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It might be that Unique burns a bit slow for the task. I use a faster pistol powder or shotgun powder- and, Cream of Wheat;-)

Tried it out in the garage, discharging into a trashcan. I had ear pro on. Not too loud. Wife was on the porch listening to music with ear buds in and didn't hear it. 14gr Unique was enough. Sorry, still using up the ancient grits.

CJF,
You don't need to feel sorry about using grits, it's your project and your house, you can do what you want. BTW discharging into a trashcan is a good solution to the "mouse attraction problem", thanks for the hint.
Mike

Mike,

The trashcan even had one of those hinged lids, so everything stayed inside. So in the garage 14gr was 1 for 1 successfully blowing out the case. I replicated that load and tried it at the range for another 8. Only one formed. Weird. I did not yet try Curl's method for annealing the case mouths. That's next.

The one round I did try was 12 o'clock on the paper at 25yds, but quite high...4-5". That was with a 350gr unpatched .458" bullet over 45gr 4198.

Also shot two 500BPE rifles with NfB loads. Went well. Will start a different thread on those results.

Chris

That's great about the hinge lidded trash can. It must be working like a giant suppressor. Strange about not working at the range. I wonder if the powder is getting mixed in the grits during the trip and not burning the same. Of course, Unique is down about 32 powders on the burn rate chart. I've used faster powders like Bullseye or 700x or Red Dot or Clays, but I would start with a lighter load of those and work up until it does the trick.

An update on fireforming and the 500/450 and 450 Lancasters.

First, I did anneal cases using the kitchen stove (gas) and the hot fingers method. I tried new Jamison 500/416 cases for this, not the ones that I've tried forming twice with Unique. So annealed then loaded with a light charge of a fast pistol powder, HP-38, plus grits and kapok to hold it in. Of the 10 cases I brought, 9 formed. At least one still has a tight mouth; perhaps not annealed soft enough. Next step is to anneal the original 10 cases that resisted forming and re-try 14grs of Unique to see if it was the original lack of annealing or the powder that failed.

I was quite excited to try 5 previously formed cases as live rounds in the 500/450 rifle. Load was 4198 with kapok and a .458" LFN 350gr bullet. First 3 rounds were touching. 4th opened it up and I don't think I pulled that one (who knows?). 5th came back to the original 3. So the 4 were 1" center to center, but the 5th opened it up to 2". Range 30yards. Very promising.

On the flip side, the 450BPE rifle (3.25") really didn't like some black powder rounds I had left over from an earlier effort with a different rifle. Those were 110gr 2Fg Swiss, 325gr FN 20-1 SPG, using bullets from RCBS mould 45-325FN, .458”. Unpatched. Velocity was too low at 1618fps. Results were all over the map.

Will post more pictures soon.

The 500/450 and some promising early results with 350gr lead bullets, unpatched, and 4198.

Here are a few more pics of the earlier Lancaster, in 500/450 3.25" that I've been working to form cases for from 500/416. So far, the few rounds I've completed and fired have shown promise that this rifle will shoot as well as it's new brother, the 450BPE.

From what I have read and from my experience with my Lancasters, the bullet needs to be sized for the minimum bore size and soft enough to upset to fill the bore under BP push. I got very good results with PP soft bullets in my 450 BPE. I also got excellent results with my little 360 EX using naked cast bullets for a 38 Special but horrible results with hard cast, GC bullets (keyholing @ 50 yds and side of barn at 100yds.)

Chris,

Your Lancaster double rifles are beautiful! Thanks for posting them.

Curly