XP-100. Loading H&H s Big Secret. One Load, One Caliber, Many Rifles? S&W Pro Series Model Savage! Remington s Venerable

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1 S&W Pro Series Model 627 One Load, One Caliber, Many Rifles? Remington s Venerable XP Savage! Loading H&H s Big Secret August 2010 No. 267 Rifle Magazine Presents - HANDLOADER $ Printed in USA $5.99 U.S./Canada Reloading Tips for Brass Shotshells!

2 AMMUNITION RELOADING JOURNAL August 2010 Volume 45, Number 4 ISSN Issue No Bullet Pull Neck Tension Reloader s Press - Dave Scovill 10mm Auto Bullets & Brass - Brian Pearce RCBS Special Order Moulds Mike s Shootin Shack - Mike Venturino The Shootist Single Actions? From the Hip - Brian Pearce.458 Lott Cartridge Board - Gil Sengel 24 Hodgdon s Varget Propellant Profiles - R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. 28 Glock R x for.40 S&W Brass Pistol Pointers - Charles E. Petty 30 XP Savage Renewing an Old Friendship Stan Trzoniec Reloading Brass Shotshells Part II: Technical Tips R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. Smith & Wesson.357 Magnum Pro Series Model 627 Brian Pearce 56 Handloading Shotgun Slugs Low Cost Performance John Haviland 62.33s and.35s Dream Rifles John Barsness Page Page Page Background Photo: 2010 John R. Ford

3 On the cover... The Remington XP Savage is set up with a Bausch & Lomb 4x scope mounted in Redifeld rings and one-piece base. Photo by Stan Trzoniec. Page 46 Page 72 Page Loading H&H s Unknown Soldier The Inch Terry Wieland One Load, One Caliber, Many Rifles? Versatility on a Limited Budget Mike Venturino A Case of Caliber Confusion and Other Blowups Reader Research Bob Campbell New Bullets for Old In Range - Terry Wieland Publisher of Handloader is not responsible for mishaps of any nature that might occur from use of published loading data or from recommendations by any member of The Staff. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Publisher assumes all North American Rights upon acceptance and payment for all manuscripts. Although all possible care is exercised, the publisher cannot accept responsibility for lost or mutilated manuscripts. Issue No. 267 August 2010 AMMUNITION RELOADING JOURNAL Publisher/President Don Polacek Associate Publisher Mark Harris Editor in Chief Dave Scovill Managing Editor Roberta Scovill Art Director Gerald Hudson Production Director Becky Pinkley Contributing Editors Associate Editor Al Miller John Haviland Ron Spomer Brian Pearce Stan Trzoniec Charles E. Petty R.H. VanDenburg, Jr. Clair Rees Mike Venturino Gil Sengel Ken Waters Advertising Advertising Director - Stefanie Ramsey stefanie@riflemag.com Advertising Representative - Tom Bowman bowmant@sbcglobal.net Advertising Information: Circulation Circulation Manager Melinda Clements circ@riflemag.com Subscription Information: Handloader (ISSN ) is published bimonthly by Polacek Publishing Corporation, dba Wolfe Publishing Company (Don Polacek, Pres - ident), 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona (also publisher of Rifle magazine). Tele - phone: (928) Periodical Postage paid at Prescott, Arizona, and additional mailing offices. Subscription prices: U.S. possessions single issue, $5.99; 6 issues, $22.97; 12 issues, $ Foreign and Canada single issue, $5.99; 6 issues $29.00; 12 issues, $ Please allow 8-10 weeks for first issue. Advertising rates furnished on request. All rights reserved. Change of address: Please give six weeks notice. Send both the old and new address, plus mailing label if possible, to Circulation Dept., Handloader Magazine, 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Handloader, 2180 Gulfstream, Ste. A, Prescott, Arizona Canadian returns: PM # Pitney Bowes, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2. Wolfe Publishing Co Gulfstream, Ste. A Prescott, AZ Tel: (928) Fax: (928) Polacek Publishing Corporation 6 Background Photo: 2010 John R. Ford

