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Normal Topic Pressure levels of duplex loads (Read 1715 times)
emmett22405
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Pressure levels of duplex loads
Jan 25th, 2014 at 10:38am
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Is anyone aware of any published or otherwise  reports of measured pressures of bp duplex loads vs bp alone--or the duplexing smokeless powder as the only charge?.  There is a lot of speculation out there but I am curious if there are actually measured results. Thanks.
  
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ssdave
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Re: Pressure levels of duplex loads
Reply #1 - Jan 25th, 2014 at 11:36am
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I saw some graphs from the old shooters.com board from someone that had bought a transducer system and tested blackpowder, smokeless and duplex loads in his rifle.  The duplex loads at low smokeless ratios were interesting, showed a quick pressure rise, then a pressure spike, then a slow pressure decline.  Essentially the blackpowder pressure, then a smokeless explosion, then the normal blackpowder pressure decline.

As I recall, as he increased the duplex charge, the loads showed steadily rising pressure spikes to about 2 to 2.5 times blackpowder pressures until 10% smokeless is reached, and then the graph looks essentially the same as loads with that much smokeless and a filler; maybe just a bit slower pressure decline from the peak than you would get with smokeless alone.  The shooter that had done the testing had the opinion that duplex loads produced HIGHER pressure spikes than smokeless loads alone that produced the same velocities.  His take on it was that the blackpowder ignited faster and built the base pressure of the smokeless so that it effectively burned faster than it's normal burning rate.  His conclusion was that duplex loads were a bad idea for original guns.   

I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion, my take on it was keep the duplex down to way less than 10% of the blackpowder capacity and stop duplexing with double base shotgun powders; use slower rifle powders.  Soon after that I went to straight black anyway, as I found it worked better.  I just had a slow transition from smokeless small bore rifles to blackpowder big bores because of my preconceived notions about blackpowder.

dave
  
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emmett22405
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Re: Pressure levels of duplex loads
Reply #2 - Jan 27th, 2014 at 9:43am
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Thanks for the info-- good recall of the important trends.  I just found, on another forum, a post by John Kort referencing the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook, 3rd Ed. wherein the 45-70 was duplexed with 4759 and FFg powder for various bullet weights (for the almost indestructible Ruger #1 and 3).  For the 2 lightest bullet weights (322 and 366 gr.), the duplexed loads showed the same or LESS pressures compared to either pure black (!) or pure 4759 loads, while for the 420, 426 451 and 464 grain bullets the duplex pressures were 10-20% higher than the bp but way below the 4759 pressures, and the velocities were likewise higher than the pure bp but considerably lower than the pure 4749.  The text noted that slightly higher velocities were obtained relative to pure bp but the burning was cleaner.
  
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