Powder Charges & Round Balls
 

Here's some food for thought.

A .50 caliber gun shooting round balls over 85 grains of FFg Black Powder gets something around 1550 fps at the muzzle. That's works out to about 1020 fps at 75 yards (with 433 ft.lbs. of energy).

If the load is reduced to 70 grains, muzzle velocity will be about 1450 fps, and velocity at 75 yards will be 990 fps (with 409 ft. lbs. of energy).

So, going from 85 grains of powder to 70 grains reduces the powder charge by 18%, the velocity at 75 yards by only 3%, and the energy at 75 yards by only 6%.

To add to the dilemma, the trajectory for the two loads will be almost exactly the same, differing by less than half an inch.

Change the load to FFFg, or to Pyrodex, or to Triple seven and you get progressively higher muzzle velocities with an 85 grain load. But the reduction ratios work out about the same if you reduce the charge of each of those powders to 70 grains.

I know all this. So why do I still use loads in the 85 to 95 grain range in all of my round ball shooters. :s13: :confused:

It's called "Tim Allen Syndrome" MORE POWER! Or so your brain is telling you you have more power with a higher powder charge. Even when you KNOW you are getting little to no more impact poundage at distance. Aint kinetic energy fun!

I shoot whats most accurate. My flinter shoots 70gr 2fg and my 58cal perc. shoots anywhere from 80 to 120gr 2fg.

Accuracy would be the only reason when shooting those loads.
Can you run the numbers on a .58 shooting PRBs? Right now I am using 100 gr of FFg and getting phenomenal accuracy.

if its goex 2fg you are in the 1590-1604 range. At least thats what my .58 is shooting with 100gr goex 2fg, .020 patch and .570 ball.

100 grains of 2f in a .58 caliber according to T/C Owners Manual

1428 fps 1263 foot pounds of muzzle energy. Max load recommended is 120 grains of powder.

80 gr if 2f = 1302 fps and 1050 foot pounds of energy. More interesting is they claim 90 grains will be most accurate in rifles. Mine likes 100-110 grains in my GMB. But it does shoot very well with 90 grains. I just felt, like Semisane if I could push it that little bit harder, it would be more ... "deadly."

My results.

seems right for your .575 ball

Thanks guys. I would guess then with my renegade with the .58 GM barrel 1:70 on it and shooting 100 gr of Goex FFg I'm likely getting about 1450-1475 fps giving me upwards of 1275 FTLB of muzzle energy. That should be more than adequate for any whitetail out to 100 yards and I believe would also wreck a black bear's day.
I plan on using my .58 this coming week here in PA and later on in November for blackies.

depends on a lot of things, elevation especially. Im at 7300 feet and you guys are at sea level.

Getting back to the .50 caliber. Here's an interesting chart that helps understand the ballistics mystery of round balls.

Now those numbers are really pretty accurate considering a 29" vs a 32" bbl. (plus a bit of extra powder in the 32").
That should be a pretty good bear thumper. I can't wait to find out come late November. God willing and he puts one in front of me.

Says you...

Why don't you come out here and huff your scrawny butt up some of these PA mountains then tell me (or bronko) we're at sea level.

BPS

LMOA@ BPS. Have to kinda sorta agree with MD on that one BPS. I lived in Pa for a good bit and been hunting there for decades. Altitude is minimal compared to Colorado and other western mountainous states. I'm thinking the highest elevation in Pa is close to 4k.

that just means you are out of shape. I know round is a shape but its just not the right shape for mountain climbing! :D

At 12,500 theres no mountain in PA that can compare to a stroll in the mountains like this one was.

