Ed Harris
posted this
08 October 2016
Tom Ellis at Accurate Molds has several traditional designs for the .45-70 which have adequate lubricant capacity for use with black powder, and which are improvements over the Lyman-Ideal designs, which were far less than satisfactory in my experience.
This one bears a close resemblance to the mold which Richard Hoch made me back when I did alot of 200-yard match shooting with an original 1884 Trapdoor Springfield. We shot 20 rounds standing at 200 yards on the standard Military SR target and with good black powder loads, a Master class shooter was capable of firing a “clean” score.
I cast my bullets from 1:40 tin-lead, and lubed the as-cast and unsized .463” diameter bullets with 1 part lard to 2 parts of beeswax, and used the “carbine” charge of 55 grains of Goex 1Fg with a booster of 5 grains of Unique next to the primer, and loaded a card wad over the powder, an 1/8” felt wad over that and another card wad under the bullet to achieve 1/4” compression. I used Winchester solid head cases and Winchester 8-1/2 primers in white boxes with wooden trays, from WW2 era, given to me by Frank Marshall.
I never chronographed the load, but from sandbags ten-shot groups at 200 yards were expected to be less than six inches, and on good days 4-5” groups could be obtained without blow tubing or wiping.
73 de KE4SKY In Home Mix We Trust From the Home of Ed's Red in "Almost Heaven" West Virginia