The trouble is that I'm up in Canada and with the current exchange most of the "oddball" sizes of Bertram brass are running from about $85.00 to $100.00 Canadian per box of 20.  So by the time you add the taxes and shipping .40-90 brass will run me $5.00 to $6.00 each.  And unfortunately I can't order rifle brass from Buffalo or any other American distributor with the current cross border regulations.  (Hey, you never know ... I could be a terrorist planning an attack with a 135 year old black powder single shot rifle ...)  Sigh ...

"Probably not going to shoot it THAT much?"  I'm hoping to shoot the "H E double hockey sticks" out of it!



I'd like to have at least 100 rounds of brass on hand for it with that in mind.  I have a line on some once fired Norma 9.3x74R brass for about $75.00 (Canadian) per 100 so it's probably worth getting some to play around with.  If the rims are too thin for my chamber then I can always shim them up a bit ...

rustyrelx wrote on Jun 29^th, 2016 at 2:34pm:

I hope you keep the thread updated!    Will be interested in your progress.    I've got a 40-63 I just shot at the Quigley.   My bullets are a little over 350gr but it shoots another 317gr bullet I cast very well too.    I initially reamed the inside of the necks but eventually resorted to turning brass instead.    More uniform neck tension going that route with a groove diameter bullet.

A little more progress ... (I hope) ...

Yesterday afternoon I made a batch of home-made lube (50/50 Crisco / Beeswax and a few drops of olive oil) to pan lube some 400 grain RCBS .410 bullets to test in the Ballard.  I left them overnight for the lube to set up and I'm just heading down to the shop right now to cut them out with a modified .45-70 case.  I'll be waiting a while for the 9.3x74R brass to arrive so that I can fire form and test some, but I have 19 rounds of Bertram .40-90 brass that came with the rifle (# 20 had a vertical split in it) and I'm going to test load 19 of these bullets and shoot the Ballard for the very first time this Sunday.  I'll try shooting my 1885 High Wall in .40-82 WCF for the first time on Sunday too, so it should be a fun and interesting day!

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al,
it might pay to only load 1 bullet first.
the reason is that if you have a true pp chamber, the cartridge might be too large in diameter to fit.
if that is the case, please do not rechamber it to take groove diameter bullets, as you will destroy a piece of history.
the 403 stuff so denigrated means that you patch to bore diameter as opposed to groove diameter, then you have the right chamber for the job.
probably will not need to size cases, just finger seat.
all you need is a buffalo arms 2 diameter expander to form cases.
keep safe,
bruce.

Al,   I missed it if you said so earlier but do you still have the original owner available to you.   I be curious to know if he needed to size his bullets.   If he did, I'm guessing, since those came without lube, they are unsized.   Anyway, just a thought in case you have problems chambering the last quarter inch or so with the first dummy round recommended.   if so, a very slight sizing might address that.   Could be you won't even have the problem.   Odd how a small change in recipe can effect the color of the lube so much.  Mine is not so different but way yellower.

PS: I neck sized the cases using my set of RCBS .40-82 WCF dies, belled them slightly, and then seated the pan lubed, as cast, .410" diameter bullets and ran them up into the die just enough to take the bell off the case mouths.  Again, this is just the first round of preliminary testing and I'll see how they perform loaded this way.  Maybe on the next batch I'll try hand seating the bullets without neck sizing in the fire formed cases.  There are lots of different options ...

On a side note though, I also took up one of my 2 Swedish Rolling Blocks in 8x58R Danish Krag and shot it for the first time too.  The test loads were 22 grains of SR4759 (no filler) and an old Ideal 221 grain .325" cast bullet with an aluminum gas check.  It has a typically LONG throat and even seating that big bullet out with only the gas check and one band inside the case mouth it is still 90 thousandths short of the throat!  The good news though is that it put 8 of 10 shots into one nice round group at 50 yards with one flyer slightly low left and one slightly right of the other 8 rounds.  All that was with the crappy folding sights mounted on the barrel too ... no tang sight yet.  Looks like it really wants to shoot!

OK, thanks for the info.  I don't have any Goex Cartridge on hand right now, but could likely borrow a little bit from some friends that are more addicted to black powder cartridge shooting than I have been the past few years.  I do have a couple of part cans of 1F and 2F on hand though, so I'll try those next for comparison.  These initial loads with the 3F were just for basic testing to see what would happen.  I mostly shoot light smokeless loads in my older guns, but wanted to try some more traditional loads in this old Pacific Ballard.

There were about 10 other people up at our rifle range shooting yesterday and they all wanted to know what I was shooting after I touched off a few and created a "fog bank".  Most of them wanted to take a picture of the .40-90 Ballard cartridge next to whatever they were shooting in their rifles!  LOL ...

My young next door neighbour that I took up to the range for a bit of shooting instruction and coaching had a blast (literally) and really enjoyed shooting the variety of guns I brought along.  He especially like shooting my Springfield Armory M1 Garand and was smiling like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland whenever he fired the last round and the steel clip "pinged" out of the rifle and bounced onto the ground.



I taught him a little bit about basic shooting techniques (mostly proper sight picture with open and aperture sights, breathing, and trigger control), how to shoot offhand "standing on your hind legs", and how to shoot offhand using a sling to get a more stable shooting stance.  By the end of the day he was hitting our 200 yards steel gong with pretty fair regularity.  He's totally hooked now and can't wait to go up and do it again sometime soon.  Next time I'll take up a different variety of rifles in some other action types and calibres and we'll continue the lessons ...