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POWDER IN DRAMS

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tom berwinkle

40 Cal
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Location
Clarksburg, WV
Some where I had an old page from Muzzle BLASTS that gave information on period loads in drams. I guess it must have been lost in my muzzleloading library. How many grains of powder equal a dram? I have an old Hawksley flask with the four position nozzle. dosant have the drams marked on the position of the nozzle.
 
One dram = 27.344 grains (close enough to "thereabouts") in the avoirdupois system.
But I'm not going to tell you how much powder to put in your front-stuffer. ;)

Richard/Grumpa
 
Just a brief warning not to confuse a 'dram' at 27 grains with a 'drachm' at 60 grains. The difference has cost quite few fingers and the odd eye over the years.

Old writers could be sloppy about which they meant. That 'ch' is important, even if the words are pronounced the same. Curse those English with their stupid language with so many homonyms!

Weather or knot you live inn Whales wear the Queen rains their and razes hoarses witch ware reigns according two the lore and yew have to bough in a ruff weigh and drink tee, bier or whine with bred. Butt hear won can shute vial villeins inn the rode.
 
To make it easy, I load 68gr of Swiss #2 in my .577 rifles - the British service load at the time - 2 1/2 drams.

Your Hawksley flask - is it for powder or shot?
 
To make it easy, I load 68gr of Swiss #2 in my .577 rifles - the British service load at the time - 2 1/2 drams.

Your Hawksley flask - is it for powder or shot?
powder, when I got it it still had some powder in it. I hate to step on toes but, Im convinced their were a lot moore flasks used in the 19th. century than we use today. There are so many original flasks available by the survival rate is huge. I know by research a lot of English flasks were being imported in the 1830s. Stands to reason there were an ample supply of them at places like Pittsburgh,St Louis etc. I guess they arrent as romantic as the picture of a powder horn on a frontiersman. If they werent used frequently then why is the survival rate as great as their are available, Powder horn survival is considerable a lot less except for the highly ornament, scrimshawed ones that were family heirlooms.Research may find they were fairly common, evan in the frontier regions, Tom
 
I just looked at some old shotshell boxes, and they listed "dram equivalent" which was left over from about 50 years prior, when one could buy either smokeless or black powder shells, and the buyers wanted to know how the new smokeless shells compared to the BP shells that they knew and trusted. The shell boxes went from 2¼ dram equivalent (just about 60 grains of BP) to 3¾ dram equivalent (about 100 grains of BP). 3 Drams was just over 80 grains so I decided to use 80 grains with 2Fg in my 20 gauges, and 60 grains in 28 gauge.

SHOTSHELL COLLECTION.png

LD
 
I just looked at some old shotshell boxes, and they listed "dram equivalent" which was left over from about 50 years prior, when one could buy either smokeless or black powder shells, and the buyers wanted to know how the new smokeless shells compared to the BP shells that they knew and trusted. The shell boxes went from 2¼ dram equivalent (just about 60 grains of BP) to 3¾ dram equivalent (about 100 grains of BP). 3 Drams was just over 80 grains so I decided to use 80 grains with 2Fg in my 20 gauges, and 60 grains in 28 gauge.

View attachment 14155

LD
Last shells I bough like 4 years ago still had the equivalent on it.
 
powder, when I got it it still had some powder in it. I hate to step on toes but, Im convinced their were a lot moore flasks used in the 19th. century than we use today. There are so many original flasks available by the survival rate is huge. I know by research a lot of English flasks were being imported in the 1830s. Stands to reason there were an ample supply of them at places like Pittsburgh,St Louis etc. I guess they arrent as romantic as the picture of a powder horn on a frontiersman. If they werent used frequently then why is the survival rate as great as their are available, Powder horn survival is considerable a lot less except for the highly ornament, scrimshawed ones that were family heirlooms.Research may find they were fairly common, evan in the frontier regions, Tom

It could be that you're right, but there aren't that many 100gr rifle]shotgun loads in the average-sized powder flask. Most of them seem to have been used for handguns, even in the USA where there have always been far more handguns that over here in UK or even the rest of Europe. Remember too that a horn is a natural product, and the survival rate of them compared to any metal flask is likely to be somewhat less.
 
T Foley,

In the UK and over here, I think a great many of the powder flasks would be used with shotguns. a flask throwing between 2 drams and 3 1/2 to four drams would suffice most of the time, but we do see a lot with markings for over four drams.
(110 grains approx.) That these larger flasks, (or those which dispense larger amounts of powder) were used mainly with shotguns, can Maybe be determined by the fact that they have larger nozzles, and it maybe tricky to dump the charge down the (often) smaller bore of a rifle with them.
Yes, today dumping the pre-measured charge from the flask directly into the barrel is frowned on, but was quite safe with the "fireproof" tops and was the way it was done at that time. I am just mentioning this as historical fact though. Not saying you should do it this way nowadays :)
 
Remember 16.
16oz in a pound. 7000/16 = 437.5gr (1oz).
16drams to an ounce. 437.5/16 = 27.3drams

Also, in reference to shotshells:
Is it dram equivalent to a BP charge or BP Velocity ?
 
No where is the Smokeless powder type designated on the modem shotshell box.

Anyone know of any test comparing known drams of BP in a shot-shell and its corresponding Velocity?
 
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