Well I've hunted several western states (not yet above tree line) and although you are higher in elevation from all I've climbed in Idaho, Montana and Colorado, I can honestly say that our mountains here in NC PA are just as steep. Then you compound that steepness with fresh fallen autumn leaves with some rain or worse, snow on them and you can have a miserable time trying to claw your way up to the top. The rockies are a bit more forgiving in that regard than our little appalacians. And coming down is worse yet. One slip and you can become a human toboggan very quickly.
I recall one time being a younger lad. My parents had bought me one of those "Hot Seats" for hunting. It hooked to you belt via a "S" hook, was basically a vinyl pillowed filled with styrofoam balls. It did a great job of keeping your butt warm on those cold rocks/logs. One day coming down on one of those said snow covered mountain sides I mis-stepped and slipped, landed squarely on the Hot Seat which immediately transformed into a rocket sled. I believe I was close to approaching Mach II when the seat departed from my belt. I continued on for another 30-40 yards before my feet dug in deep enough to stop me. I turned around looking up at the hillside seeing hundreds of tiny styro balls rolling down. The tattered seat laying on top of the snow. Needless to say I never used one of them again.

Speaking of food for thought . . .
 

Hi, new member here. I was doing some ballistic calculations the other day. My granddaughter has accompanied my son hunting (woodchucks, mostly). I don't know if she will want to hunt, herself, but if she does, I hope she will take to muzzleloading. So, I did some calculations, based on the caliber .54. Other calibers would be proportionally similar. I looked at the 230 Gr PRB with 120 Gr of black, and the energy at 100 yards. This distance was mentioned as a practical hunting distance, and I agree. Now, take this 100 yard energy, and achieve it with a bullet 230 Gr in weight, say a 230 XTP. The increased ballistic coefficient of the bullet will allow you to get that 100 yard energy figure with a much lower muzzle velocity, using half the powder charge (60 Gr), and a lot less recoil. So, why would we subject my granddaughter (or anyone) to more recoil than necessary, to achieve the same result? Well, not exactly the same result; the wind drift would be less, also.

I suspect some people would object to the use of sabots, but they're nothing more than a thick patch, in essence.

Anyone see a fallacy in my calculations?

OldBob47

sorry bout round balls just do not complete in energy like a conical or sabot. I've never heard of anyone complaining about their round ball fragmenting on an animal LOL.

Balls just straight up kill by cutting what ever is in their path, plus bone fragments ( with any bullet actually)

If we went by ft lbs energy and whats needed, the eastern forests would still be full of elk from 2-300 years ago.

I know, "you" (not directed at anyone on the forum - just in general) lost animals with balls,You've lost 'em with powerbelts, you've lost'em with xtp's, or you just didn't get a blood trail.... Uh huh...

As for a young shooter and sidelock, You can't go wrong with a 50 or 54 and 60-70gr of powder behind that ball.

Well, that's half the problem.
 

That solves the recoil problem, all right, but it makes the wind drift problem even worse. The 60 Gr load was what I had in mind, giving a MV of about 1450. At that speed, though, the wind drift at 10 MPH, which is by no means an unusual condition where I live, will be about a foot at 100 yards. Even at 50 yards, the windage will still be enough to drift the ball from the center of the whitetail kill zone to outside that zone. This means that even if the hunter does everything perfectly, you can still wind up with such a poor hit that the animal is lost. That's not sporting. Most hunters I know are honest enough to take the blame for a poor hit, but I wonder if many of these poor hits are not a fault of marksmanship, but a failure to use effective munitions.

BTW, I picked that 230 XTP for a purpose. The bullet has a good reputation, the velocity range is well within the "best terminal performance" range, and the lack of a cannelure might reduce the chance of fragmentation. The ballistic coefficient is much higher than a PRB; its all good.

I haven't read anything that the terminal performance is inferior to the PBR, so again my question is, why use round balls?

OldBob47

I also have the T/C Renegade in .58 cal. and love e it. It seems to shoot the PRB better then conicals. This is what I ended up with when trying to come up with a good load:



Seems like the gun likes PRB. I'm good with that and expect to nail a nice juicy doe this year with it.

One thing funny about round balls, due to their shape, the faster you push them, the faster they slow down...Add to that the inefficiency of black powder where it reaches a place where more powder simply doesn't give much more velocity and you find that a charge of 70-80 grs of powder is fine for a .45-.54 round ball...