4 MIKE S SHOOTIN SHACK Being so enamored of old and oddball guns and their cartridges, my handloading life would have been much more difficult without the array of RCBS special order bullet moulds. By my count in the current Huntington Die Specialties catalog (PO Box 991, Oroville CA 95965), there are 30 bullet designs listed under special order. Of these, 6 are for handguns, 21 are for rifles and 3 are.40-,.45- and.50-caliber moulds for smooth-sided paper patch bullets. In total they stretch from a 50-grain roundnose for the.25 ACP to a 515-grain flatnose for the Big.50 Sharps. Twenty-five years ago, I first became aware of the RCBS specialty moulds when the late Jay Postman of RCBS sent me their design for.44 S&W American. An article under my byline had just appeared in these pages about the hoops I jumped through in getting an old S&W Model #3 revolver up and running without proper reloading equipment. Never had I dreamed that one of our major reloading tool companies would have a mould available for such an all-but-forgotten cartridge. Jay Postman got my attention with that mould, and I have been a frequent patron of the RCBS special order mould list ever since. (I did notice in writing this column that the.44 American mould is no longer listed, so ev - idently some designs come and go.) After the turn of the century, I began assembling an array of World War II firearms, includ- RCBS SPECIAL ORDER MOULDS by Mike Venturino Mike currently uses these eight bullet moulds from the RCBS special order section. These five rifle bullet designs are RCBS special order moulds (from left they are intended for): Winchester,.32 Winchester Special,.33 Winchester, 11mm Mauser and Government or Sharps. RCBS has taken pains to fashion its.455 Webley and 8mm Nambu special order moulds to duplicate the shape of military issue bullets for those calibers. From left:.455 Webley round with 265-grain FMJ bullet, RCBS 265-grain bullet and.455 Webley round loaded with RCBS bullet. Next is 8mm Nambu Japanese military round with 102-grain FMJ bullet, 106-grain RCBS bullet and 8mm Nambu loaded with RCBS bullet. ing rifles, sniper rifles, carbines, handguns and even submachine guns used by all the major combatant nations. The RCBS special order moulds have been instrumental in helping me shoot two of those handguns and one submachine gun. Those are a British Webley Mark VI.455 revolver, a Japanese Type 14 pistol for the 8mm Nambu and a Russian PPsh x25mm submachine gun. In the same order, the RCBS special order moulds for those guns are WEBLEY, 8mm- 110 NAMBU and RN MAUSER. The first number is the caliber either in inches or millimeters, and the second is the nominal bullet weight in grains. Of the three bullets mentioned in the above paragraph, the latter two are plain-base roundnose designs, while the big Webley bullet has a cone-shaped nose with a hollow base. One might note that the bullet I m using in the Russian-designed submachine gun is actually listed by RCBS as for Mauser. That s okay, because the 7.62x25mm Russian and the 7.63mm Mauser can share bullets. Shortly before the turn of the century, I published a book titled Shooting Lever Guns of the Old West, therein covering handloading for most of the cartridges that had been chambered in nineteenth century Winchester and Marlin lever-action rifles and carbines. Again RCBS special order moulds were a great help. Without them, including cast bullet loads for

5 Winchester, and.32 Winchester Specials and the.33 Winchester would have been far more difficult. [Mike s book will once again be available in early fall from Wolfe Publishing Co. Ed.] RCBS s bullet designs for those three bore sizes are variations of the same theme. That is they have one wide, curved grease groove, a crimping groove, flat nose and shank for attaching gas checks. Nominal weights are 100, 170 and 200 grains in.25,.32 and.33 caliber, respectively. Important too is the fact that the crimping groove on those bullets is placed so that overall loaded cartridge lengths are correct for feeding through lever actions. Single-shot riflemen can also find some good designs among the RCBS special order moulds. When I bought a.43 Spanish caliber Remington Rolling Block No. 1, its FN was ordered. At a gun show I noticed a new/ unused RCBS FN mould on a fellow s table. Hoping it would drop.446-inch bullets to fit my caliber (both Sharps and Remington) single shots, I took a chance on it. Poured of a very soft alloy of one part tin to 40 parts lead, it indeed did cast at.446 inch. Not only did those flatnose bullets shoot accurately in both rifles, but also they were used in the Sharps.44 on a bison cow with great effect. I ve also shot a couple of six-point elk and a couple of mule deer with the RCBS FN loaded in a Shiloh Sharps. That particular bullet is shaped like a very large semiwadcutter and does an effective job on game. At this writing I have some bullets from RCBS mould FN loaded up in both 6.5mm Japanese and 6.5mm Swedish cases. They will be test fired as soon as this long Montana winter lets up. Also I ve been eyeing mould FN. My Winchester Model seldom gets fired because of the hefty recoil delivered by fullpowered rounds. Perhaps some good cast bullet loads would allow me to get more trigger time with that fine, old rifle. Also, mould RN intrigues me. I suspect that one might be intended to duplicate the 178- grain jacketed roundnose the British loaded in their.38/200 revolver cartridge as chambered in their Enfield No. 2 revolvers. The one defect with most catalogs in regard to those RCBS special order moulds is that they do not show photographs of the various designs. Also there might be some confusion as to what specific alloy was used to obtain the designated bullet weights. Mostly RCBS lists weights with an alloy of one part tin to 10 parts lead but does vary from that on some of its regular cataloged bullet designs. Regardless, I ve yet to have had a bad experience with one of the special order moulds. As a rule they are cut into iron blocks with two cavities until bullet size goes past.44 caliber in rifles. Then it s one cavity per mould. Also the hollowbase.455 Webley bullet comes only in a single cavity design. The 2010 retail price for all RCBS special order moulds is $ August-September

