Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

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Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby pitted bore » Tue Jul 12, 2016 1:34 pm

* * * * Warning * * * * Warning * * * * Warning * * * * Warning * * * *

Handloads for the 450 Bushmaster cartridge described below are completely untested by any reputable lab. Use of handloads based on the data below in your own rifle may be dangerous. Attempting to shoot similar loads in your own rifle may result in damage or destruction of your rifle, and in severe bodily injury or death to the shooter or bystanders.

Please consider the description of events in this thread as being intended for entertainment purposes only.
--Bob
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Re: Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby pitted bore » Tue Jul 12, 2016 1:35 pm

1 - Introduction

Google and several other search engines could not find any reports of shooting black powder in a rifle chambered in 450 Bushmaster, so this may well be the first trial. If forum members know of any other attempts, please post them.

The narrative description of this adventure is relatively long, so I'm going to divide it into sections. The verbiage-to-shot-fired ratio is exceedingly high -- sorry.

Short version: I loaded four 450B cartridges with black powder and a 300-grain cast bullet. In 19th century terminology these became 45-52-300 cartridges. I shot them in a bolt rifle, with MV about 1280 fps, and pretty good grouping at 25 yds.

I've been shooting traditional muzzleloading rifles with black powder for a couple of decades. I recently obtained a Shiloh Sharps rifle, but am still at the bottom of a steep learning curve in making it perform. These experiences made me curious whether attempts had been made to shoot black powder loads in the 450B. Finding nothing on record, I decided to try it for myself. The necessary components and tools were at hand. I thought it best to start small, so I began with putting together just four cartridges. The results were encouraging, but it may be a while before I can do follow up work, so I'm making this preliminary report.

To AR users: Black powder probably is a very poor choice of propellant for any semi-auto, because it produces a lot of gunky fouling. (Gatling guns are another matter.)
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Re: Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby pitted bore » Tue Jul 12, 2016 1:37 pm

2 - Assembling the BP cartridges

BP cartridges are loaded with widely varying techniques, and discussions of these may become contentious. Here I'm describing what I did this time around; other BP cartridge rifle shooters may find glaring faults. Feel free to post them.

I selected four Hornady cases that had been fired eleven times with assorted smokeless loads. Case lengths were about 1.690". I primed the cases with CCI 200 primers.

I decided to use sufficient powder so that a seated bullet would sit directly on top of a compressed powder charge. The flat-nosed bullet-seating stem included with the Hornady 450B die set seemed an admirable compression piston. The stem fit snugly inside of unsized cases, but would not enter sized cases.

I used my single-stage reloading press to compress a charge of black powder in a case. In place of a die I screwed into the press a short headless 7/8-14 bolt to serve as a compression anvil (term?). After adding powder to the case, I put the flat-faced seating stem into the case mouth and started it into the case with hand pressure. Then I put the case and stem into the shell holder in the press and raised the ram, causing the head of the stem to contact the anvil and compress the powder.

It required a couple of tries to find the amount of powder that when compressed would produce the proper height for the bullet. I used cast lead 300-grain .452 LFNGC bullets left over from some trials reported in this forum six years ago: Cast bullet trials. I found that 52 grains of Goex FFFg would compress to allow these bullets to sit on top of the powder charge when seated to the cannelure. OAL was 2.110".

Here's a photo showing the box of bullets and the bottle of powder:
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Image
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Here's a photo showing the powder, bullet, loaded cartridge, compressing tool (=seating stem), and anvil:
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Image
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A problem appeared when I tried to crimp the cases to hold the bullets. As stated, did not resize the brass. As a result the bullets were not held firmly in the case, and could be twirled in the case mouth. I tried the Hornady taper crimp die, squeezing the case mouth to 0.475. This didn't solve the looseness problem because the soft lead bullet was also squeezed, and the lead bullet didn't spring back as much as the brass case mouth when released. Applying a side crimp with the modified Lee 45-70 failed for the same reason. So, I fired the cases with the bullets not as tight as I'd have liked. Usually a tight bullet seat is needed in the 450B to aid powder burn, but with BP this isn't a concern.

The obvious solution to problem is to have a compressing stem slightly smaller than the present one to fit into a resized case. Maybe next time.