And, let's not even get into burning patches, which more powder will do...

And more powder also leaves more crud in the barrel...

When I finished my .54 I started with 120grs FF, after a few years I went to 100grs FFF and then down to 80grs FFF...I suspect that 70grs would be plenty but with a 9 pound rifle and a 38 inch barrel there just isn't any real felt recoil so I figure I'll leave it alone...

Another thought as well, a pure lead ball sure flattens pretty easily even at slower velocities...I've seen them flatten to about the thickness of a nickel...This retards penetration...So it's really not what you want to see...

Need a recipe
 

Rafsob,
I'm at a disadvantage here. I don't have any recipes for "paper target". :poke: Kidding, but I never said RBs couldn't be accurate, and a properly expanded bullet begins to resemble a RB, once in the target. It's mostly the ballistic compromises that the sherical shape has that makes it such a poor choice, when better is available. A member here posted an account of shooting a deer, and watching it flop around for maybe a full minute, without even the mercy of a humane finishing shot. So all these folks are congratulating him. If I had had such an experience, I would certainly be looking for answers on how to avoid a repeat performance. I'm sure my Dad would have been disgusted with me.

Terminal effect is maybe more important than accuracy, so said Randy Brooks in the Rifleman article on his company. I agree, obviously. "Bang, flop" is the expected performance, not a happy accident.
OldBob47

Lead alloy?
 

nchawkeye,
I came to question the idea of pure lead quite a few years ago. I was casting round balls for use in shotguns, mostly using Lyman recipes. I began to get what looked like pressure problems in the 20 (never used pure lead in the 12s). While checking wound
channels with newspapers, I noticed that the bases of the projectiles were flattened. That had to be happening inside the barrel! So I tried wheelweights, and the pressure indications
disappeared.
Now, throwing a .600 or .720 WW ball through a deer will likely be effective, but maybe not with a .54, So, what about running a different bullet alloy, maybe 25%ww/75% pure lead? Fiddle with the mix until there is no sign of Base deformation. You would have to test this at different velocities, simulating different ranges. It would be more work that I would want to do, so I would take the lazy way out and use a 250 Barnes in one of Del Ramsey's "patches". :s4:
OldBob47

Well, I started hunting deer with a flintlock in 1977, not planning on changing now...I've rolled my own for 35+ years or so, get the lead from different sources...I think I probably have enough to last me the rest of my life... ;)

OldBob, there's no way the base of a ball can be flattened inside the barrel, unless perhaps there's a wad between the powder and ball, or the ball was pounded mighty hard against the powder charge in the loading process. With nothing between the ball and the powder pressure is equal on all parts of the sphere exposed to the charge.

I've recover numerous pure soft lead balls in .50, .54 and .58 caliber from the sandy loam behind the 50 yard target frame on our rifle range. Unless they struck another bullet in the soil upon impact they remain almost perfectly round.

I've only recovered one ball from a deer (all others were pass throughs). It was a .535 ball shot into the chest of a 155 lb buck on a head on shot. The ball stopped against the inside of the rib cage, stuck between two ribs. It remained round and you can see where it impacted the side of a rib.

Here's that ball.

Using other than pure lead for a full bore conical or PRB is setting yourself up for problems. I recently discovered this personally. You can alloy the lead if you are going to use a sabot or, as at least one of our forum members uses, a paper patched bullet with good results. The problem with using too hard a bullet is that the lack of expansion at the lower velocities. This is one of the reasons why saboted pistol bullets are used a lot. Because they are designed for similar velocities.

Shotgun
 

Semisane,
You hit the nail on the head. I should have been more explicit. I was working with cartridge shotguns, and I was using a wad, and a hard one at that. Accuracy was all about wad selection. Softer wads, like the Winchesters, deformed, and the accuracy was erratic. At one point I contemplated using a .135 card wad to support the wad floor, but I never did. Lazy slug that I am, I just went to using the harder Federal wads. I was getting 2-2 1/2 inch groups at 50 yards out of a smoothbore, so I stopped there. Intended use would be similar to crossbow range, 50 yards max.