6 The Inch Terry Wieland Ask anyone to name the great Holland & Holland car - tridges, and chances are he ll mention the.375 H&H, probably the.300, and maybe, if he likes double rifles, the.500/465. But there is another cartridge from the black-powder era that may not have been a Henry Holland development but became such a specialty of the house that it should be on the list of great H&H cartridges. The.500 Express (3 1 4 inch) was a cartridge that had a short life span but was considered in its day to be just about the best lion-and-tiger round the world had ever seen. Look up the.500 Express (3 1 4 inch) in almost any cartridge book, and the information will be sparse. The very first edition of Cartridges of the World (COTW) gave it barely a mention, lumping it in with the 3-inch version as just a variation on the theme black-powder Loading H&H s Unknown 72

7 Soldier August-September

8 H&H s Unknown Soldier ancestors of the great.500 Nitro Express. If you count both case lengths and then multiply by the original black powder, the later cordite and the in-between nitro-forblack loads, there are six variations, and they do tend to look alike from a distance of more From a Holland & Holland catalog, circa After The Field trials of 1883, H&H was England s preeminent riflemaker, and the.500 Express inch was a specialty. The.500 Express (3 1 4 inch) had a short life span. than a century. But delve into a little history history that is spread in bits and pieces through different books, catalogs, old magazine advertisements and even the loading information engraved on the frame of an H&H hammer double and the differences start to come into focus. After several months of researching this specific cartridge, I have drawn some conclusions. Rather than qualify every statement with in my opinion, let s just take that for granted and, if anyone finds a demonstrably egregious error, feel free to say so. Otherwise, a little slack would be appreciated. Although later editions of COTW expanded on the British.500s, they never did go into the particular history of the.500 Express (3 1 4 inch). As it turns out, that cartridge was more than just some gunmaker s attempt to be a little different. The 3-inch version was introduced sometime in the 1860s, which makes it one of the very first rifle cartridges. The round numbers are logical: A.5-inch bullet in a 3-inch case makes sense. Initially, these express cartridges followed the pattern of the original express muzzleloaders, as initiated by James Purdey, and fired a relatively light cast bullet in front of a maximum charge of black powder. In the case of the.500, standard bullet weights came to be a 340-grain hollowpoint and a 380-grain solid. There were certainly other bullet weights loaded in the.500 (3 inch), but for stag-stalking and general plains game hunting in India, those were the accepted standard. The cartridge belonged These specifications for the.500 Express inch are from a Kynoch catalog, circa 1895, with some modern notations for the.500 Nitro Express.

9 Above, this custom mould will produce a facsimile of the original Kynoch 480-grain solid lead bullet used in the.500 Express inch. Right, the 440-grain express hollowpoint bullet for the.500 Express inch had a relatively small cavity in the nose. Henry Holland was adamant that too large a cavity promoted poor penetration and wounding. to no gunmaker in particular. This was before the later practice of proprietary cartridges really became established; there were several metallic-cartridge makers in Britain, and all of them loaded variations on the.500. During this period, guns for really big game continued to be the proven 8- and 4-bores with wide use of 10- and 12-bore rifles as well. By comparison, the.500 was a medium at best, but by the 1870s, hunters and gunmakers alike were starting to see the possibilities of smaller rifles on the larger game. Sir Samuel Baker, an unquestioned admirer of the ultralarge guns, championed the development of a.577 rifle even for elephants. The.500 as it existed had potential, but it also had limitations. The standard bullet was paper patched. You could increase the weight to make it more effective on bigger game, but that would reduce powder capacity; if you packed in more powder, it meant you had to reduce bullet weight. Someone hit on the idea of extending the case length by.25 inch, which allowed a 100-grain increase in bullet weight while still managing to afford a little more powder capacity. As originally designed, the configuration of the 340- and 380- grain bullets is identical; the weight difference comes from hollowing out the cavity, so seating depth, overall cartridge length and so on are the same for both. The longer.500 Express (3 1 4 inch) would accept 440- and 480-grain bullets, and even with the larger bullets, powder capacity increased to 142 grains (5 drams) from 136. The new cartridge was the ideal rifle for lions and tigers. In 1883 the magazine The Field sponsored a comprehensive rifle trial in London with rifles tested in 10 categories from smallbore rook rifles to 4-bore elephant guns. August-September

