Small muzzleloader calibers.

M

mrawesome22

New member
I was thinking, couldn't the muzzleloading industry make, lets say, a .243" diameter barrel and use blackpowder and a regular rifle bullet? Or would it not generate enough pressure to seal the bullet? Maybe blackpowder does not have a high enough burn rate for these velocities?
 
Think fouling. Blackpowder fouls and smaller calibers would be very difficult to load after a few shots. While .36 caliber squirrel rifles are popular, I'm told that the .40 is superior in accuracy and fouls much less. This is hearsay as the smallest rifle I have is .45 caliber.
 
A 243 bullet fired out of a centerfire rifle is larger than bore size, and forced through the rifling. A muzzleloader bullet obviously has to be smaller than bore size, or forced down the barrel. I doubt you could do that with a regular copper jacket bullet. I guess this is where the concept of saboted bullets comes from.
 
243

Modern copper clad bullets will not work in black power . you use ONLY soft
lead , do not or you could have a bad experience.
Such as a blow up .It does not have to be smaller, it should fill the grooves.
 
The ML works on the principle of slow and heavy. Slow and light just doesn't kill anything. If you tried to get 100 grains of powder in a .243 barrel it would fill it half way full. The bullet would only have 12 inches of barrel to travel down.
 
There is an article in the new Handloader magazine about black in the .32 Winchester Special. He got about 1400 fps with a jacketed bullet, not much different from cast except that his first shot from a clean barrel was always slower than followups. Accuracy was mediocre at best. I don't see much point in it. A .243 BP rifle is a squirrel gun at most no matter you put patched lead or Noslers in it.
 
Geting to load from the breech lets you use a bullt that seals the bore...get to use a bottle neck case that holds a LOT more powder (and avoids that 10" powder charge in a muzzle loading 6mm barrel).

Have played with a little rifle made with a 26" .22LR barrel (from a 28" barrled match gun)...even using patched ball there comes a point (about 15gr.) where adding more powder does NOT add velocity. In fact, from 8 to 15gr. the vel. gain was way too small to justrify the use.

Long charges being set off from the rear...past a certain point, more powder is just adding more weight to be moved down the barrel...so while pressure seems to keep on climbing, muzzle vel. doesn't.
 
If you add powder, pressure and velocity DO go up, to an extent.

Diminishing returns, again.

Them of you who want a .243 or whatever, should study BP. There were .22 caliber "parlor pistols".

And .23, .24, .25 calibre. Whatever the barrell cut out to. If it all of a sudden became "good", it was sold, and, back then, people didn't say, "Oh, no, we got to have a .45 calibre to shoot squirrel with."

The Patterson was made in .28 calibre, piss poor small ball, don't you think, for a "Combat Weapon"?

Think I will try making one under .30 calibre for my own self.

Cheers,

George
 
"Modern copper clad bullets will not work in black power . you use ONLY soft
lead , do not or you could have a bad experience.
Such as a blow up .It does not have to be smaller, it should fill the grooves."


Then what is this shiny orange stuff on my PowerBelt Bullets? LOL
 
The .22 LR & the 30-30 were not BP rounds, but the .22 Short and .22 Long were.

___________________________

The .30-30 Winchester/.30 Winchester Center Fire/7.62X51Rmm cartridge was first marketed in early 1895 for the Winchester Model 1894 lever-action rifle. The .30-30, as it is most commonly known, was America's first small-bore, sporting rifle cartridge designed for smokeless powder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.30_WCF

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.22 Short is a variety of .22 caliber (5.6 mm) rimfire ammunition. Developed in 1857 for the first Smith and Wesson revolver, the .22 Short was the first American metallic cartridge. The original loading was a 29 grain (1.88 g) bullet and 4 grains (260 mg) of black powder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.22_Short

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.22 Long is a variety of .22 caliber (5.56 mm) rimfire ammunition. The .22 Long is the second oldest of the surviving rimfire cartridges, dating back to 1871, when it was loaded with a 29 grain (1.9 g) bullet and 5 grains (0.32 g) of black powder, 25% more than the .22 Short it was based on. It was designed for use in revolvers, but was soon chambered in rifles as well. The .22 Long Rifle, a heavier loading of the .22 Long case, appeared in 1887, along with the first smokeless powder loadings of the .22 rimfires.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.22_Long
 
Believe they are dead wrong about the .22LR being a smokeless round; it was originally a black powder round.

Are right about the 30-30 not being a black powder round...was the first US commercial smokless round in 1895 (OK...may have been a tie with the 25/35...depends on whose research you read).

Must have been others, but the only black powder with a jacketed bullet round I can think of would be the early 303british rounds. Introduced in 1887, it was first loaded with a 215gr. jacketed bullet and a compressed charge (70gr.) of black for about 1850fps. Smokless loads didn't get adpoted until 1892 or 1893.
 
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