Testing loads over snow

1861colt · Nov 28, 2019

Long ago, I remember someone that stated the best powder charge for your rifle was accurately determined shooting when there is snow in the ground. If you go out and see unburned grains in the snow, the load is too high, . Drop it down till there is no powder left on the snow and you have reached the point of peak efficiency.
Has anyone actually tried this?

buford87 · Nov 28, 2019

This is something you see mentioned a lot. I have never done it. The more I study on it the more likely it would seem that any powder un-burned inside the barrel would be burned once outside the barrel. I am believing this is an old myth such as placing tje ball in the palm of your hand and pour enough powder over it until it is covered and that being the best load for your rifle. This is just my opinion..............watch yer top knot..............

Loyalist Dave · Nov 28, 2019

buford87 said:
I am believing this is an old myth such as placing tje ball in the palm of your hand and pour enough powder over it until it is covered and that being the best load for your rifle.

That's not a myth..., that's simply messed up over time. The cover-the-ball-with-powder when it's in your hand is a field expedient loading technique for a) your measure has become lost or broken, or b) you need a quick rifle reload in combat, as the enemy is closing on you (you don't use a patch in the second scenario).

LD

Loyalist Dave · Nov 28, 2019

1861colt said:
Drop it down till there is no powder left on the snow and you have reached the point of peak efficiency.

I like that folks have said to you the word "efficiency" and "powder" when speaking of black powder..., because BP is really inefficient.

That is, I believe, modern reloading of smokeless powder thinking, drifting into black powder shooting.

I've also wondered how folks can tell the difference between black specks of burned powder in the snow vs. unburned powder? It's not like after hitting the snow they collected it and tested it. When I swab my bore at the range, I sometimes get black bits that look like powder grains...are these unburned and left in my barrel ?

I've noticed that normally folks that mention this aren't adding that they did it to determine their own load?
I've also noticed that they don't explain why you need to be efficient with your BP load?

And I've noticed that the load data charts show that from 60 grains to 90 grains for every ten grains of powder I get an average increase of 155 fps... so if a bit of the powder isn't being burned, it's not a problem, and I don't know many traditional shooters using the "big three" calibers of .45, .50. or .54 that go above a 90 grain load.

LD

EC121 · Nov 28, 2019

Because black powder has charcoal in it, there will always be a certain amount of ejecta due to incomplete burning and ash. You might go for minimum particles. but I doubt you will ever see no particles. A painters canvas drop cloth will also work.
Give it a try it might work. The target will tell the story.

Carbon 6 · Nov 28, 2019

buford87 said:
This is something you see mentioned a lot. I have never done it. The more I study on it the more likely it would seem that any powder un-burned inside the barrel would be burned once outside the barrel.

Correct!
If powder is un-burnt then there are un-burnables within it. That is assuming that what you see on the snow isn't burnt.
Either way, I think it speaks to the quality of the powder instead of the load.
From all the reading I have done, two things stand out about powder,
1. The source of carbon is very important.
2. The source of niter is also.

They seem to define quality.

poker · Nov 28, 2019

I used 90 gr pretty much all the time in traditional 54-58 cal. But mainly due to a belief that there was some extra oomph there for deer hunting. This was back in the 70’s and 80’s. Then in the 80’s started with a Kahnke and Gordon himself was shooting 100 gr with outstanding accuracy so that became our new benchmark. But that 100 gr worked much better in his hammer guns than the traditionals.

Grenadier1758 · Nov 28, 2019

buford87 said:
I am believing this is an old myth such as placing tje ball in the palm of your hand and pour enough powder over it until it is covered and that being the best load for your rifle. This is just my opinion..............watch yer top knot..............

There is a bit of validity in that old myth. Once for one of the Woods Walks that I participated in, we didn't have cartridges rolled for our Land Pattern muskets (okay, Brown Besses) and a couple of members didn't have measures for their charges. We decided to use the pour the powder over the ball. Place your thumb on the ball and drop the powder down the bore. Fouling was significant enough to hold the bare ball in place when dropped on the powder. Performance wasn't super accurate, but then our performance with paper wrapped cartridges wasn't much better.

Later when I had access to a scale I measured 10 loads and the average weight of my 2fg black powder was 90 grains. Deviation wasn't too bad. Certainly good enough for us to take the field.