10 H&H s Unknown Soldier The firm of Holland & Holland swept the field, winning all 10 categories. The credit belonged to two men: Henry Holland and his foreman and chief barrel regulator, William Froome. Holland was a gifted rifle designer, while Froome was the best regulator of his generation, as well as being an excellent marksman. In the trials, Froome did all the shooting. Exactly which cartridge the H&H.500 rifle was chambered for, we don t know. Information published later stated it was loaded with 136 grains of powder, which suggests the older 3 inch, yet the stated bullet weights were either 414 or 435 grains Tired of Run Out? Tired of Over Sizing? Want to Extend Brass Life? The WTC Sizing Die is the Answer to your Sizing Headaches! Minimal brass sizing for flawless chambering and maximum case life. Concentricities of.0005" or better from top to bottom. Head space adjustment within the die via hardened and ground tool steel retainer rings. Standard die body will accept die inserts for any caliber from 6mm to Now introducing the Magnum die body that will accept larger cartridges up to 416 Rigby. 2 part die insert construction - one for the body, one for the neck and shoulder. Every die is custom made based on your fire formed brass. Wildcat Development and hydraulic forming services available. 201 Old Homestead Hwy. * N. Swanzey, NH * * Warner-tool.com Eley Bros..500 Express inch brass is exceedingly rare compared to the common 3-inch variety. Even when you find it, however, if it has been used, it is rarely reusable. both odd weights for that caliber. Later, H&H made published ref - erence to its special bullet, but exactly what that was remains a mystery. It really doesn t matter; the point is, The Field trials established H&H s reputation as London s preeminent riflemaker, and Holland and Froome set out to build upon that in every way possible. Since the.500 bore was a favorite all-around rifle for army officers and hunters setting out for Africa and India, Holland and Froome were determined to perfect it. They did this in a number of ways involving both the cartridge and their rifles. The standard H&H express rifle was a back-action hammer gun with rebounding locks and a Jones underlever. It was simple, durable and ultradependable. Holland also developed and patented a pattern of rifling that minimized powder fouling, allowing many accurate shots without cleaning. The bore tapered near the muzzle by.005 inch, a feature that was found to improve accuracy. Obviously, they were not doing this independent of the cartridge design, and the literature of the day makes oblique references to the special H&H.500 Express (3 1 4 inch) cartridge. In early 2010, I acquired one of these great H&H hammer rifles. When I did, I knew little more about the black-powder.500 (3 1 4 inch) than I outlined in the opening paragraphs of this article. My original intention was to find some nitro-for-black loads using smokeless powder like 5744 and play with a variety of bullets until I found a combination that worked. As I got deeper and deeper into the literature, however, I realized what I had was, in 1895 (when it was made), the state-of-the-art lion rifle, carefully tailored for a particular load by two of the most Yet another wrinkle: In the transition period from black powder to smokeless, the am - munition companies loaded Smokeless for Black ammunition. Other components, such as bullets, were usually transitional too. This Kynoch.500 Express inch was loaded with a 440- grain solid lead bullet with a copper base, providing the same protection as a gas check. 76