I lugged the heavy 450B bolt gun to the local range with a chronograph and four cartridges with somewhat loose bullets. A grandson tagged along to make photos and to pick up body parts in case something went wrong.

edited to update image url
Last edited by pitted bore on Fri Aug 10, 2018 11:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby pitted bore » Tue Jul 12, 2016 1:38 pm

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3 - Shooting the BP loads

At the range I put the rifle on sandbags on a shooting bench, and placed the chrono 11 feet in front of the muzzle. Unsure of what to expect, I put a pretty large target at 25 yards.

At the first shot the rifle belched a wonderful cloud of grey smoke. My grandson happened to be downwind and inhaled just as the cloud reached him. Although an experienced shooter of muzzle loaders, he hadn't really ever gotten a good lungful. After the coughing and wheezing subsided, he moved upwind and prepared to take a photo of the next shot.
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Image
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A hole had appeared in the target after the first shot, which was encouraging. The second shot failed to show a hole. Grandson and I wondered what was going on? In the 2010 trials cited above, some of the cast bullets groups were pretty well scattered on the target. I wasn't sure how this could occur at only 25 yards, but I resigned myself to a repeat shotgun-like performance and kept shooting just for the chronograph readings.

Shot number three also was not visible on the target. Oh well. Just for fun I moved the point of aim up about an inch. Shot number four showed a hole an inch above the first hole. We checked the target, and found the first three shots were all in the same hole. This was gratifying, although I'm not ready to assign the magic solely to the propellant. Here's the target:
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Image
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For shots #2, 3 & 4, the chrono showed velocities of 1251, 1286, and 1308 fps, an average of 1282 fps.

Inspection of the cases showed no signs of excess pressure. Only the front third of the cases were smoked, indicating that the cases were sealing the chamber nicely. Primers were nicely rounded.

Here's what the cases looked like after being fired.
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Image
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edited to update image url
Last edited by pitted bore on Fri Aug 10, 2018 11:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby pitted bore » Tue Jul 12, 2016 1:38 pm

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4 - Afterwards

I cleaned the rifle as soon as possible after shooting, putting a half-dozen water-wetted patches through the bore, followed by dry patches, and then a couple of patches saturated with Birchwood Casey's Sheath. Surfaces of the rifle were wiped with a damp cloth, dried, and wiped with an oiled cloth.

I noticed that within a half hour of firing, the fired cases became really damp where the BP fouling had contacted their interior and exterior surfaces. I failed to wash them immediately, and corrosion set in quickly, as shown in the photo above. Wet tumbling with stainless steel pins for a couple hours cleaned them acceptably.

The 25-yard group was unexpectedly small. Further trials at greater distances are certainly in order, and I'll post any usable results here.

--Bob
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Re: Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby commander faschisto » Tue Jul 12, 2016 3:24 pm

Wow...now there's what you call a venture into uncharted territory! Extremely interesting post there, pb...good thing you washed out the bore immediately, or your forum handle here would have probably reflected reality, and not in a good way. Keep it comin'....

If I could add to your warnings above: It should go without saying that this should absolutely NOT be attempted in an AR platform .450b, unless you want to ruin your rifle. I hope I'm not insulting anyone's intelligence by saying that.
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Re: Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby plant_one » Tue Jul 12, 2016 10:03 pm

its doable in an ar - or i should say its been done with a 300 blackout AR anyway...

and it cycled...


http://www.300blktalk.com/forum/viewtop ... 00#p927586
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Re: Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby commander faschisto » Tue Jul 12, 2016 11:23 pm

I'm sensing a massive cleanup job afterwards, though? :?
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Re: Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby m113103 » Wed Jul 13, 2016 1:51 am

Black Powder shoot 1 day and clean for 3 days. My grandson learned this when he shot his muzzleloader. He came out to shoot and was surprised that for the next 4 days he cleaned it. Finally on the 4th day cleaning did he not see any dirty patches from the bore. That fouling gets into the metal and leeches out on each cleaning. It did teach him on how important it is to clean his gun regularly. When he gets a deer gun he will know how to maintain it. :P :D :D
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Re: Black powder and cast bullets in the 450 Bushmaster

Postby Al in Mi » Wed Jul 13, 2016 3:48 am

very interesting Bob, thanks for sharing.
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