Anyone Shoot "Real" Blackpowder in Your Schofield?

[Lucky Cuss Russ]

I have read a lot about how the cylinder binds up when real BP is shot in reproduction Schofields.  If anyone has any knowledge you can share with me about this I would sure appreciate it.  Any tips?

By the way, I e-mailed Bill English after seeing postings mentioning his gunsmithing skills in this fourm.  I am interested in getting an action job, but I also inquired about any work that could be done to enable my revlover to shoot BP...WITHOUT the binding.  This was, in part, his reply:

...I am working on the problem right now.  I have prototype Uberti and ASM
Schofield's that we are machining to replicate the original style of the
Smith & Wesson new Model #3's and expect to be able to run BP as the
originals did.  I would estimate we will have testing done about the end of
the year.  At that time I will post it on my web sight...

Don't know about you, but that gets the old blood pumping!!

Respectfully,
Lucky Cuss Russ

[Scattered Thumbs]

Howdy,

My Navy Arms Schofield, in 45 Colt,  worked well with blackpowder (FFFG), I used Maxiballs with huge lube grooves over 26 grs of said FFFG and crimped over the ogive, I lubed them with a mix of lam's tallow and beeswax.

I got rid of the hammer safety.

I understand that not all Navy Arms Schofield perform this well with the same receipe, but some do. And mine did.

PS my gun has very tight tolerances.

[Cuts Crooked]

Howdy Gang,

Although I am not a BOSS member, I think I can shed some light on yer problems with the reproduction Schofields and BP. The Problem is much the same as what one encounters when shooting BP in my favorite firearm, the 75 Remington!

Manufactures making these guns have changed the geometry slightly to better accomodate the .45 Colt round. (I THINK that original Schofields were never chambered for .45 Colt) They do this by making the cylinder slightly longer and, of course, shortening the barrel at the forcing cone area. The effect of this change is to put the cylinder gap directly over the gap b'tween the clyinder bushing/shoulder area and the frame.....allowing fouling to be directly blown into this area upon firing. It's not much of a change overall, but it's enough to make a huge difference in where the fouling is going. Those gases and associated powder fouling end up getting blown right in b'teen the frame and the cylinder boss/bushing and also onto the cylinder pin...even migrating up the pin into the hole the pin fits through! Result: Rapid tie up of the cylinder!

I've encountered this in later model reproduction Remmies! I have a very early reproduction Remmie that handles BP very nicely, and several of the later models, none of which perform quite as well with the stuff. The cylinder is much shorter on that older one, the cylinders in the newer ones wont even fit into the frame of it, although they will interchange quite handily b'tween those newer ones with no problem. The cylinder gap on the old one is set back to the rear a bit compared to the newer ones creating the above mentioned situation wherein the gasses are not coming out directly in line with that bushing/cylinder boss!

Did I explain that good enuff? (I found that it's much harder to explain than it is to display )

The only possible solution I can think of would be to install a Colt style cylinder bushing b'twixt the pin and the cylinder, but I don't know if this is possible with the Schofield because I'm not all that familier with them. I've been told this can be to a Remington, but have never seen it done and it looks to me like the metal would getting almighty thin after machining the cylinder to fit such a modification!

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[Four-Eyed Buck]

You're on the right track, Cuts. In order to do the .45Colt, the bushing was eliminated. If you talk to Six Gun Shorty, he can confirm this. The S&W 2000's won't do BP either, and they're in .45 Schofield! He has an original Schofield in his collection, and that's what he discovered.......Buck

[Soldierboy]

Howdy Y'all

I must bend my head in shame and confess that my beloved pair of Uberti Schofields has been retired from long and true service (Including laniding me the second place in the frontiercartridge category during last years European CAS championships)
But my piont to this posting apart from bragging is:

ITS NOT THE GUN! Its your loads...

Mine worked perfectly without any modifications of any sort with .45 schofield brass, 28gr of SWISS 3F BP, and a fat grease cookie of beeswax and lanolin, topped off with ordinary 230gr .45acp lrn bullets.
My "gamer" load for the championships where: .45 LC brass, ca 24 gr of my secret mix of 50/50 Swiss 2F and ordinary BP 2F, with "polenta" filler and loaded with .452 round balls. I greased the chamber moths like i would do on a percusiion revolver before each stage....

 

[Soldierboy]

Maybe it's just that every once in a while someone hits on the right combination. One of our NCOWS member, Grizzle Bear, shoots black powder regularly in his Schofields without any problems.
I have not tried Swiss powder, although I use it in my 45-70. All I've tried in my Schofields was GOEX 2f & 3Fg and it was a no go. I've tried heavy grease groove bullets, grease cookies, but still couldn't get but five or six rounds off before binding. I posted before that one of our club members has great success with bp substitute called American Pioneer Powder.

Yuck... Begone vile substitute!!! Aparently APP is the same as the subistute known as cleanshot. But it ain't the holy black
Swiss is probably the answer for Schofields. It is a bit hotter than ordinary BP, and burns slightly cleaner to. When i was fiddling around with loads, i tried some of them with ordinary BP, and those would only last for a 4-5 rounds before everything was seriously stuck.

[Lucky Cuss Russ]

I'd like to thank everyone for sharing your experience with BP.  I have a few ideas and will test them out when I can.  Soldierboy, thanks for the information on Swiss...I will certainly try this combo out!

Regards,
LCR

[Soldierboy]

Always a pleasure to help a smoking pard

And it might be a source of forgivnes when I admit that I have pensioned my trusty Scofields and become a Dirty Rat

[DJ]

I shoot black powder in a Navy/Uberti Schofield as well as a Russian model.  The Russian (in .44 Russian) functions just fine--I shoot 205g  bullets with large grease grooves from a Saaco mould over a case full of Elephant 2F and have no problems. 

