Smokeless Muzzleloader

Anybody ever build a smokeless muzzleloader on a CF bolt action like a Remington 700 or Mauser 98. I want to do a 45 cal. without a sabot. Any tips?

gunbutcher59 said:

Anybody ever build a smokeless muzzleloader on a CF bolt action like a Remington 700 or Mauser 98. I want to do a 45 cal. without a sabot. Any tips?

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These guys do it Bad Bull Muzzleloaders

Savage produced one as well not sure if its still in production or not

Never shoot smokeless in a black powder muzzleloader. They can explode.
Be safe.

Spyderedge, absolutely correct, and there are pletny of reasons the barrels are stamped "BLACK POWDER ONLY", but thats not the question.

A few folks have built and marketed muzzle loaders intended for smokeless powder.
I have never been fond of the concept for mass marketing.
If bubba does not understand the difference between green dot and 4350 its "your fault" and his lawyer will try to clean you out.
That liability keeps the field small.
Black powder is a lot more forgiving.

For your own needs, well you have some technical issues.
Barrels made for BP guns tend to run a bit on the soft side when compared there smokeless brothers.
Tensile strenght and hardness go up together, so its a safe bet that many of the BP barrels that are easy to come by are not up for the pressures smokeless powder can generate.
Without the raw material specks and a bit of math, you realy don't have a good estimate of the pressure handling capabilities.


If you find a high strenght barrel intended for smokeless powder, the rifleing patern may not be quite what you want.
Most rag and round ball barrels have slow twists and deep groves. Mini ball barrels, faster twists, but the rifeling is deeper than you find in most cartrage guns.


Once you get a barrel that your satisfied with, then what.
Choice of powder, primer and projectile are far more important with smokeless rounds.
Just because you have a barrel that will take the heat and pressure of some smokeless rounds does not mean you can dump in any combination of powder and ball.
13 grains of unique is a published load for the good old 45/70. Plenty of extra case volume there.
Go to a long grain slow burning rifle powder, and you dont have much if any excess volume.
Try to pack a full 70 grains of BP in a modern case and you will fill her right up. (thicker walls and heads than the original ballon head cases)
Pack something like a 444 marlin shell full up with bullseye and you may have a bomb.

Proper materials, proper popellents, proper ignition. They are all worked out for cartrage guns.
No so for what your after.
Bad Bull states that they use IMR 4350, but not how much.
There are rules of thumb some BP cartrage shooters use for black to smokeless equivelants, but you are basicly on your own especialy if your trying to improve performance.

Cartrages have ways of telling you when your red lineing them.
How you go about working up a load in a smokeless smoke pole?

Savage made one for a while. There are lots for sale. Some in need of minor repairs.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=Sava...b1BaTt2wWCioG4Cw&ved=0CEwQsAQ&biw=960&bih=461

Geez, Speerchucker. That there link needs a warning on it!

Not for the kids, eh.

Pretty graphic representation of how what can go wrong, will. Not nearly as forgiving as BP or the substitutes.


Cheers
Trev

Good link Speerchucker.
A picture is worth 1000 words and that link is a novel.

We feal the little push on our shoulder and discount how much energy is released when a firearm goes off.

trevj - - - - - - - - DON'T YOU BE LOOKIN AT DAT SON ! ! ! ! !

ahall - - - - - - - - Sometimes being shown, is much simpler than trying to explain things! You are correct. They do say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Sorry I asked. But not everybody is a DA.

Richards Custom Rifles Richard Franklin used to make them and sells a book on how he did it if that is what you are looking for.
Bobby

gunbutcher59 said:

Sorry I asked. But not everybody is a DA.

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Thats righ, and the DA tax is expensive, however, we are assume the DA factor was involved.
Its certanly not the first muzzle loader barrel I have seen that failed in a dramatic fashon. BP can do similar things if not handled correctly.



There is a lot that can go wrong with a front stuffer and the margin for error is much smaller when smokeless powder is involved.

Its hard to maintain the precision of your reloading bench in field and some of the safety factors inherent to cartrages are not present in a muzzle loader.

Think about it, your reloading books record charges to 0.1 grain - 1/70000 of a pound and advise approaching the top end loads gradualy.
Try maintaining that level of precision in a deer stand with hand held powder measure.

The case provides a visual indicator when you double charge (powder falls out in most cases), and if your pushing the limits the spend brass gets hard to eject, splits, mushrooms primers, etc. No such luck on a muzzle loader. The only indicator you have the the projection of the ram rod. Bet you dont pay attention to it when your seting up for a second shot on a small group of does thats confused and did not run off.

You cant put two projectiles in most cartrages, but you can pack a dozen or more in a front stuffer. More than one civil war relic was recovered with multiple charges still in the gun.

I will stick to the real black powder for my front stuffers.

I dont understand why a company like Savage took on the liability of a smokeless muzzle loader.
I bet there are a few engineers saying I told them this would happen and they would not listen.
I sure would not want to be on the witness stand.

Ahall, I guess you never heard of preweighting your powder charges & putting them in a bottles to take to the tree stand. You keep on keeping on with your narrow-minded ways & lack in your own abilities. Sounds like your even afraid of reloading .

That's the one (Richard Franklin) I'm interested in I was wondering if anyone on here has built one. Any helpful information will be greatly appreciated.

