It's a common term used and you are right, just a place to start. Generally it does make a good plinking load unless you want to go even lower but to the most accurate your gun will shoot. For pistols and small caliber rifles, they generally drop it down to half the caliber per powder grain. i.e. 32 cal rifle 16 gr powder or 15 to round it.
-
This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.
Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades -
Friends, our 2nd Amendment rights are always under attack and the NRA has been a constant for decades in helping fight that fight.
We have partnered with the NRA to offer you a discount on membership and Muzzleloading Forum gets a small percentage too of each membership, so you are supporting both the NRA and us.
Use this link to sign up please; https://membership.nra.org/recruiters/join/XR045103
All of this misinformation is really getting old
- Thread starter N.Y. Yankee
- Start date
Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:
William Sublette
45 Cal.
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2020
- Messages
- 671
- Reaction score
- 1,288
I own/ operate a muzzleloader shop outside of Pinedale Wyoming. I spend a ton of time hearing about the “proper way of things”, believe me! It sometimes makes for a very long day
Where at ?
I'll stop in next time I'm thru.
Does not that phrase refer to a type of firearm?
According to the BATFE....a black powder muzzleloader is not consider a firearm....cap & ball refers to bp muzzleloader, whether pistol or long gun. Of course that could change in the next 3.5 years to refer to them as "assault weapons".
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2012
- Messages
- 666
- Reaction score
- 782
That is a great movie. took my wife to the theatre in Denver Center for Performing Arts also to see it.
Erwan
45 Cal.
Here is something wrong or something you don't know :
We always refer to calibers in fractions of inches and bullet and powder weights in grains. The calibers and powder measurements are always in imperial measures and this is valid for all Europe and even more...
When I say take the caliber .36, .45 or .50 it is always in fractions of inches and never in millimeters, so for a caliber .45 I will put 45 grains of powder as a base load and then I will adapt according to the results obtained in order to obtain the optimal load...
For example, in my Tryon for 50m I have a load of 40 grains, which for information makes 2.60 grams of 3Fg because 45 grains for a small .45 Minié bullet (300 grains) from a Hensel mold is a load too important for a short distance. With bullets of the same caliber, but with my Tryon for 100/200 meters, the bullets weigh 500 grains and the powder charge is sixty grains which makes ~4.00 grams (or about 4cc) of 3Fg...
I pass on the value of the French grain which does not have at all the value of the American grain: 1/576 of an ounce of avoirdupois in place of 1/437,5 of an ounce (I believe) or 0,0648 gram...
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2020
- Messages
- 6,840
- Reaction score
- 18,846
- Location
- On the Border in Idaho looking at BC
i use splatter targets so i don't have to walk to the target to see the rare times i hit it.Let me see here, unless you had binoculars, you had to walk 150' to check that target, but you couldn't walk 200' to get your measure. How far do you walk when your huntin'?Just yankin' your chain friend
my form of hunting the last few years is "still hunting" two steps and watch for a couple minutes. this way i can be out of the wife's sight in about an hour!ya see i have MS and if i move faster than that I usually end up on my face. or butt. not that one is prettier than the other but one hurts while the other is numb.
I still manage to get my tag filled every season.
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2005
- Messages
- 6,735
- Reaction score
- 4,884
Sir, there is no 'American grain' weight. The pound weight consists of 7000 grains. The pound referred to is the Troy weight pound that replaced the earlier and lighter Tower pound of twelve ounces.
Quote - Pound, unit of avoirdupois weight, equal to 16 ounces, 7,000 grains, or 0.45359237 kg, and of troy and apothecaries’ weight, equal to 12 ounces, 5,760 grains, or 0.3732417216 kg. The Roman ancestor of the modern pound, the libra, is the source of the abbreviation lb. In medieval England several derivations of the libra vied for general acceptance. Among the earliest of these, the Tower pound, so called because its standard was kept in the Royal Mint in the Tower of London, was applied to precious metals and drugs and contained 5,400 grains, or 0.350 kg, whereas the mercantile pound contained 6,750 grains, or 0.437 kg. The troy pound, believed to have originated in Troyes, France, superseded the lighter Tower pound in 1527 as the gold and silver standard. Increased trade with France led also to the adoption of the 16-ounce avoirdupois pound in the 16th century to replace the mercantile pound.
As an aside, I was not aware that the French used inches for bullets and grains for powder.