The Schofield is a tougher customer.  Large grease groove bullets (Lyman mould) don't carry enough lube, nor does the use of a single grease cookie over a wax paper wad (50-50 beeswax and olive oil) do the trick, at least not with .45 Colt loads.  The following techniques have been more successful.

My best success is a slightly compressed load of Elephant 2F in a .45 Colt case (I compress it just enough to give a nice flat surface to seat the wads on and keep powder in place if I knock the cases over while reloading), with a pure beeswax wad about 1/16th of an inch thick on top of the powder, and a 1/8th inch thick grease cookie of 50-50 beeswax/olive oil on top of that, all topped off by a 250-grain RNFP.

The other load, which is a little easier for me to make (on account of how brittle the beeswax sheets are and what a pain they are for me to make) is a slightly compressed load of Elephant 2F, with a wax paper wad on top of the powder, and two 1/8th inch beeswax/olive oil wads on top of that, followed by the bullet.  Oddly, despite the extra grease, this load tends to bind up after fewer rounds than the first load listed.  I suspect that might be because of the ash from the wax paper.

With either load, I can shoot three or four stages with no problem, but I always make sure the cylinder spins freely at the unloading table.  If it's gummy, I first try to oil it with whatever BP solvent/cleaner I have with me and wipe off the gunk.  If it still sticks, I pull and regrease the cylinder.  The one time I tried to go six stages with a Schofield without cleaning/greasing, I had to turn the cylinder by hand in the sixth stage--slows things down considerably.  By contrast, my Russian model can go six stages with about zero maintenance except maybe a wipedown and a little solvent on the cylinder pin and cylinder face. 

Your mileage may vary.

[Fox Creek Kid]

I had a lucky buddy who bought an "as new" Uberti Russian model for $450 and it shot BP great! Like a knucklehead he sold it!    I "torture tested" it and fired 96, yes that's right, NINETY SIX, rounds of .44 Russian BP loads ( I ran out of ammo!  ). The secret was IMHO the MAV .44 "Big Lube" bullet with a very soft lube. The BP was not Swiss either. Mike Venturino has written that with his original Schofield he can only get about 25 shots before "vapor lock". Let's face it, all bets are off trying to make a 19th century design shoot under CAS conditions. 

[Lars]

In addition to the bad engineering that Cuts Crooked describes nicely, I have seen another bit of bad engineering on a friend's Schofeld. On his the hand would push the cylinder so far forward that the front of the cylinder would almost touch (about 1,0 thou clearance) the rear of the barrel. Wíth any charcoal-based BP the gun would bind up rapidly. The "fix" on his was a bit of TIG welding on the front of the undersized cylinder bushing. Don't know how well it actually does with charcoal-based BPs after the fix. The fix did keep the hand from pushing the cylinder so far forward.

I have seen a Remington New Army cylinder fitted with a proturding bushing, which fit into a "cut-back" on the front of the frame, effectively giving this gun the same geometry as Colts, Rogers & Spencers, Rugers, etc. Same fix might work on Schofelds.

Lars

[Virgil Ray Hality]

I sat for a long time with a caliper and feeler gauges staring at a pair of Uberti Schofields, an 1875 Remington Outlaw and an 1873 Catttleman.   One of the Schofields will shoot about 18 to 20 rounds before grit lock.  The other will go 3 or 4 rounds.  The 1875 Remington Outlaw will go almost 50 rounds before getting sticky.  The 1873 Catttleman has gone to 150 rounds without grit lock. 

I was trying to figure out why the one Schofield runs so badly.   

What I found was that the boss that protrudes from the cylinder on the Schofield (aka nearly non-existant gas ring) is the same depth as on my Remingtons, and it is only a little deeper on the Cattleman.  We are talkin 0.050 versus 0.067 here.  That is when I noticed that the boss on the Schofield that does not work well with BP was not level so it would not sit flush to the barrel frame.  This boss was 0.050 on one side and 0.03x on the other.  As that section rotated up to the cylinder, it left a gap for sot to be forced into the arbor/cylinder pin.  The other Schofield was very level, as was the Cattlemen and Remingtons.

I will be putting a new cylinder in that Schofield to see if that corrects the problem and helps it to run better.  I also plat to try out APP in both Schofields that I have.

[Virginia Gentleman]

Unless you have a real S&W Schofield, the replicas in .45 Colt don't seem like they can work reliably with black powder.

[Virgil Ray Hality]

FYI, I took my Schofields out to the range yesterday along with 100 44-40 cartridges filled with APP. 

Revolver 1:
I was able to 30 rounds out of this gun before the cylinder got sluggish.  After 35 rounds I used a little bit of Ballistol sprayed in between the cylinder and arbor/pin to fend off the grit lock.  After 40 rounds I had to spray a little bit of Ballistol between the cylinder and arbor/pin and on the cylinder stop notches and along where the bolt drags.  I was able to get 50 rounds out GF style this way. 

Revolver 2 (this one has the bad cylinder):
I was able to only 10 rounds out before the cylinder got sluggish.  After 20 rounds I used a little bit of Ballistol sprayed in between the cylinder and arbor/pin to fend off the grit lock.  This held up unilt after 35 rounds I had to spray a Ballistol between the cylinder and arbor/pin and on the cylinder stop notches and along where the bolt drags.  I was also able to get 50 rounds out GF style from this revolver.

I think I may still buy a new cylinder.