Sparkitoff · Nov 28, 2019

I've tried something like this but on white sheeting. Using a 30 grain, 50 grain, 80 grain and 100 grain load, they looked identical. I should have took photos. My friend brought this up but insisted that 10-grains over marked caliber was always ideal from 45 caliber up, and 10- grains under from 45 caliber down in rifles. IE: 45 cal = 55 grains; 50 cal = 60 grains; 54 cal = 64 grains; 58 cal = 68 grains. Going the other way, 44 cal = 34 grain; 41 caliber = 31 grains; 32 caliber = 22 grains; 28 caliber = 18 grains. Some of that seems to make sense but his point and belief was that any more powder than that did not create any gain due to "UNBURNED" powder. We used his .50 caliber to conduct the white sheeting experiment and found no discernable difference of "powder" on the sheets. Turning to the paper targets and shooting over a chronograph, we did find out that accuracy and velocity were not optimum with his "loads" and in fact some of the charges that he was using were the poorest for accuracy in his respective rifles, and up to a point more powder always gave more velocity. Up to a point - my own .54 has more velocity with a 80 grain load than 100 grain load. Somewhere around 90 grains is where it takes a dip of nearly 100 FPS. Now, pouring powder over the ball - I have no idea if that is something worthy of repeating.

Grenadier1758 · Nov 28, 2019

When you measure the powder, the ball is in the palm of your hand, the palm is flat. you pour powder from the horn on top of the ball to have a cone of powder just barely covering the ball. Hold the ball with your thumb as you cup your palm to pour powder into the barrel. Works best with large gauge smoothbores as the slight differences in powder charge really doesn't matter much with respect to accuracy or performance.

The best video demonstration of this technique takes place in the movie "Allegheny Uprising" when Claire Trevor is asked to demonstrate the effect of firing a rifle at 20 paces. They only trusted Claire to load the rifle. She deftly tucked a patch in her cheek, took the ball in the palm of her hand, poured powder over the ball, with her thumb on the ball dumped the powder down the barrel, took the patch out of her mouth and placed it on the muzzle of the rifle, thumb started the ball and set the ball home with the ramrod. She primed from the horn and fired the shot to complete the demonstration. There were a lot of other historical innacuracies in that 1939 movie, but the loading of the rifle was spot on.

Zonie · Nov 28, 2019

A number of years ago, there was an article in Muzzle Blasts, written by a guy who wondered about the, "Pour the powder over the ball until it just covers it" for a powder load.

He poured the powder and then measured the weight of the powder charge. He repeted this with his wife and with his daughter holding the ball thinking that would improve the accuracy of his tests.

I don't recall what the actual powder loads he ended up with were but, in all cases, the powder load was a little less than the old, "Use the same amount of powder as the bore size" method. That is, use 40 grains in a .40 caliber, 45 grains in a .45, 50 grains in a .50...

After doing the tests he came to the conclusion that using the powder over ball method wouldn't produce a dangerous load but it might be on the weak side of what a person might want to use.

longcruise · Nov 28, 2019

Sparkitoff said:
I've tried something like this but on white sheeting. Using a 30 grain, 50 grain, 80 grain and 100 grain load, they looked identical. I should have took photos. My friend brought this up but insisted that 10-grains over marked caliber was always ideal from 45 caliber up, and 10- grains under from 45 caliber down in rifles. IE: 45 cal = 55 grains; 50 cal = 60 grains; 54 cal = 64 grains; 58 cal = 68 grains. Going the other way, 44 cal = 34 grain; 41 caliber = 31 grains; 32 caliber = 22 grains; 28 caliber = 18 grains. Some of that seems to make sense but his point and belief was that any more powder than that did not create any gain due to "UNBURNED" powder. We used his .50 caliber to conduct the white sheeting experiment and found no discernable difference of "powder" on the sheets. Turning to the paper targets and shooting over a chronograph, we did find out that accuracy and velocity were not optimum with his "loads" and in fact some of the charges that he was using were the poorest for accuracy in his respective rifles, and up to a point more powder always gave more velocity. Up to a point - my own .54 has more velocity with a 80 grain load than 100 grain load. Somewhere around 90 grains is where it takes a dip of nearly 100 FPS. Now, pouring powder over the ball - I have no idea if that is something worthy of repeating.