Also, this is a quote from ctc-castelnau site -
Quelle poudre et quelle charge :
Il existe 2 principales poudres : la PNF2 et la poudre Suisse N°1. Cette dernière est un peu plus chère mais très régulière en granulométrie et un peu plus puissante ce qui permet des charges plus légères. En outre la Suisse N°1 laisse moins de résidus. La charge de poudre dépend de l'arme et du tireur. En général entre 0.8 grammes et 1.3 grammes de poudre mais chaque arme à un dosage préférentiel qui donne les meilleurs résultats. C'est donc une alchimie, qui fait aussi le charme de la poudre noire, pour trouver le meilleur chargement en poudre et diamètre de balle pour optimiser les résultats. Pour débuter et sans balance de précision, il est possible de doser simplement en volume avec une douille de 9mm qui, remplie, fait de l'ordre de 0.9 grammes de poudre.
No grains there, eh? Of any kind.
Certainly, my experience of shooting French-made rifles - I began my shooting career on school trips to France and Switzerland from 1962 onwards - like Lebel, Gras, MAS, FAMS et al, makes no mention of inches or grains - millimetres, grams and metres/sec seem to be used to denote ammunition diameters, weights and velocity. I've obviously overlooked something here in my last sixty years of shooting.
Last edited:
Daniel
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2019
- Messages
- 1,600
- Reaction score
- 2,412
Troy weight is used for Gold in the U.S it is not used for gun powder nor bullet weight? I believe this is correct but I am usually wrong when I think! LOL!
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2005
- Messages
- 6,735
- Reaction score
- 4,884
You are correct - 'The troy pound, believed to have originated in Troyes, France, superseded the lighter Tower pound in 1527 as the gold and silver standard.'
BUT - 'Increased trade with France led also to the adoption of the 16-ounce avoirdupois pound in the 16th century to replace the mercantile pound.'
So we use the avoirdupois once and pound. We always end up using a French word, somehow! 'Avoirdupois' just means, 'to have weight'.
Erwan
45 Cal.
Hello,
You have not forgotten anything from your sixty years of shooting, just like me and I congratulate you for it.......
All the French weapons and mainly the old military weapons after the Revolution of 1789 are in millimeter and it is an exact fact ......
We also have our French "grain" that, by my job, I used as well as the "inches" (27,07mm instead of 25,4mm now) which are French measures now little used except in certain trades of which mine: I was a watchmaker-jeweler, thus....
....The grain is theoretically an old unit of mass representing a seventy-second of "Gros", worth about 53.114 milligrams in France (division of the Paris pound). It is approximately the mass of a good grain of barley or wheat. For pharmacists, the scruple is worth 24 grains.
In jewelry and watchmaking, the grain is still used in its decimal definition worth 49 milligrams (about 1/576 of an ounce of avoirdupois or a little less than a quarter of a carat), to express the weight of batches of pearls or oriental diamonds.
This aside, I used the expression "American grain" because we are on an American forum, but I could be wrong, and on an English forum I would have said "English grain"...
To come back to weapons, it is true that the military culture imposes/ did impose a particular language, for example a .50 caliber in the army becomes a 12.7mm caliber...
For the rest of the population and the civilians that we are, a .50 caliber is a .50 caliber, a .22 caliber is a .22 caliber, a .45-70 is a .45-70, a .45-70-500 is a .45-70-500, etc..., etc..... Never millimeters in calibers: always fractions of an inch and grains.
Never a question of powder weight: always grains. Imagine, just for fun, a 45mm caliber loaded with 70 grams of black powder or a 45mm caliber.
The military used to say, a long time ago now: caliber 11.43mm for caliber .45, but that was a long time ago and only for military weapons...
In short, apart from these few particular cases, the good people always give, as far as weapons and ammunition are concerned, the caliber in fractions of an inch and the weights in grains, which is logical since calibers and weights are given in fractions of an inch and weights in grains since the beginning of their existence.................. except for a few rare guys diehards in the process of disappearing for whom it is always necessary to make the conversions in metric so that they understand, but there, it is another history.......
PS: you will certainly find a lot of mistakes that need to be corrected and I apologize, this explanation in a language that is not really my native language has been for me quite long and complicated, in general I do shorter, with as many mistakes, but much shorter ....
Last edited:
I came into this world a genius and seem to know less and less every day.
Robby
Robby
Think I'm the only BP shooter at our range so nobody else has much to say, they might notice that I'm there 4 hours and only shoot 10 times....haha
When I'm sighting in a newly acquired Muzzle Loader, I often shoot about 24 rounds in 3 hours. Try and do that with a box of 20 cartridges!
