Target Sports

QSA-STYLE SHOOTING: THE BLACK POWDER CARTRIDGE RIFLE

Created on 18th May 2009

KEN HALL with a newcomers' guide on how to reload for the black powder centrefire cartridge

WHEN I have written about this subject before, I mentioned some of the choices available when selecting a suitable calibre for the black powder centrefire cartridge for QSA (Quigley Shooting Association) style shooting and promised some more info on loading the .45-70. I hope the following will help answer some common queries that crop up when you start to reload for this superb cartridge.

In 1873 the US Army introduced its new round for the Trapdoor Springfield Rifle, the 45-70-405 (.45 cal with 70gn of black powder behind a bullet weighing 405gn). This remained in service with front-line troops (although with a later upgrade to a 500gn bullet, along with its more user-friendly 55gn charge for the carbine) until the adoption of the .30-40 Krag in the 1890s, and well into the 20th century with the National Guard. With a suitable bullet and load this calibre is capable of scoring well on targets at ranges up to 1,000yd.

First, let's look at the case. .45-70 brass is readily available at around £40 per 100 from manufacturers such as Winchester, Remington, Star-Line and Federal with most dealers keeping a stock of this calibre, which means you can usually get your hands on some without a wait. When it comes to choice, all these cases are up to the job, although many shooters have their favourites. It is to be noted, however, that Starline uses thicker brass which does have some effect on case capacity, which we will deal with later.

Secondly, the bullet. There are a bewildering number of bullet shapes and sizes out there. Ready-made ones tend to be around 405gn or less and are cast of a hard alloy, with a hard lube designed for use with nitro powders. These are less than ideal when used with black powder at long ranges. A heavier bullet, 500gn to 540gn, cast of a 20:1 or 30:1 lead/tin mix, with deep lube grooves filled with a natural, softer lube to keep leading to a minimum is what is required. For this you will need to cast your own. Moulds are made by many commercial suppliers like Lee, RCBS, Saeco, Lyman and Redding, as well as by several custom makers in the USA such as Hoch, Magma Eng, NEI Handtools and Paul Jones. As for bullet shape, those with a Postell shape or rounded nose tend to be favoured among most of today's marksmen using single-shot rifles. For my standard Quigley load I use Lyman's 457125 mould. This is the original 500gn government round-nosed bullet introduced in the 1880s - if it worked then, why not now? Of course, if loading for a repeater with a tubular magazine, then only flat-nosed bullets must be used for safety reasons. Many shooters believe that a perfect base is preferable to a perfect nose and so most custom moulds are of the nose pour type, as opposed to most commercial offerings which are of the base pour design which can leave an irregular base after the sprue is cut off. Again, this is a personal choice as custom moulds are much more expensive than their commercial counterparts. Bullets can also be swaged from a soft lead core, but as these generally emerge without lube grooves they are used mainly for paper patching, which may be covered in a later article.

When it comes to choice of powder it's probably best to start with whatever is available locally or what is recommended by an experienced shooter, again, there are a few suppliers and several brands and grades, but some powders are going to work better than others in your rifle and it can take a lot of experimenting to find the one that suits best. After much trial and error, I have settled on 70gn of Swiss No 3 (ffg grade) for my handloads.

All cartridges need a source of ignition, and this is achieved by a relatively inexpensive, simple, yet extremely reliable item called the primer. Primers come in various standard sizes determined by the case they are designed for. For our purposes, the size is known as ‘Large Rifle', and they can be purchased as ‘standard' or ‘magnum.' The latter are often quoted as essential for reliable ignition of black powder, but I have found no discernable evidence to corroborate this, and indeed many shooters I have spoken to in the USA are having great success using ‘Large Pistol' primers.

Let's look at assembling a round of ammunition. I will assume that the handloader has already bought the necessary equipment and is familiar with its use. First, case preparation. Start with a clean case. If it is new and unfired, it will first be necessary to full length size the case, ideally trim it to length. The flash hole can be de-burred at this stage if required with a simple tool costing only a few pounds. The next stage is to expand the neck to allow the bullet to be seated without damaging it on the case rim. Finally a suitable primer is inserted into the pocket in the base. Once the case has been fired then it is not necessary to resize it at all, providing that the case is only to be used in the same rifle. This may also help to prolong the case life.