11 expert riflemen of the day. It did not make sense to try to secondguess Henry Holland and William Froome. Why not, I thought, find out exactly what this mysterious original load was and duplicate it? Why not indeed. A letter to Russell Wilkin, H&H s technical director, elicited a lit - tle information. My rifle was made for stock, not to order for a client, so they had no loading data for that particular rifle. And Holland s company policy is not to give out specific loading data anyway. (And who can blame them?) Still, the information was useful: It meant this rifle was made to fire a standard load, which very likely was the commercial Kynoch ammunition of the era. What I had was, in 1895, a state-of-the-art lion rifle. The.500 (3 inch) used paper patched bullets, but every illustration of the inch that could be found showed a bullet partly out of the case with lube grooves. As well, while there are references made to many different bullet weights in the shorter cartridge, as far as I could find, the longer version was loaded only with 440- or 480-grain bullets. In other words, this was a specially designed cartridge intended for a specialized purpose: lions, tigers and comparable beasts. Varmints and plinking were not part of the plan. I contacted Bob Hayley, my bullet-casting and custom-ammunition making friend in Seymour, Texas, and he began digging through his voluminous store of information on British ammunition from the late 1800s. He didn t have an appropriate mould in his 500-plus mould collection, but he did have the Kynoch specification sheets and engineering drawings from the 1890s and was able to order two custom moulds Custom, odd, obsolete and specialty ammunition Wildcat development Loading OVER 200 different calibers Correct headstamped wildcat brass WEBSITE: P.O. Box 445, Hollywood, MD ( ) THUMLER S TUMBLER '93-'96 MAUSER Cock-on Opening Conversion Cocking piece; Striker spring; Fully adjustable trigger included. Cast steel; Blued; Safety notch cut. Dayton Traister Trigger Co N. Monkey Hill Rd., Oak Harbor, WA Thompson Center Arms Company Encore & Contender/G2 Accuracy Solutions by Mike Bellm TCs We make em work! Tel: BRASS MASTER ULTRA VIBE CASE CLEANERS Made of durable steel construction - heavy polyethylene bowl - heavyduty, sealed ballbearing motors - thermally protected - fast, quiet operation to gallon capacity - industrial and rotary models available. Send for our free brochure! TRU-SQUARE METAL PRODUCTS, INC. P.O. Box 585, Auburn, Washington TEL (253) or Toll Free 1-(800) FAX (253) Manufacturers of quality case cleaners, deburring and tumbling equipment since 1959 August-September

12 H&H s Unknown Soldier that would provide us with the basic bullets needed. Brass for the inch is not common; most.500 owners just shoot the 3 inch, which is readily available. But that did not fit my purpose. Fortunately, Bertram makes the longer brass, which is imported by Huntington Die Specialties. At almost $4 apiece, the brass is not cheap, but a man s gotta do what a man s gotta do. And no, I didn t get a discount. With brass and bullets looked after, we moved on to powder. My decision that I would shoot only black powder in this rifle was enormously liberating in a bizarre sort of way. At least I could concentrate on black and forget smokeless. As all black-powder shooters know, however, the black powder of today isn t the Curtis s & Harvey s #6 of 120 years ago. I took Garry James s recommendation of GOEX, and I then took Chris Hodgdon s recommendation of GOEX Express Fg. Back to Bob Hayley. The British didn t load their cartridges the way we did, he told me. Tropical heat was a huge concern, coupled with the need for absolute reliability. Everything they did was based on that. Some years ago, Hayley visited the Birmingham proof house and spent some time examining its collection of old cartridges and components. He advised me to Bob Hayley checks chamber compatibility with modern inch brass. Although specifications were standardized so rifles could accommodate a variety of ammunition, it does not always fit. This is where the rule originated to always check chambering of the rounds you are carrying before you go into the bush after a lion. This collection of assorted.500 Express brass includes Eley Bros., Kynoch and the long-defunct NA&A (National Arms & Ammunition Co. Ltd.). discard any idea of using the various tricks and wrinkles espoused by America s black powder target shooters of today; the Brits wanted simplicity and reliability above all, along with ease of loading. And unlike the buffalo hunters of the plains with their Sharps rifles and loading tools, Kynoch and Eley brass were not going to be reloaded. All these factors played a part in the way the ammunition was put together. Lubrication was extremely important, obviously, but they were also very concerned that the grease not melt in the heat and contaminate the powder, Bob said. For that reason, they used pure or almost pure beeswax as their lubricant. That also allowed them to dispense with a wad and pack in as much powder as possible. In lieu of beeswax, we used SPG Bullet Lube, which Bob considers the best black-powder lubricant available today, and it has a high beeswax content. Kynoch used a 100-to-1 alloy (lead/antimony), but since the antimony was there solely to make the melted lead cast easily, we dispensed with it and went with pure lead, lubed with SPG. The British standard for

