doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com SHOOTING SMOKELESS LOADS IN BLACK POWDER GUNS

What the Chief said! I loaded LP loads for my Damascus & Twist guns for a while, then as my volume of shooting tapered off I shoot what Guns shoots..

What happened, after the advent of "modern" smokeless loads in the 20's, was that ammo makers started putting two warnings on their shotshell boxes: Don't shoot in guns with Damascus/twist barrels, and don't shoot in guns with chambers shorter than 2 3/4" (assuming that was the length of the shell in question). Those warnings made sense, not because Damascus was unsafe with smokeless nor because the extra 1/4" hull length was a problem in and of itself, but because those modern shells could develop higher pressures than those which Damascus/short chambered guns had been built to withstand.

Eventually, those warnings were (incorrectly) translated to mean that no smokeless loads are safe in Damascus guns, nor are any 2 3/4" loads safe in guns with 2 1/2" chambers.

My Father, Grandfather and Uncles were all convinced that those Damascus and Twist barrel warnings were just an attempt by the manufacturers to scare consumers into buying a new gun. I know my Father's 1896-vintage AE-Grade Remington Hammerless Double and my Grandfather's 1890-vintage PH-Grade Parker Bros. double both digested many, many, cases of Super-X and Federal Hi-Power shells over their lifetimes. Dad's AE-Grade is still looking fine in my gunroom. He shot it up to when he quit hunting in 1988 after he turned 81.

For two or three decades now I've heard this moaning over modern "SAAMI" spec ammunition. But, I've never seen any definitive information on what the pressure specs were for earlier nitro powder loads like say 3 1/4 drams of DuPont (or Schultze, or E.C., or Hazard, etc.) bulk smokeless powder and 1 1/4 ounce of shot, or say 26 grains of Infallible (or Ballistite, etc.) dense smokeless powder and 1 1/4 ounces of shot??? I have an early Western Cartridge Co. brochure on their Super-X load, and it says with their new progressive burning powder they are achieving this level of performance at lower pressures. But, I think that means a 3 3/4 dram equiv. load and 1 1/4 ounce of shot, while with the older bulk smokeless powders the heaviest 12-gauge loads offered were 3 1/2 dram.

Have been loading and shooting low pressure smokeless as a substitute for black, for about 35 years. All digits and optics and other extremities still intact. No evidence of pressure issues with
any damascus guns. Only problem is that now that the "dangerous damascus myth" has been debunked, it is no longer possible to buy all those best quality "unsafe" British guns at bargain prices anymore. Great ride while it lasted.... As Larry says, many thanks to the ammunition makers who managed to convince a couple generations of shooters to condemn damascus guns. Worked for me...

Any guess on the date of this advertisement? I have an 1897 vintage elsie hammerless I am working on right now, I am thinking it was made after this advert?

Are the Winchester featherlight shells light enough to be included in the same class with the RST and Polywad loadings?


Thanks,
CHAZ

Researcher, can't help you with the pressure specs on those "pre-modern" smokeless loads. However, I did save a discussion of proof and service pressures on old, short chambered guns--courtesy of Greg Tag, going back quite a few years. Greg quotes Calvin Goddard in the May-June issue of "Army Ordnance", as reporting that Hunter Arms proofed its short 12ga guns at 14,300 psi. Parker's short 12's had a service pressure of 9500 psi, and both Parker and Ithaca proofed at about 15,000 psi. Given the date of that article, I think the psi figures are more likely to be LUP, since crushers were still being used back then. So, using the "ballpark" psi to LUP conversion of +1,000, we get a service pressure of around 10,500 psi for those guns. That figure is further substantiated by Arthur Curtis in a 2-part article in the American Rifleman, also in the 30's, addressing the issue of long shells in short chambers. Curtis, who had worked in the firearms industry for about 40 years and was with Marlin at the time he wrote the article, suggested that the "modern" loads increased pressure by about 1,000 psi. That fits quite nicely, because it would mean they were at the current SAAMI 12ga service pressure standard of 11,500 psi.

Like your father and grandfather, back in the "day"--although my day isn't as long ago as theirs--I shot numerous high brass 1 1/8 oz pheasant loads through a pre-war Sauer and an Ithaca Flues, both 16's and both of which had had the chambers lengthened. Can't say that it did anything bad to either of those guns, although I would tend to err on the side of caution today, knowing what I now know (much of which I've learned here).

"Greg quotes Calvin Goddard in the May-June issue of "Army Ordnance", as reporting that Hunter Arms proofed its short 12ga guns at 14,300 psi"

Larry, Hunter Arms never had a "short" 12 ga., all 12ga. guns from the begining were 2 3/4" chambers.

I guess about as close as we have to the early pressures are those mentioned from the early 20's. These were recorded for a 3DE load with 1�oz shot. As noted older loads used up to 3�DE of powder with the 1�oz of shot. The 3 dram measure of DuPont Bulk load certainly did not fall into what we refer to today as "Low Pressure"

In an srticle on Shotgun powders in the american Rifleman back sometime in the 1950's they stated that Infallible was the same powder as Unique. 26 gtains of Unique with 1�oz shot is not a particular low pressure load even in paper cases with card & filler wads & can only really assume that neither was the same load using Infallible.

Another point is that when some of the old makers stated "Bored For Smokeless" this often refered to the size of the hole down the bbls. Many of the older gunes were "Bored" for the use of the all brass shelles with black powder & thus had oversize bores. Re-loading with smokeless was generally discouraged at that point of time. Thus a person who intended using smokeless was expected to be buying factory loads put up in paper cases with standard wadding so the barrels were bored nearer to standard gauge size.

I personally still prefer for my sound damascus guns to shoot relatively fast powders with loads in the 7-8K psi range than to court disaster with those Super-Low pressures in the 5K range acheived by underloading the slow powders. In my Lefevers by comparsion to the loads listed in their catalogs even the 8k loads are quite mild.

Miller, I don't know much about the other gun manufactures, and if some of them back then were overboring for black powder, I can only go from bore readings I have taken on L.C. Smiths from 1884-present. What I have found is that most were ,725-.730, and most of the early hammer from Hunter Arms were .725.
My Skeet's gage only reads to 12 1/2" and from the breech most were bored so, funny thing is going from muzzle down 12 1/2", past choke area, most read .720 and some slightly lower. This is true for both hammer and hammerless. I'm wondering if this is what L.C. Smith Maker and Hunter Arms referred to as "Multiplied Choke Boring" for better patterns.

I had read somewhere that 12 ga. bores were .729 -.002 +.000. I couldn't find it in both of Brophy's books, but I'm sure it is in there. I know that in his "L.C. Smith Shotguns" he lists on one page the bores, and the 12 ga. as now being .732. Also listed is the 16 ga. as .662, so this had to be in the 1930's when the change was from .650 to .662.

I was taught that if it was a three decimal reading the tolerances were +/- .005 unless noted. I do see in some, the tolerances were + .000 -.002.
How well their quality control was, who knows.

Why do you ask Two Dogs ...?