Bottleneck or straight calibers for black powder repeating rifles?

There are problems with the 45 Colt using black in the lever guns. The 44-40 is considered a better choice due to less blow back then a 45 Colt . people have tried annealing 45 case necks. They have tried fire formed cases. They have tried thinning the walls where the bullet seats.
I think the answer to the fouling blow back problem with the 45 Colt in the lever gun was to use a FIRM CRIMP on the heavier bullet and a full charge of blackpowder. Fouling would get back into the action since there would be black on one side of the case showing blowback was happening.
Anywhoooo......after all the cockamamee things tried the logical ones just used a simple remedy with a firm crimp and a full charge of powder in the 45 Colt. The use of FFFg over FFg may be part of it as well as annealing the top of the case that gets work hardened from resizing.
That said... using fire formed cases and seating the heavier bullet with a full load of black powder and bullet firmly crimped worked to stop the blow back as far as I remember.
It's not that the 45 Colt didn't shoot well enough but that fouling got dragged back into the action and the use of lots of lube made the action drag or be sticky.
I'm sure if this same post was initiated at the CASS CITY forum the results would be worth reading since they deal with this and I've read a lot over there about people having first hand experience with blackpowder and the 45 Colt and the lever gun.
The loadinng proceedure for the 45 Colt gave one good solution and the other was just get the 44-40 with the thinner case walls.
Loading the 44-40 came upand a knowledgeable reloader gave a good solution to reloading with the 44-40and it's thin case walls. The answer was a good logical one as any reloader of the 44-40 would know. Use an expander to expand the case more for the bullet so the cases wouldn't collaspe.
Modern guns want to use .429 bullets and the loading dies want .427 bullets so......use a bullet that fits the gun and get an expander in the expander die that accomodates that bullet instead of trying to push a .429 into a case sized and expanded to use a .427 bullet. A bevel on the inside of the case throat is a help too but that gets done on a lot opf cartridges anyway. Using case lube helps too.
I've fired blackpowder 45 Colts from a fine,seemingly, a "One in One Thousand" type rifle. Very accurate even way way out there.
I did get some barrel fouling and went to using a thin lube pill on the powder and the Lyman 454190 mould for bullets sized to .452. I did get dirty into the action and would disassemble the action and clean it but....that's no biggie. A lever gun Winchester 1873 Model is easy to take apart. Part of the experience and the enjoyment.
I'd bring this "45 Colt in the lever gun" up at CASS CITY. Then decide whst to get between 44-40 and 45 Colt in the lever gun.
I don't remember getting much "sticky" from fouling and lube in my rifle using black. Some but not too much but......I wasn't firing the lever gun as fast as a full auto machine gun either. I was just getting rid of ground hogs that dug holes in the farm fields. ha ha ha More ground hogs met their maker from my 1873 Winchester(Uberti) than any other rifle or hand gun I have. Beautiful rifle and wonderfully accurate with the 45 Colt cartridge. The recoilis pleasant and I didn't even have the need for ear protection. Of course I'm half deaf anyway from firing guns. ha ha ha
People wouldn't believe I could drill those ground hogs way way out there in the plowed fields or grass pastures until they would go for a walk with me and my rifle. I had drilled them hole diggin critters out at the 500 yard mark on more than one occaision. ha ha ha I missed them a few times too. Well.... maybe more than a few times. ha ha ha I usually at least threw dirt on them with that 45 bullet.
One strange thing.....the 45 from the lever gun ,going slower probably, killed them critters one the spot where as the Sharps rifle with a round nose bullet could drill them and they still run a good distance and get back in the holes.......denying the buzzards their super.
 
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.
There were many, many bottlenecked target rifle rounds. Take a look at Cartridges Of The World if you have any doubts. There were a lot of 40-caliber target cartridges, and many target rifles of the 1880-1900 era were 40-caliber. Bottlenecked cartridges provide very consistent velocities, (good for target shooters), but typically shoot lighter weight smaller diameter bullets (good for target shooters but not for hunters). Hunters wanted the most power available, meaning they gravitated towards larger, heavy bullets since velocity was going to be about the same.

One reason so many straight-wall cartridges stuck around has to do with the case size limitations of the available actions, and the limited velocity of BP rounds (typically around 1,500 fps max). One reason there were so many .45-70 rifles around had little to do with the cartridge being "better", it had to do with availability of ammo. The Army used to support the civilian marksmanship programs by providing ammunition, which meant you shot .45-70 ammunition unless you wanted to provide your own. The .45-75 and .45-90 cartridges were widely acknowledged to be "better" than the .45-70, but ammo was harder to get and expensive, so people shot .45-70.
 
One point about many of the European "bottlenecked" cartridges...

I was going through Jean Huon's Military Rifle and Machine Gun Cartridges for another reason tonight, and decided to skim through some of the old blackpowder European rounds that were mentioned as being bottleneck rounds.

If you take a close look at them, many of these cartridges, like the 11 mm Mauser and 11mm French Gras, really weren't bottlenecked in the sense that we understand it today.

Many had the bottlenecks near the mid portion of the case.

Looking at many of the old American black powder cartridges, the same is true.

The effect is, then, to give the cartridge an extremely long "neck" in which the bullet is fully supported by this neck, unlike today's cartridges where the neck well may be shorter than the bullet.

If my thinking is correct, what has been discussed here, that fouling was an issue with bottlenecked cartridges, might not have been as much of an issue with these rounds with the bottleneck in the midportion of the case.
 
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