Interestingly, I had the same experience out of a TC Black Diamond with Buffalo Bullets sabots. The bullet was pure lead, and had a nice boattail shape. Accuracy was decent, bullet expansion in newspapers looked good, but the nice boattail turned into a bevel base. The only place that could have happened was while it was inside the barrel. The loads weren't heavy, either, since the plunger-style bolt would blow back and crup up the underside of the scope.

My guess is that pressure IS equal on all parts of the base, but that the pressure cause the bullet to compress lengthwise, increasing pressure. I think the best solution is to use a flat-based bullet of stronger construction, and alter the nose to cause expansion.
OldBob

False tradionalism
 

Bronko22000,
And the use of modern pistol bullets to replace the roundball is exactly what I am suggesting, for improved terminal performance. I don't know where this roundball thing came from. The first standardized US military rifle was the 1803 Harper's Ferry rifle, and it had a 1-49 twist. Obviously it was intended to be used with conicals. Running a conical, just below the speed of sound, decreases wind drift. You want to avoid the sonic barrier for best accuracy. If you can't keep your speed above the speed of sound all the way to your target, then you start your bullet below the speed of sound. They knew all of this well over 200 years ago. This is why I asked the question of why anyone is still using a roundball. Other than in a smoothbore of, say, .600 or above, it makes no sense. Most of the subsequent posts offer no reasoning other than, "That's the way we've always done it."
OldBob

Perhaps because round balls kill deer just fine when used at appropriate ranges. :D

The primary advantage of a conical is you can get a heavier projectile into any given bore size, resulting in a projectile with a higher ballistic coefficient and thus a flatter trajectory.

go out and get some in the field experience with a 54cal round ball and report back.

.54
 

Oh, I like the .54. Thanks to Del Ramsey, we can load them with just about any bullet from .45 to full bore. This gives us versatility unmatched by any other caliber. However, (I'm trying to figure out how to say this nicely) I do not consider use of a roundball smaller than .600 to be ethical game harvesting. You may do whatever your ethics dictate. I will use the most effective combination that I can find.

OldBob

Well DANG, OldBob. You're considering the Colonist, the Frontiersman, and all other early Americans unethical? It turns out Davy and Daniel weren't the heroes I thought they were. :D (Sorry, I couldn't resist that one.)

Sorry to tell you this OldBob, but the old roundball has stacked up more meat than you could count. If used within it's limitations there is absolutely no concern about ethical kills. I personally don't like them all that much except for maybe in using a .32 cal squirrelie rifle that I may just pick up soon for giggles. May just get ole semisane to fix my blind rear up with one that I can actually use :D But for a deer/elk/moose rifle I will stick to the more efficient connies and sabots but NOT because of ethics concerns, just a personal preference. If I were to go get me a .54 or .58 then I would probably consider a round ball.

Subsistence hunting
 

The rules for hunting from necessity are different from sport hunting. It doesn't matter how many you wound or kill needlessly as long as you get meat for the table.
OldBob

Comparisons
 

[QUOTE=super_hunt54;4224824]Sorry to tell you this OldBob, but the old roundball has stacked up more meat than you could count.

So has the 22LR; happens up here now and then.

If used within it's limitations there is absolutely no concern about ethical kills.

