Settling black powder charges

[sonny from st. louis]

This has been a fun test and I learned a lot. Thank you for your reply.

 

[sonny from st. louis]

I would contact the powder manufacture and see what they had to say about your maximum load. When it comes loading close to maximum charge, I go to the manufacture for information. The manufacture should run test on the burning rate. This is the best I can do.

 

[Squint]

I find this interesting, and yet you are taken more precautions than I did when I loaded 270 shells, and my chronograph thing showed 10 or 15 ft./s deviation in five shots with it. My experience, such as it is, shooting round balls wrapped in cloth, Proved to me, no matter what I did, that there wasn't Any accuracy compared to my old 270 with a scope. I will be interested in your results, I have chronograph one of my 50s, just to see if it was fast enough to what I thought I should have to kill deer an antelope. Being I have also killed deer with a 50 pound bow, I was well satisfied with the lighter charges I was shooting. Keep us posted, the bridge going to our shooting range is being repaired and its 14 miles around so my testing is going to have to wait.
Squint

 

[sonny from st. louis]

I have been interested in ballistics since I was a teenager. As I went through school and my math got better, I did better on the ballistic calculations. Now I use the Oehler products to do the calculations. No more hand calculations. For muzzleloaders I set my start screen at 14 foot with a 4 foot spacing on the rail. I have a very involved loading procedure to get the best accuracy. This is for range testing only. No one would do this out in the field in a hunting application. In my Oehler Ballistic Explorer program, I can take the chronograph reading and move it back to the muzzle. That will change the chronograph instrumental velocity to the actual gun muzzle velocity. Most do not do that. They just use the velocity at the chronograph. I have found my chronograph to be very handy.
My wife is going in for knee surgery tomorrow and I will be down for a while. I will be back.
Thank you for your reply. I really appreciate it.

 

[deermanok]

Best wishes for your wife. Hope her surgery goes well

 

[sonny from st. louis]

Thank you for your reply

 

[Squint]

Thank you for your reply

You're most welcome, I too have been interested in ballistics and bought a chronograph sometime in the 80s or 90s and it required building a sawhorse of sorts and positioning two timers exactly 10 feet apart, which recorded the time that the bullet crossed over and then I referred that number to a chart. I believe it was called tepco or something like that, I still have it though I bought an upgraded Chronograph that will record the speed of arrows and bullets some 20 years ago. The first one I had was so bothered by sunlight that I fixed up 25 Watt DC bulbs that were 12 V above each timer and did most of my testing at night. As far as I know, I was the only one in this area that messed with it that long ago. It had three different charts, and it would run from 1000 to 4000 ft./s depending on the spacing of the timers. Once I was satisfied that my hand loads were equal to factory loads that I chronographed, I kind of quit messing with it, but just this summer I did check some on a 50 caliber Flintlock muzzleloader. I have a 45 percussion, that I wanted to test, but with that bridge out I probably won't make it. The bridge is supposed to be fixed by the end of October, and depending on the weather I might get it done. I'm in the center of Montana and it can get tough sometimes. I really am curious how you make out with what you're doing, I never measured mine enough to see how it deviated between shots. I didn't compute it back to the muzzle either, as I was only interested in what I could achieve for like 75 yard shots. Keep it up, and I hope you're wife does well in her upcoming surgery. My knees are still original, but both shoulders are fake.
Squint

 

[sonny from st. louis]

My chronograph is an Oehler 35P. If you go to the Oehler Research site, you can see what this chronograph looks like. I purchased mine in 1987 and have not had any problems with it. The print unit has to be replaced once in a while because it runs out of ink. There is a summery button that will calculate mean or average, high, low, spread, and standard deviation. Press the button and you have the answers. I have several premeasured strings for sitting the start screen. There is so much stuff coming out of the muzzle loader that I place the start screen at 14 feet. I use a 4 foot spacing on the rail. This chronograph requires sun light to operate. If the range has over head baffles, the chronograph will not work properly.
I use the Oehler Ballistic Explorer program for calculating the bullet trace. This program is on the professional level and has several drag functions available. All the programs have the G1 drag function for calculation. Some have the G7 along with the G1. If you go the web site for ballistic coefficients, you can see the standard bullets and the write up for drag functions. The Sporting Arms & Ammunition Manufacturing Institute (SAAMI) has calculated the drag function tables for use in these programs. Basically the trajectories are calculated the same way in each program but can be programed differently. There can be a 10% difference between these programs. This is what the NRA tech told me several years ago. I am retired from Boeing. One of our computer engineers told me about the same thing. So if you see a slight difference do not worry.