Am I on the right track?

[Malacai Johnson]

At this weekend's match I shot BP in my Uberti Henry for the first time. I'm shooting 45 Colt with a full case of Goex 2F and a 250 grain bullet. I was getting quite a bit of fouling on the carrier, to the point it made the lever dang near impossible to operate in the later stages. I tried wiping it with a rag and it improved but after a few rounds I was back to really forcing the lever.

I figure I need more crimp on the cartridges and spray a bit of moosemilk into the action between stages. Anything else I can do easily and quickly to ensure ease of operation? (Hittin' targets is another question altogether!)

Mal

[St. George]

Today's firearms are made to far tighter tolerances that those of yesteryear - so I'd imagine that a tighter crimp may help, somewhat - especially in the feeding part of the cycle.

So will a 'thorough' de-burring and cleaning - and a 'good' lube on bearing surfaces to help obviate fouling.

There are no doubt more folks who've conquered this problem, and you should be hearing from them pretty quickly.

Good Luck.

Vaya,

Scouts Out!

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

You are on the right track. You want the case to obturate (swell) when the round is fired, to seal the chamber as best as possible. All brass swells when fired, then snaps back slightly in diameter. That is one of the desirable qualities of cartridge brass, it has memory. If it did not, the case would swell in the chamber and get stuck. Modern 45 Colt brass is fairly thick and needs a good pressure impulse to get it to seal the chamber and prevent exhaust gasses and fouling from blowing back out of the chamber and into the action. Those of us who shoot 44-40 have an easier time of it because 44-40 brass is considerably thinner and seals the chamber very well. Almost completely preventing fouling from blowing back into the action.

In order to get your 45 Colt brass to seal the chamber, use a heavy bullet, as you are doing with your 250 grain bullets. Do not go any lighter. Fill the case completely with powder, no fillers. Again you are on the right track. Good heavy crimp, to delay the bullet's departure until pressure starts to build. One more trick you can try with 45 Colt is to not completely resize the brass, just neck size it. Some 45 Colt shooters have reported success with this method. After your brass has been fireformed once, if you only resize the necks, the rest of the body of the case will remain slightly larger in diameter, hopefully forming a better seal when fired. You may find that using this method you have to reserve that brass for just your Henry, it may not chamber well in other guns. Or it maynot be a problem at all, depending.

Still another method that some have tried is to anneal the necks of your brass, softening them so that they obturate better.

By the way, how's Maw?

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[Malacai Johnson]

Thanks for the tips, gents. There's no problem keeping my brass separated for this rifle, cuz it's the onliest 45 I have. I'll try the heavier crimp first, cuz it's less work.

Cousin Driftwood, Maw is doin' well, but she does pine for her kin she left back east.


Take care,

Mal

[Bristow Kid]

How would doing this effect my brass when used in my revolvers?

[litl rooster]

How would doing this effect my brass when used in my revolvers?

Are yer revolvers giving you fouling problems?

I've gotten into the habit of running my 44-40 and my .45 ammo thru a factory crimp die.  My wife shoot's .45 rifle I shoot .45 pistols  the smokeless was messy and had a lot of blow back, added a 225 grain bullet and crimped, I also went and sorted out all the Winchester brass for this ( I was told it was softer)...No blow back in rifle and pistols...I loaded the 200grain BL bullets over 2.5cc of ffg of Goex, again same guns no problems....There has been some issues with her rifle but it's not the ammo.   My Henry's when in operating order handles any thing I but in it. Ocassionally needing a squirt of Moose milk and a rag.

The advise Driftwood has given is sound ... I might add recently recieved some new brass, in the box was a note recomending just neck sizing

[Bristow Kid]

Haven't loaded any with BP yet just getting my stuff straight before I start.

[litl rooster]

Haven't loaded any with BP yet just getting my stuff straight before I start.

There's lots of good load info on the Darksider's Den

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

Regarding the information about trying to get a better seal in a rifle and how it affects ammo in a revolver.

In my opinion, and it is of course just my opinion, going to the extra effort to get a good seal in the chambers of a revolver is a waste of effort.

Let's look at it objectively for a moment. A rifle is basically a closed system. Once the breech is closed, it is just a big long tube. All the fouling goes straight down the barrel. No amount of sealing the case in the chamber is going to eliminate all that fouling in the barrel. The only fouling that goes the wrong way is the stuff that leaks past the cartridge case and gets past the bolt and into the action. Once fouling gets past the case, the openings into the action are great big gaping holes, and fouling can build up all over the cartridge lifter or carrier, depending on the design. It also can work its way into the guts of the action and get onto the linkage that actually operates the rifle. So because of this, it behooves the BP rifle shooter to keep the fouling in the barrel as much as possible, and the best way to do that is to seal the case in the chamber.

Revolvers, on the other hand are not closed systems. There is the barrel/cylinder gap, and fouling regularly blasts out of the gap and gets all over the front of the frame and the cylinder. Nothing you can do about that, it is the nature of a revolver. At the rear of the cylinder, where the case butts up against the recoil shield, a revolver does not seal the breech anywhere near as tightly as a rifle does. There is always a few thousandths of an inch of free play where the rims sit. A revolver has to be designed that way. If the rims were tight against the recoil shield, the cylinder would not turn. Now I suppose some fouling can be kept off the rear of the frame by attempting to obturate the case as well as possible in the chamber, but you are still going to get fouling blasted all over the front of the cylinder and frame, from the barrel/cylinde gap, no matter what.

