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

sounds like barrel wall thickness is a decision making factor here. so, what are minimum barrel wall thicknesses recommended for the various barrel materials? and how much of an issue is bore pitting?

My bad, JDW. Good catch. The Hunter proof figure I reported was correct (14,300 psi), but that was for the 2 3/4" 12ga. The 2 5/8" service pressure figure of 9500 psi was the then-current SAAMI standard, which was what Parker used for its short-chambered 12's.

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.

You come from a very smart family. A manufacturer has to sell the latest product to stay in business.





45 years later and we are still shooting damascus.

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.

The ability measure a load by "lead crusher" was around from the 1890's. The powder makers had a tough time keeping the pressures the same from batch to batch. So the proof houses had their own tools to accomplish this.






Pete

re: the ithaca letter...i have also heard that it is dangerous to shoot english made guns made prior to ww1. seems like they used an acid flux to flow the solder used to join barrels. the theory is that the acid slowly eats the steel and leaves the barrel walls very thin behind the solder joints. logically, it makes sense...supposedly, only the english used an acid flux. seems like everyone else knew better. now, that really doesn't make any sense...

In early Lefever Arms Co catalogs it was recommended for black powder use to load wads two sizes larger than the gauge. As best as I can determone this was speaking of actual wad diameter. By the time i started reloading just prior to the plastic age a card wad in a box marked 12 gauge actually measured to about an 11 ga. While those marked 11 for use in the brass shells measured to 10ga dia's. This would have been the wads efever referred to as "Two" sizes larger than the bore gauge. Many 12ga Lefevers of that era do have bores which run large in the 11 ga area. These same catalogs advised if getting the gun for smokeless to order it "bored" for standard wads only one size larger than gauge.
I can only conclude the term "Bored for Smokeless" has reference to the bore diameter & not the wall thickness. I think by this time regardless of the "Bore" most US makers were using suitable wall thickness over the chambers to handle the smokeless loads of the era. You won't find many guns from the 1890's or later having very light breeches to their bbls.

i have several damascus and twist barreled guns, ive used IMR7625 in all of these guns, no issues at all, great performance, i have 2 grade A remington model 94"s both 2 stripe damascus, also a lefever heavy damascus sidelock 12 gauge with 3 strip damascus , and a small english sxs hammer gun, twist barreled, im loading in federal hulls 25.5gr of 7625, WIN AA12 wad, 1 1/8oz loads, with WIN 209 primers, load is about 7000psi, works fine, i use winchester target hulls also with 23.5gr same components, only diff is the hull, pressure runs at about 6300 psi, both loads work fine, i use#6, #4 , also heavier shot sizes, BB doesnt offer a high pellet count but it patterns well

hope it helps,

The other issue to remember, when evaluating vintage pressure data, is that you get different psi readings, crusher method vs electronic transducer. Once we went to the transducers, reloading manuals corrected for the difference by referring to psi taken using lead crushers as LUP--or lead units of pressure. So, when you read vintage literature concerning pressure--certainly anything written before WWII--when you see psi, it actually means LUP. Thus, the psi figures I gave, above--for Hunter Arms guns and for the then-current SAAMI standard for short-chambered guns--are actually LUP. Which means, ballpark, you'd have to add about 1,000 to get the current psi equivalent.

I shoot six Remingtons, five Parkers, and an English SxS, all damascus. The Brits still proff damascus guns today, so I don't believe for a momount the acid flux crap. Over the years I've used PB, 700X, 800X, Red Dot, Solo 1000, Nitro 100, Promo, and Clay Dot for low pressure shells [ anything around 7000psi or under ]. Only problem was when I thought I was loading Pyrodex and used 94grs of PB - according to Tom they were 24,000psi. Not good. But that was 5 or 6 years ago and now I have one s. stage press for smoke. My early 12ga Parker hammerguns have bores at .745, which was pretty much the standard back then. The Parker 10 hammergun is at .800. But they all have such heavy breechs I don't worry. Paul