Jeff may want to weigh in here but I can tell you for a fact that the ASSRA targets are copies of the old 75’ bulls. They are now shot at 50’ because most galleries that is all they have. I recently have seen a target that was scaled correctly for 50’ they are so small it will be hard to score.

40 Rod

40-Rod is correct and I agree with Keith as well.  Our 50' targets are official for the ASSRA and ASSRA sponsored events.  If anyone else wants to print their own idea of the ideal 50' target, that's ok as well...go for it.

2 explanations: 
#1: I am not trying to change what we do.  But the Tuesday Afternoon Schuetzen Verein competes (+/-; with more - than +).  We have only an outdoor range, where one of the guys brings the 50-foot target boards from home.  If the wind blows hard, the target boards blow over, or, like last Tuesday when George's back went out, the 50-foot boards did not show up.  We shoot on the club pistol range, with fixed target boards at 25 yards.  On "No 50 foot" days, we shoot at 25 yards.  As you might expect, our scores are much reduced.  Hence my question "What does a 75-foot target look like?"

#2:  I have been doing a lot of shooting of Shorts, trying to determine the accuracy potential of the present day stuff.  But how do our results compare with the accuracy of Shorts back in the gas-light days?  There were lots of very high scores recorded.  In my tests of modern Shorts, I used our gallery targets at 75 feet, from a machine rest.  Many modern (post WW2) shorts will not consistently hit the 25-ring, but from the records, all the Semi-Smokeless Shorts would cut the 25-ring.  

Example:  The indoor Hudson matches of 1898-1909 were won with scores of 2475 or better.  And that was offhand!

Hence my question "how big was the 75 foot target back in the gas-light days?". Were those old Shorts really that good?  Or was the target just a bit bigger?

I posted earlier that I received via snail mail an original gas-light (or maybe incandescent light on a cord with a string) target from Dave Arawinko.  The 25-ring is 15/32" or .4875" and the black (20-ring) is 1 and 15/16".  That is bigger.  So all shots at least cutting the 24 ring would be 30/32".  

Back in 1917, in The American Rifle, Townsend Whelen wrote that with Shorts, using fresh ammunition (shelf life 6 months), from rest, with a good rifle, a good shot should be able to keep all shots within a circle the size of a Mercury dime.  That's 0.700".

My thinking is that if you can shoot a 240 on our gallery target, you might have squeaked out the odd 250 back in the gas-light days.  Can you shoot 10 scores of  240 or better in a row?  If so, I think you might have been in the running.

A couple of guys have tried with black and 4227, and (AFAIK) only in .22 LR. The mixture ratio is about the same as in duplex loading, about 90 % black and the rest smokeless.  You can mix the two together, but with any jostling, gravity takes over and you wind up with a duplex load of questionable uniformity.  As I understand it, the present smokeless powders all have greater density than black.  To make a mixture gravitationally stable, both kinds need to be the same density and grain size.

Semi-smokeless was not only more dangerous to make than either smokeless or black, it had a short shelf life.  The smokeless component was not stable over time.

Yes, the settling out of the denser powder would be a problem, unless the charge is under compression, which would not be unreasonable. But it would likely be difficult to get sufficient uniformity, even to begin with, for top target results.

Although smokeless powders have a greater energy density than black powder, the specific gravity is actually lower. Wikipedia gives—

1.70–1.82 (mercury method) or 1.92–2.08 (pycnometer)

—for black powder.

(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

Data sheets for IMR give—

1.65

—for both single and double base smokeless powders.

(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

The specific gravity is lower still for Trail Boss, at—

0.6

(You need to Login or Register to view media files and links)

Still, the problem remains, of course!

We shoot both rimfire and centerfire matches on the standard 50' target. I score the centerfire matches from the center of the bullet hole, no matter what the caliber is. I use a mylar overlay that has lines at the scoring rings. My overlay is old and getting more difficult to use. Do anybody know where I could buy one commercially? I know I should be able to print one from my computer. If I got stuck doing that, what is the diameter of the 25 ring, and what are the distances between each ring?