Powder loads. I shoot a few different designs 1874 Sharp’s, 1885 Winchester, and 1895 Marlin Repeater all in 45-70. They are all modern remakes of the originals so no issues about shooting normal ( not hot loads) thru them. I just picked up a Remington Rolling Block, and being 140 years old ( although it has been rebarreled) how fragile is the action of the old Remington compared to a variety of other single shots? I cast 405 grain GC bullets, and use them in all my others, but do not plan on using black powder loads.

40_Rod wrote on Dec 1^st, 2017 at 9:31am:


That’s already slightly over my normal load velocity, of approx 1400 FPS that I use in the modern Sharps and Winchester Ss’s. I’ve used 39.0 grains of H4895 with the 405GN GC bullets, and they work beautifully for hunting loads. I have only recovered one bullet, and that was after penetrating 5 1/2 Feet of Elk thru the back end. 
    Reading thru the Hodgdens reloading web sight, they say a 60% ( of max)  load can be used as a starting point. Even though all my Ss’s have 30”-32” barrels a 36Grain powder charge should be a good shooter.  I’m thinking around 1300FPS. Wish I had a chrono for my range

macktruckfarm wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2017 at 6:00pm:


Texas heart shot

I would not shoot smokeless loads in any rifle built back in the black powder era, a catastrophic load in one is certain body harm.

Pretty much any load that yields 1400 fps is safe in a black-powder rifle.  Run some models in Quickload to convince yourself.  No matter what type of powder, the pressure is the same.   Only extremely fast powders or extremely heavy-for-caliber bullets will be the exception. 

Big problem is double charges.  Possible with many smokeless powders, but impossible with black.   Use good loading practices, and smokeless is quite safe.  

Cat_Whisperer wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2017 at 8:17pm:


Texas heart shot

After stalking the bull from before sun up till about an hour before almost too dark to see, he walked into a clearing, and gave me a perfect straight away shot. No wasted meat, and very effective.

Reading Sherman Bell’s tests of black powder loads and nitro for black loads, it is surprising that for the same velocity, many nitro loads yield lower pressures and less abrupt pressure spike than black powder.
I do shoot a good amount of black in my rifles but must admit that smokeless is appealing too.
That said, I have also read that at around 10,000 psi, the brass case is pretty well adhered to the chamber until pressure drops.  I guess that means that a new barrel on an old action could be expected to tolerate higher pressures than the original barrel/action.  Don’t know if anybody has really tested that theory.

Folks, everything is great when everything is great but when using smokeless powder you better have everything going your way when trying to duplicate black powder loads. Giving the lesser experienced reloader the go ahead on loading their black powder era guns has caused many a tragedy. Heck, even loading a black powder era gun with black powder is dangerous enough in itself but to introduce smokeless powder into the mix is a disaster in the making. The energy of smokeless far exceeds black at any level and all that's needed is an unexplaned obstruction or double charge to get things going bad. Only the most experienced folks should dare tread on a black powder era gun with smokeless and those that have to ask need to be answered with a firm no. First question/answer to the OP should have been is whether the gun has been inspected by a qualified person and if approved use the loads that person suggests,