13 Another way of measuring groups in those days was by a diagram. A rectangle was drawn with the line passing through the center of each of the four outlying bullet holes, and then the dimensions of the rectangle were given. Froome s rectangle at 50 yards, enclosing 10 shots, was 1.8x2.8 inches. I planned to use the latter as my method when I went to the range with the rifle and a supply of (I hoped) authentic H&Hpattern.500 Express (3 1 4 inch) ammunition. The recorded velocity of Froome s ammunition was 1,784 fps at the muzzle, loaded with 138 grains of powder and using either a 414- or 435-grain bullet (reports do not agree). The Handloader Trials of 2010 took place on May 6, 2010, with one (1) entrant, shooting one (1) rifle and 10 rounds of ammunicaliber bullets was.509 inch, while ours was.512, Bob said. So we sized them down from.515 inch to.509 in two stages. That was good enough for me; slugging the bore of the rifle and discovering the.005 inch muzzle constriction with bore/land diameters at the muzzle of.500 and.495 was never far from my mind. The special H&H non-fouling rifling consists of six narrow lands in what looks almost like a smooth bore, so it grips the bullet without setting up much obstruction. Holland and Froome knew how this would work, and they also knew that the rifle might be called upon to fire ammunition from any of the different makers. Bob s last recommendation concerned primers. While most black-powder shooters today recommend large rifle magnum primers, Bob pointed out that the primers of 1895 were consider- ably less powerful, as well as softer, and for that reason suggested I use standard large pistol primers. The problem was, pistol primers are thinner and seat deeper than rifle primers. So I stuck with Federal s F215 Match. And be sure to wipe all the lube off the base of the bullet before you seat it, Bob added. Right, Boss. The Field rifle trials involved Brass for the inch is not common. shooting 10-shot groups (five shots from each barrel) at each of 50, 100 and 150 yards, for a total of 30 shots. Results were measured by designating the center of a group, then measuring the distance to the center of each bullet hole and averaging those distances. With the H&H.500, William Froome recorded a inch average an excellent result that many, if not most, modern hunting rifles would have a tough time matching. August-September

14 H&H s Unknown Soldier tion at 50 yards. This, I felt, would show if I was on the right track. To be on the safe side, I put up a blank sheet of paper 24 inches high by 38 inches wide with a bullseye in the center. I then fired five shots from each barrel, alternating right-left, right-left. The result was... was... Disastrous? Laughable? Perplexing? Humiliating? All of the above? Gas Checked & Plain Base Match Grade Cast Bullets Everything from 6.5mm to.500 S&W, BHN Real Keith Bullets -.357,.41,.44 & , 465 & 500 Gr. in.500 S&W,.460 S&W Gr. 349 NW 100 St. St. John, KS Tel: Website: Out of 10 shots, only six hit the paper. One struck 2 inches left of dead center with perfect elevation. The other five were spread up, down and sideways, with 33 inches separating extreme right from extreme left. Where the other four shots went, I have no idea. Between smoke and recoil, I could not see where dirt kicked up in the backstop. On the bright side, if you can call it such, none of the bullets keyholed or appeared to yaw. I then set up a chronograph and recorded velocities for two shots of 1,310 and 1,350 fps almost 500 fps less than Froome s reported velocity. Two other cartridges, both loaded with 140 We supply all of CorBon s cast bullets! grains of GOEX Express Fg but using 380-grain bullets and a thin over-powder wad recorded velocities around 1,550 fps still a far cry from Froome s 1,784 fps. Obviously, something or things was very, very wrong. The question is, what? Such abysmal accuracy can only be accounted for by a bullet that was not stabilized by the rifling, was too small for the bore or was deformed as it left the muzzle. As for the huge difference in velocity, we already knew that modern black powder would not measure up to black powder from the late 1800s. Having done my best to determine exactly what components H&H and Kynoch used in 1895, and then duplicate those insofar as it is possible with what is available now, and then assemble the ammunition in the manner I believed was as close as possible to Kynoch s own method, I was left with more questions than when the project began. Cartridges from that era are serious collectors items, and I, for one, am not about to pull one apart to see what s inside, even if I had the exact cartridge, which I don t. So what s left? We ll start over but in an approved load development method: First, I ll try a thin over-powder wad with a harder, 1-20 (lead/tin), 480-grain bullet. Second, I ll try several different powders to see if they show any improvement. Third, I ll jump to a greater diameter bullet.512 inch, first in pure lead, then in a 1-20 alloy. If none of this works, there is always a séance. I would love to hear William Froome s views on all this. NEWFOUNDLAND, CANADA Moose, Woodland Caribou & Black Bear Hunts Book now for 2010 & 2011 Tel/Fax: (709) dean.wheeler@nf.sympatico.ca P.O. Box 159, York Harbour, NL, Canada A0L 1L0 80