The next stage is to charge the case with powder, but before we do that we need to determine how much powder to use. What is very important with the black powder cartridge is that there is no air space left in the case when it is assembled. While it is virtually impossible to use too much powder, you can easily use too little. To work out a suitable charge, then, we need to determine how much volume is left in the case when the bullet is seated to its optimum depth. A simple way of doing this is to place our chosen bullet in the chamber and slowly push it towards the muzzle, using a suitable dowel or pencil, until it just touches the lands of the rifling. If we then measure from the base of the bullet to the rear of the chamber, reducing this distance by a few thou to allow a little clearance, this will give us the amount of space behind the bullet which needs to be filled with powder. Mark a prepared case and then weigh it, fill it to the mark with your selected powder using a drop tube and weigh it again. This will give you the minimum charge required. Because I am able to seat the bullet well forward in the case, 70gn just comes up to the mark. Once the fibre wad is added it is only necessary to compress the powder by the thickness of the wad, in my case .060".

Now is a good time to tell you about a superb piece of kit, which can be made very simply from materials you already have. Once your cases are fire formed, you will have no need for the neck expanding die from your set, so take the die and remove the internal button by loosening the collet nut. Using a lathe and some brass or aluminium rod, turn a simple insert, one end of which will just fit inside the case and the other in the collet. This will be your powder compressing tool; it is used in your press and is set so that the bottom of the insert is level with the bottom of the bullet.

Any measure designed for black powder metering can be used to dispense the charge. I use an old Belding & Mull powder measure; these are very efficient, safe and can still be sourced on the internet. I mentioned the use of a drop tube, which is a really handy piece of kit that is commercially available but also easy to make. I already have a 36"brass powder funnel which I use for my muzzle loading rifle (although a shorter one of about 24" will suffice), and this is fitted to a simple wooden frame allowing me to trickle the powder into the case which settles it more evenly getting more powder in the same space.

Using this method I have no problem getting 70gn of Swiss No 3 into the case, despite many experts saying this is impossible. Next I put a .060" thick vegetable fibre wad over the powder to protect the base of the bullet and to prevent the soft lube from leeching on to the powder. An alternative to the fibre wad can be cut from waxed milk or fruit juice cartons with a 7/16" wad punch. Then the case is raised into the powder compression die to the level determined earlier. At this you will feel more resistance if you are using Starline cases because the thicker brass slightly reduces the internal volume.

Next, a little about preparing the bullet. Ideally the bullet should be sized and lubed. Bullets do not always emerge from the mould at exactly the same weight or diameter, so to compensate for this we can do two things. First, the bullets are weighed and batched. They can then be passed through a sizing die which will size them to exactly the required diameter (which can be found by slugging the barrel) and at the same time inject the appropriate lube into the grease grooves. There are several specialist black powder lubes on the market including SPG, Ox-Yoke Wonderlube, Lyman's Black Powder Gold and my current favourite White label BPCR, which can be imported from the USA at a very reasonable price. RCBS, Lyman and Redding make sturdy lubrisizers - not cheap but recommended. Lee makes a very inexpensive lube and size kit. This is designed for bullets tumbled in alox and is not suitable for filling the deep grooves with the soft lube required on our bullets, but the sizing die can be used if the bullet is first lubed by hand.

All that remains now is to seat the bullet which can be pushed by hand into a fire formed case, or seated with the die into a new and sized case. A note on bullet seating: if the compression die was not used in the previous step then the powder will have to be compressed by the bullet. This may cause the bullet nose to be deformed, so take care. In single-shot rifles I prefer not to crimp the bullet in the case, but if you wanted to I would avoid using the roll crimp normally supplied with the die set, but purchase a taper crimp or factory crimp die, or even just run the loaded round a little way into the case sizing die providing the bullet profile allows it.

The completed round is best stored in one of those dedicated plastic flip-top ammunition boxes made by MTM. I prefer the Case-Guard RF22, which holds 22 rounds and allows the round to sit with the bullet upwards - ideal when the bullet is not crimped in place. This is just one person's method of reloading this grand old round - it works in my rifle, but it is not guaranteed to work in everyone else's. Please feel free to email with questions and comments to khall6548@aol.com.