ORIGINAL: frontier gander
Exactly! I have a book and the guy was doing testings on the hawken rifles and he was using more charge than todays 150 grain mag load. Im looking at it now and he was shooting a .53 hawken, prb, 187grains ffg powder. I personally have used more than 150 grains powder in my winchester just to see how it shot and i stopped at 170 grains pyrodex RS. I even have a video of Roger Raglin saying he is shooting a " i forget what bullet weight"700ish grain slug with 200 grains of pyrodex. He was hunting cape buffalo.
F.G.,
I would point out that your "experiment" with 170 grains loose Pyro and an unknown projectile weight differs completely from the experiments to which i referred. Unless you worked out means to discharge the rifle so that you and others could not be harmed.
A am sure that Roger was not using a .50 cal rifle. How much pressure for a given powder charge and bullet weight depends on the bore diameter.
. . . .
David,
Your gunsmith friend has a wealth of knowledge. Seems it takes a barrel obstruction to burst a barrel (short start condition). I would think a ramrod could too, but your post causes me to question that. I would be interested in knowing if those that burst were known to be short started before discharging, i.e. , the bullet/ball lodged tight in fouling while being loaded with the operator aware.