Now lets look at the frame of the revolver. There are only two small openings in the frame of a Single Action revolver that will allow fouling to get down inside the works of a revolver. The window in the  recoil shield where the hand pokes through, and the window at the bottom of the frame where the bolt pokes up into the cylinder. That's it, just two very small openings, and they are mostly plugged up by the parts that are sticking through them. Not like the gaping openings in a rifle that offer no resistance at all to invading fouling. Yes, there is the slot the trigger moves in, and the big slot the hammer rotates in, but they are not located in a place where fouling will be blasted directly into the lockwork like those two small openings are.

My point is, with a revolver, if you go to the extra effort, annealing, neck sizing, whatever, to make the case seal better in the chamber, you're just kidding yourself. The fouling will go right out the gap, but very little will get down inside the lockwork where it matters anyway.

Keeping a revolver well lubed and running well is a different matter. That requires plenty of BP friendly lube. But it is not a sealing issue.

I shoot BP in all my CAS guns. I shoot 44-40 in my rifles, because it seals the best in a rifle chamber. My brass pops out almost as clean as smokeless brass and almost no fouling at all gets into the action. But I shoot 45 Colt in all my revolvers. I make no extra effort to get the cases to seal. No Lee Factory Crimp, no annealing, no neck sizing. Just a case full of FFg and a 250 grain Big Lube bullet. My guns revovlers run all day with absolutely no attention, 6 stages, 8 stages, 10 stages. If it is a 2 day shoot, I don't clean them in between days, just start shooting them the next day. Because of the big lube bullets, full of SPG they just keep shooting. Because of those little tiny frame openings, very little fouling gets down inside the action.

[Will Ketchum]

Well put Driftwood!

Will Ketchum

[Bristow Kid]

Driftwood maybe I should have stated my question better.  I wanted to know if the the neck sizing and annealing would affect the use in my revolvers?  Would it still chamber and eject from my revolver cylinders correctly?  I want to know because I will be shooting .45 LC in both my Henry and my revolvers.  But your post was very informative and gave me alot to think about.  Thanks for the information.

[Anthracite Andy]

i only neck size my brass (well it's more like 1/2 length resizing).  i use the same .45 Colt brass in every firearm (Henry, Beretta SAA clone, Beretta Laramie) with one exception.  i have an R&D conversion cylinder for one of my 1858 Remingtons.  the folks at R&D machine the cylinders to VERY tight tolerances.  full-length resized brass must be used (or brass that has only been fired in the R&D cylinder).  it is kind of a pain to keep them seperate, but if i do, then i only need to neck size everything and i feel it works the brass less (hopefully it extends the case life).  the chambers are loose enough on every other .45 revolver or rifle that i have tried that once-fired brass will fit into all of them, hence my reason for only neck sizing.

as for the original question regarding fouling in the 1860 Henry, Driftwood supplied a ton of good info.  i only use 250 gr. Big Lube bullets in mine.  one additional point i'd make is that you need to find a lube/grease that helps keep fouling soft on the carrier.  what i do is if the carrier gets stiff during a match i'll give it a squirt of moose milk (Ballistol/water mix) or olive oil (pure extra virgin olive oil with no additives).  after all, it IS an Italian rifle. 

seriously though, i last cleaned my Henry in may and i have about 400 rounds through it since then.  it is still deadly accurate (i can hit a 2.5" gong at 30 yards all day - that's a 2.5 INCH diameter plate, not 10 or 12 or whatever).  about 120 rounds ago i gave the carrier a good squirting of moose milk and wiped out the receiver around the carrier.  other than that, i just give it the occasional moose milk or olive oil squirt like i mentioned above.  the slime coating on the carrier keeps the fouling soft and prevents corrosion, and the lube coating in the barrel from the Big Lube bullets does the same.

Anthracite Andy

[Driftwood Johnson]

Anthracite Andy

You are corect about the R&D cylinders for the 1858 Remmies in 45 Colt. I have two of them and the chambers are tighter than any other 45 Colt revovler I own. (I don't own a 45 Colt rifle.) Tight enough that I keep an R&D cylinder on my bench as a cartridge gauge whenever loading 45 Colt. After a loading session of 45 Colt, every round gets dropped into the R&D cylinder before it goes into a completed box of ammo. I full length resize all my ammo, but sometimes I will run into a 45 Colt round that does not slip right into the R&D chambers. This is usually caused by a slightly bulging crimp, usually caused by a little too much SPG overflow into the crimp area. You can't compress a liquid you know. Anyway, any round that hangs up a little bit in the R&D will usually slip right into a Colt, clone or Ruger with no problem. But I put those slightly oversized rounds aside and put them in a box labelled 'Colt only'.

[will52100]

I have a Henry in 45 and unless someone else is shooting it at a match it gets black powder only.  I went round and round and tryied this and that, neck size only, ect.  What I settled on that works best for me is a heavy bullet, 250 grain soft cast(mix of wheel wieght and pure lead to come out about the same hardness as 20-1 by my hardness tester) PRS big lube bullet.  38 grains by wieght of Graf's 3f black powder and factory crimp and magnum primmers.  I full length size also.  Had a few problems with only neck sizing, every once in a while get a round that didn't want to chamber.

The best thing to do is give the action a squirt of moose milk when it starts getting sticky.  I also removed the liffter block and sanded a couple thousands off eigther side and polished.  Just take some 400 grit sand paper and a flate plate of glass or some such and sand the mill marks off.  Sand to at least 600 grit and buff.  If you don't have access to a buffer take the finish up to around 2000 grit and you should be fine.  I used a disk sander on mine, but I don't recomend it as it'd be real easy to have to order a new block.  The lifter blocks in the reproductions are a lot tighter than originals and are realy a little too tight for black powder.  I can normaly go a couple hundred rounds before having to slosh some moose milk(ballistol lube and water) on the block.  The action stays surprisingly clean with the exception of the bolt.