I ran a 28" barreled TC .45 loaded with 445 ball over a chronograph with ever increasing charges up to 120 grains of 3f and it gained velocity with every increase in charge.

Zonie · Nov 29, 2019

While there is no doubt that increasing the powder charge does increase the velocity of the ball or bullet, there is a "law of diminishing returns" that enters into things.

Notice in the chart below, up to a certain powder load, the velocity increase with each increase in the powder charge is fairly high. That's because the powder is burning completely while the ball/bullet is still in the barrel.

After this rapid climb, additional increases in the powder charge do not increase the velocity as much as it did with the lighter charges indicating that some of the added powder is burning after the projectile has left the barrel.

The powder charges in this graph increase from left to right, starting with 40 grains, in 10 grain increases and ending with 120 grains.
The velocity (on the left) were taken from the "Lyman BLACK POWDER HANDBOOK & LOADING MANUAL", 2nd edition.

Now, I'm not saying the powder that was not used to propel the ball/bullet ended up on the ground. Based on my own visual observations and pictures of guns firing black powder, I have no doubt that most if not all of the unburned powder burns up in the large fireball that adds to the fun of shooting muzzleloaders.

PYRO is short for Pyrodex.

bang · Nov 29, 2019

I've heard similar but with sound. Boom vs pow vs pow with some crack. Boom being more than needed, pow little under and pow with crack being top of lean being powder efficient.

Loyalist Dave · Nov 29, 2019

bang said:
I've heard similar but with sound. Boom vs pow vs pow with some crack. Boom being more than needed, pow little under and pow with crack being top of lean being powder efficient.

What I heard from Dixons is that one old way was to up the load until the fellow standing off to the side a good bit, heard the crack. It wasn't an efficiency thing though. It was the point which we know today to be the ball going super sonic. So because of the "crack", back-the-day the shooter would then be confidant that the ball would get the job done.

Another source mentioned to me that the crack = the ball would get the job done, BUT also would likely stop just under the far side of the animals pelt, allowing the hunter to retrieve the ball and recast it later.

LD

1861colt · Nov 29, 2019

Zonie said:
I have no doubt that most if not all of the unburned powder burns up in the large fireball that adds to the fun of shooting muzzleloaders

This could be the answer to the theory of testing over snow. It has already been brought up that what you may see in the snow of unburned powder can also be impurities that wouldn't burn. Now with the above quote, the conclusion is the flash at the muzzle would be like a jet blast that would consume all extra powder that made it out chute. That jet blast consumes all the powder regardless and it would also shove the ball just a little bit faster, hence the continual increase in velocity no matter how much powder you use. So the only fallout isn't unburned powder but unburned impurities. I was in error thinking that when the initial charge is beyond what would be consumed in the barrel, the extra powder would create additional dead weight mass that has to also be shoved out the muzzle making an additional drag coefficient and a failure to really increase velocity. Logical physics is once again showing that black powder shooting defies all sorts of laws of physics.

M. De Land · Nov 29, 2019

I need to put some visquine on the ground in front of one of my big bore muzzle loaders, load a stiff charge, collect the fired ejecta and see if it will still burn.
I have witnessed on really cold days ,many times, unburned grains of smokeless powder laying in the snow at the range that was not burned in the least by muzzle flash. It was still the same light green/grey color as when loaded.

Carbon 6 · Nov 29, 2019

M. De Land said:
It was still the same light green/grey color as when loaded.

Are you color blind ?
If not what powder are you shooting ? Black powder should be black.

Griz44Mag · Nov 30, 2019

Carbon 6 said:
Are you color blind ?
If not what powder are you shooting ? Black powder should be black.

I did see a fellow at the range once that was loading white pellets in his plastic gun with a monster scope sitting on top, staring though a $1,000 dollar spotting scope sitting on a $500 tripod at a target 50 yards away. Said he was going muzzleloader hunting.

I politely informed him he was mistaken, that thing he was shooting was not a muzzleloader.
A few seconds later, as the flinter disgorged her twin clouds of white smoke, and tore the center out of the target, I looked over at him and said, "Now THAT'S a muzzle loader."

SamTex1949 · Nov 30, 2019

In reference to the movie Alhegeny Uprising
here is link to full version to watch

Testing loads over snow

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