cartridge just for that reason."

Actually, yeah, they would. It's called hedging your bets.

When the .32 Winchester came out, smokeless powder was still far from being a sure thing and there were a LOT of people who didn't want anything to do with it, or they wanted to be able to make sure that no matter what happened with smokeless, they weren't going to have a rifle that was going to be obsolete.

The .32 Winchester Special was that cartridge.
 
Hello, Andy Griffith. I really should be able to give you a definate answer on this one, as I have two rollingblocks, one chambered in .40-70 str. (2 1/2"), and another in .40-70 bn. (2/1/4"), but I have not got around to trying black in the b.n. case...yet! That said, when I had the b.n. made up by Lone Star, Mr. Higgenbotham thought the fouling problems on the b.n. cases were overated..at least he didn't find mine to be so in test firing. I have heard there are problems in compressing the charge...But with the Swiss powders, compression is not recommended..This is what I hope to find out. One other thing to think about...Every military cartridge of a major European power at that time was bottlenecked. And most were paper-patched..which makes fouling control even more critical.
 
"Every military cartridge of a major European power at that time was bottlenecked."

The British started out with the .577 Snider, which was a straight case, for about 10 years.

There were also a few other straight-case European military rounds, but you're correct, almost all were bottlenecked to one degree or another.
 
I just wanted to figure out if the non-traditional .45 Colt loaded with BP would be much more troublesome than the .44-40 in a lever rifle, and should spend a bit more time looking for one in that caliber.

The correct answer is...I should get both. :p
However, I don't think money will allow that...so I'll just have to settle for one or the other. :(
 
Other than a little fouling in the action it should be fine. I hear of more feeding issues with magnums feeding specials.
 
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