These guys seem to have a good, simple system. I watched their loading video and I could probably build one out of a Remington 700 in a couple of days. Pretty straight forward system using a spring loaded priming cup in the bolt face. They have about 50 million warnings about under loading, overloading and experimenting with different powders and bullets which results in detonation. (obviously) But I don't think it would be hard to make one and use their data and bullets. To work up your own loads I think you would need a test tank, some pressure sensing equipment and possibly some sacrificial barrels. Working up loads for large caliber bullets with minimal barrel/bullet resistance is touchy at best because the primer kicks your charge forward on ignition. It must be a pretty tricky balancing point. It sounds like Shilen is making special barrels for them so if you talked to them nice they might send you one without their name on it. I can't help but think that all of the smokeless muzzle loader makers are doing approximately what these guys are. The hard thing is getting a bullet that can be pushed down the bore which will still engrave enough to spin the barrel and at the same time find a load that's stable enough to not kick the bullet 3 inches down the bore and then detonate the powder charge. Now that I think about it I can understand why so many do blow up. Barrel and bullet development will be the key to not having it explode to often.

Bad Bull Muzzleloaders

Bad Bull Muzzleloaders

gunbutcher59 said:

Ahall, I guess you never heard of preweighting your powder charges & putting them in a bottles to take to the tree stand. You keep on keeping on with your narrow-minded ways & lack in your own abilities. Sounds like your even afraid of reloading .

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Gunbutcher,

An old machinist once told me that little voice saying "you will get away with it" pipes up before most accidents.
I suspect you heard that voice when you started this posting.
Your welcome to call me narrow minded, lacking or afraid.
My age and experience and professional training have given me a healthy respect for the tools I work with.


How many friends have you buried because they allowed others to goad them into doing things against their better judgment?
Have you ever had to call your family to assure them the dead guy on the news was not you?


The events I am referring to of happened over 10 years ago.
To this day they bother me, and but for a few quirks of fate it would have been me.
Prior to the event, I did not even recognize the risk was present, and only learned of Glens objections after his passing
I learned the hard way not to negotiate on health or safety.
I will not elaborate further and I don’t wish to burry another friend.

However, it’s your life and limb, use them as you wish.



My age and experience have given me a healthy respect for the tools I work with.
We all know from experience that things don’t always go as planned.


I fully understand the concept of preweighed charges.
With the arm your considering, they would be highly recommended.


The idea of smokeless smoke poles is not a big streach (thats why the warnings are there).
If the concept was robust (hard to mess up), it would have been done long ago.
Speerchuckers comments on the internal balistics are solid.
A lot goes on in that we take for granted or miss entirely.
Without a safe way to do some full up testing, you have potential pipe bomb in your hands.
Having torn skirts off of mini balls with heavy loads, I doubt thats a good choice for a smokeless barrel.


As to my decision to stay with the good old black powder.
Its more forgiving, and I just like the chalenge of a side lock.


Respect what you’re working with.
Understand the risks and how to mitigate them.
Then you don’t have to worry about "getting away with it".

I understand all of dangers that is why I'm trying to found out if anyone on here has built one from Richard Franklins plans. Not be called a D A for asking a question.

If I was going to pursue this idea I would pay particular attention to the breech plug design. Without the cartridge case to seal the breech finding an alternative means to effectively seal the breech during firing may be an obstacle to overcome. I'm dont know what ignition system current smokeless MZ rifles use but I suspect that they seal the breech somehow.

gunbutcher59 said:

I understand all of dangers that is why I'm trying to found out if anyone on here has built one from Richard Franklins plans. Not be called a D A for asking a question.

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Dont go getting offended, you have 16 posts on this forum and your not well known to us. The folks here error on the side of caution, expecialy when giving advice to folks that they are not farmilear with. None of us want to advise someone to go beyond there skill set or knowledge base.


As I read this thread, no one called you (gunbutcher59) a DA.

My statement was a simple agreement to your post that not everyone is a DA, but being can be expensive.
We also dont know what happend in Speerchuckers post. The DA factor may not have been involved.


I have no personal experiance with Richards work, but many of the "build it yourself" gun prints I have looked over have minor fit up issues.
If the guns were built "to print" something would not fit correctly and the gun would not function.
I don't know if this is a deliberate trick to atempt to avoid liability, error in workmanship or some of both.
Usualy its trivial stuff thats easily corrected, but I would be looking for it.

I find cad modeling of the prints can be very usefull.
Its a good way to check the prints, and think about orders of operation in the machine work.

I looked at the Bad Bull video. I like their system for putting a primer IN. But,it seems to be a lot of trouble to reload the rifle. You have to remove the bolt and knock the primer out with the ramrod which screws together,and is carried in a sheath like a short sword. On a normal muzzle loader,the ramrod is 1 piece and carried on the gun. Hopefully someone will come up with a more quick and easy way to remove the primer. BTW,if the primer does not function,you have to pull the ball and dump the powder,I guess,since there's no way to get the primer out of a loaded gun.

I understand the problems of dealing with the much higher pressures involved. The primer is the weak spot,and has to be dealt with carefully.

I haven't thought about smokeless muzzle loaders,and I suppose this is one of the best systems for reloading,but it seems like a lot of trouble,and having a second shot takes a good deal of time. I think I'd just prefer to shoot black powder and clean the gun later.

I don't recall calling ANYONE a DA! I just provided a link showing some blown up Savages. It sounds like a wonderful project. Not one that I would personally approach mind you. To me it's sort of up there with jumping out of perfectly good aircraft, riding bulls and racing motorcycles. All commonly practiced sports, but there is a high risk and rate of demonstrated failure. I'm like the monkey that saw the other monkey eat the red berries and die. I don't eat the red berries.