Pete G
76 Cal.
Something with no chemicals = NOTHING....
(Don't trust atoms; they make up everything)- Joined
- Aug 6, 2005
- Messages
- 6,735
- Reaction score
- 4,884
Hello,
You have not forgotten anything from your sixty years of shooting, just like me and I congratulate you for it.......
All the French weapons and mainly the old military weapons after the Revolution of 1789 are in millimeter and it is an exact fact ......
We also have our French "grain" that, by my job, I used as well as the "inches" (27,07mm instead of 25,4mm now) which are French measures now little used except in certain trades of which mine: I was a watchmaker-jeweler, thus....
The grain is theoretically an old unit of mass representing a seventy-second of "Gros", worth about 53.114 milligrams in France (division of the Paris pound). It is approximately the mass of a good grain of barley or wheat. For pharmacists, the scruple is worth 24 grains.
In jewelry and watchmaking, the grain is still used in its decimal definition worth 49 milligrams (about 1/576 of an ounce of avoirdupois or a little less than a quarter of a carat), to express the weight of batches of pearls or oriental diamonds.
This aside, I used the expression "American grain" because we are on an American forum, but I could be wrong, and on an English forum I would have said "English grain"...
To come back to weapons, it is true that the military culture imposes/ did impose a particular language, for example a .50 caliber in the army becomes a 12.7mm caliber...
For the rest of the population and the civilians that we are, a .50 caliber is a .50 caliber, a .22 caliber is a .22 caliber, a .45-70 is a .45-70, a .45-70-500 is a .45-70-500, etc..., etc..... Never millimeters in calibers: always fractions of an inch and grains.
Never a question of powder weight: always grains. Imagine, just for fun, a 45mm caliber loaded with 70 grams of black powder or a 45mm caliber.
The military used to say, a long time ago now: caliber 11.43mm for caliber .45, but that was a long time ago and only for military weapons...
In short, apart from these few particular cases, the good people always give, as far as weapons and ammunition are concerned, the caliber in fractions of an inch and the weights in grains, which is logical since calibers and weights are given in fractions of an inch and weights in grains since the beginning of their existence.................. except for a few rare guys diehards in the process of disappearing for whom it is always necessary to make the conversions in metric so that they understand, but there, it is another history.......
PS: you will certainly find a lot of mistakes that need to be corrected and I apologize, this explanation in a language that is not really my native language has been for me quite long and complicated, in general I do shorter, with as many mistakes, but much shorter ....
A great post, Erwan - we both learn things from each other, which is a good thing, and in the spirit of our fascinating sport!
All CIP ammunition of the modern kind has packaging like this from Lapua -
All ammunition made by the fourteen CIP nation members has packaging marked with the weight of bullet and velocity in metric as well as imperial measurements. Some, like Lapua here, puts the metric measurements first - others, vice versa.
But of course, we are discussing muzzeloaders, before the arrival of a mass-produced metallic cartridge. It would be interesting for me, anyway, to learn how the French military described their paper cartridge load for THEIR Minié cartridge.......
Meanwhile, this is a post from 'Les Armes a Poudre noire' with apologies for the lack of accent - my Japanese keyboard does not help me here -
'J'ai fait des éssais avec 2.8, 3.0 et 3.2 grammes de PNF1 avec les quelques amorces et balles minié que j'avais. Résultat: meilleur groupement à 3.0 grammes de 12X12 cm. Vu qu'à cette distance avec mon Hawken en 45 ça ne sort pas du 9-10 de la C50, je sais que je peux faire mieu avec un rechargement approprié.......'
It seems that not all your compatriots do it the same way as you do....
Last edited:
Supposedly wiping between shots with a damp patch accomplishes the same thing.
However, I do remember trying to blow down the barrel at Shooting Matches on a hot summer day. I had to wrap my hand around the muzzle and blow through that. The barrel was too hot for my lips!
hanshi
Cannon
I NEVER forget anything......that I didn't know anything about to start with. But some of these dolts know it all just because, well, they KNOW it all. The world will never run out of these...these..., well, you know. Age creates neither knowledge or wisdom; only research and testing does that. The Earth is overpopulated with old, and young as well, who know only the wrong thing to do and nothing else. There is far more sewage out there than knowledge so watch where you step. It is therefore incumbent upon all of us to be somewhat skeptical and not parrot everything we read or hear.
I find it very relaxing myself. I have no worries other than getting a nice group. Now, if that doesn't happen for some reason, then I might not be so calm.