I had this discussion maybe 40 years ago with a bowhunter. The gear of the time was not like we have today, but "Charlie" had a really good track record. He really was an expert hunter and archer. I argued to him that we shouldn't base game regulations on what the expert can do with his chosen equipment. The difference between the expert and the ordinary hunter is that the expert has a keen awarness of what the limitations are, and when those limitations have become even more constrained by changing field conditions, wind, primarily.
I saw a deer a few weeks ago, just across the road from my house. It looked so close that you'd think you could have hit it with a thrown rock. I went inside and got the rangefinder, The deer hadn't moved, and it was 49.5 yards away. That's right at the edge of the range I would shoot with a roundball shotgun load, the crossbow I will be using, or any roundball ML. If I had been presented such a shot in season, would I hesitate? I hope so, but some people might not. People screw up shots like this with a scoped .30-'06! Go out and actually listen to the shooting during rifle season. You OFTEN hear strings of 3,4,5,or 6 shots! This isn't because those 150 Gr. '06 pills are bouncing off the deer, its because they screwed up their first shot. And, these multiple shot strings are the rule, not the exception. ML hunters are probably not much better these days, with game commissions inventing new seasons to maximize profit. So, the most ethical game harvest will occur when we encourage the ordinary hunter to use the very best tools for the job.

I personally don't like them all that much except for maybe in using a .32 cal squirrelie rifle that I may just pick up soon for giggles. May just get ole semisane to fix my blind rear up with one that I can actually use :D But for a deer/elk/moose rifle I will stick to the more efficient connies and sabots but NOT because of ethics concerns, just a personal preference.

Yeah, your preference is for Bambi to take an immediate dirt nap when you squeeze the trigger. Mine, too.

OldBob

Actually my preference is based on existing equipment in my safes. I own 2 .50cal with both having 1:28 twist. That aint roundball twist.

Twist rate
 

Well, it is and it isn't. I guess that covers it all.:s4: That is, twist rate is only a number. What we are trying to acheive is an optimum rotational speed, which does not degrade as velocity does. I want to eventually acquire a Lyman Trade Rifle. They have a 1-48 twist, supposedly not ideal for roundball. Wait a minute! The rotational speed of a bullet exiting the muzzle of a 1-60 twist gun at 1800 FPS would be the same as a bullet exiting a 1-48 twist at 1440 FPS. This fits in with my idea of using a 230 XTP at the latter velocity. The bullet would be marginally above the speed of sound at 100 yards, avoiding accuracy problems from crossing that barrier. The energy would equal that of the roundball with MV of 1800 FPS. The benefits would be the reduced wind drift, and the greatly reduced recoil due to using about 60 grains of powder. That's what abandoning the roundball gains you.

With a 1-28 twist, you would have to drive the roundball much slower, say 840 FPS. That's not a practical hunting load, but it might make a mild and economical plinking or target load. Substitute a cast 185 .451 bullet in a sabot for your .50 cals, and you might have a squirrel harvester. All kinds of ways to skin this cat.

OldBob

230gr XTP & 60 grains of powder? Now who's being unethical

Unethical?
 

Not me. Now, bear in mind, while we may question the velocity vs charge weights that a manual publishes, the velocity loss is subject only to the science of ballistics. Data obtained is measurable and repeatable.

Lyman's data on page 260 of the Black Powder Handbook, 2nd edition, shows 120 Gr of FFg propelling a .535, 230 Gr roundball to 1803 FPS. Remaining velocity at 100 yards is 1093, and the energy is 610 ftlbs. On page 237, 60 Gr of FFFg gives 1435 FPS. Here's where we stop and substitute our XTP. Hornady says the BC is .188. So, I took the data from and old Speer #11 for a .190 BC, on page 520. Starting at 1400 FPS, remaining velocity at 100 Yards is 1149, and the energy is 673, about 10% higher than the roundball. Actually, both the velocity and energy would be higher still, due to the extra 35 FPS over our 1400 FPS data. However, no need to get that precise. The XTP is better at 100 yards than the roundball, with half the powder.

According to Hornady's data, the expansion range of the XTP is 600-1650, so the middle of that range is 1125. Our 230 XTP load is just slightly above that at 100 yards, and does not exceed the velocity expansion range even at the muzzle. A little Googling show that people who have used this bullet seem to really like it.

What part of this strikes you as unethical?

Old Bob