A slightly more “accurate” representation of the original black powder 303 loaded with 71.5gr of Black powder Black Powder 303 British • Black Powder 303 British
@cameronlamb7274 here in the midwest, if you ask for .303 and the clerk stares at you like you are speaking in tongues, walk out and find another store.
@@hambone307 I’m kinda located somewhere between the mid west and east coast I can pretty much throw a rock across the river and hit Michigan. .303 is starting to be less common up here seems theirs a myth that you need a belted mag to hunt deer/black bear and moose .30-30 and .303 British have done the job for a long time here without the massive meat damage.
@@hambone307 Exactly! Ask ANY " HIGH SPEED ,LOW DRAG,TACTICOOL,GUNBRO", if he knows where you might find a couple of boxes of 303 Savage at. 10 out of 10 times, they'll just stare at you blinking. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, There's more in life than AR platforms.
I used to shoot at the Angeles Range off the 210. They only allowed one shot per 5 seconds (“no rapid fire blah blah”) but the range safety would always joke and say “but you black powder folks can shoot as fast as you want.” So I loaded up ten rounds of black powder .303 and mag-dumped that thing in like 2.2 seconds. Getting banned from the Angeles Range also helped me discover my old high desert shooting spot, which launched my interest in long range shooting.
As a Canadian who owns and shoots a Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk 1, all I'm going to say is well done. This is something I would never have thought of trying. 👍
Of all the BP cartridges, the 303 British is probably the most complex. Without access to a special puck mold and straight walled 303 cases, you are stuck with what you had to do but you got close. That central hole is critical to increase the burn rate of that molded charge in order to get to 1850 fps. You could try other powders (many suggested your TP version) but my hunch is you are near a velocity wall without that central chamber. The fact the armorers had to go the route of a specially molded charge indicates to me they failed with stuffing the case with loose powder. ....and they had some damn good powders in the late 1800s.
@@irregularguy6465 Hmm, kinda like orange slices and slide them in from the top? It would be tricky as that last piece would be almost impossible to insert. I had some success(?) with my 40-50 making a central pin indexing on the flash hole, pouring in powder around the pin and compressing with a ram center drilled to allow the pin to slide through. It took 12 min to make each cartridge and no real gain in MV so I gave up.
true, and the orange slices method would require the segments to fit into the central chamber too. Maybe some kind of an expander mandrel that compresses the powder against the inner walls of the case? or an even bigger expander mandrel to un-neck necked casings?
@@irregularguy6465 I think the latter idea would have the best chance: anneal the cases, expand the neck enough to insert the pre-formed molded charge and then resize the case around the charge.
Well I would say you got it about right. The original load was a 215 gr bullet which they called a copper nickel and with 70 grs of black powder which was extremely compressed. So you did a Great Job.
If you want to continue your experiment, you might want to try staying with the 4F and try both a drop tube and separately, vibration to settle the powder in the case prior to your "compression die." I've done so in 45-70 to good effect, and you might find you only have to compress once prior to the final insertion of the bullet.
You should make a shit load more of the toilet paper powder and do more testing with it, in various cartridges. (And yes the pun was intended) Hahaha As always I really enjoy your videos.
This reminds me that I need to get my 1917 Lee Enfield No.1 MK 3* up and running. It needs more work to be done to it. When I ordered it from Royal Tiger Imports, it was caked in 100 years worth of cosmoline and gun oil. The barrel could self identify as a smooth bore... it needed😊 alot of work. I completely disassembled, cleaned, and inspected the rifle. I took the barrel/receiver assembly to a gunsmith and had a new barrel fitted to the receiver. Then I had the headspacing checked an adjusted. All that needs to be done now is a refinish of all metal parts (Bluing), wood repair/refinish, and glass bedding the forend to the barrel.
#03 British is correct because there is more than one 303. There is the 303 Jeffery, 303 Magnum, 303 Savage, 303 Epps, 303 rimless and on and on. The 303 Military cartridge was given the name 303 British to differentiate it from the other 303 cartridges of which there are piles... So yes 303 British is more than a correct name for the cartridge.
I think the 5in. Longer barrel of the Lee Metford would get you pretty close to the original velocity. Metford rifling might have something to do with it, too, but I doubt it. Great video. One of my favourite channels.
Jake you should try this with the toilet paper black powder! That is since it produced such interesting results when you made it. But it is kind of like someone recently told me with something I recently did: It is what it is, and if it works that is all that matters.
Any box of 303 ammo I have seen here in Canada always had '303 British' on it. I reload using Varget or IMR4895, and my rifle is a 1942 Longbranch, from the former Longbranch Armories in Mississauga Ontario.
Yes this is because there is more than one 303. There is 303 Jeffery, 303 Magnum, 303 Savage, 303 Epps, 303 rimless etc etc.. The 303 Military cartridge was given the name 303 British to differentiate it from the other 303 cartridges of which there are piles... So yes 303 british is more than a correct name for the cartridge.
I really appreciate the common sense approach to most of your experiments and testing. I’ve found over the years that so much published information is overly complicated? I always thought that it must be my thinking that is simplistic, when in reality , it seems to be people showing off about how smart they are. My brother and I Took an old black powder pistol, loaded up some black powder and put a loosely fitting ball and fired it at a telephone book It worked, that was fifty five years ago, I was 7 and my brother was 13. I had hockey gloves on and a helmet (safety first), we weren’t stupid)… I know there are things you need to be careful with when messing with firearms, especially smokeless and the pressures of modern firearms. Good videos, and I’m really enjoying my vintage firearms, it kinda brings me back to 55 years ago.
The pressing technique you use is really similar to the method of making blasting caps using perchlorate based explosives. While it’s safe to do that with BP I would avoid trying it with pyrodex since it uses ammonium perchlorate as an oxidizer and there could be a chance of it detonating rather than burning like usual. Awesome video!
Triple seven does not like compression - Hodgdon recommends that it not be used with compressed loads. I had to try it anyway in my cap and ball revolvers and I found that the standard deviation increased considerably. With compressed loads I actually lost ft/s and ftlbs energy decreased. Triple seven does not burn well or burn predictably when compressed. Compressed loads did not produce increased velocity even once out of 12 shots. There were no signs of detonation when I tried these loads, but you are on your own if you try it as compressed T7 loads are against the manufacturer's recommendations. Personally I don't see the point of trying it as for me it was a waste of powder.@@elenas4878
You might actually get better velocities with a heavier bullet. I've heard of that happening in black powder cartridge loads due to light bullets being pushing out the muzzle before the pressure curve can properly build up. Either way getting ballistics on par with a .44 Mag carbine isn't bad at all out of a black powder loading.
Not an expert here, I think I read back in the day hand loaders would use duplex loads of 2Fg and 3Fg powders. I forget the ratio, something like 20% 2Fg and 80% 3Fg. Drop 2Fg and tamp it with wooden dowel then the 3Fg and tamp that as well with a wooden dowel. The point is at that time they were using compressed loads and to compress the powder they used wooden dowels and a brass hammer then seated the bullet. It was dangerous from what I remember reading. Static electricity.
Ive been using a custom die set to form a hollow core compressed charge in the case ,, for years . I can send pics of my process. I use a small arbor press and have made die sets for several cartridges (.45 caliber and .30 caliber).
Only thing I have done different is use a piece of wooden dowel as a tamper rather than to use a metallic object, even though sparking between copper and brass should not be an issue.
Thanks for sharing your research/testing. It certainly opened my mind to an alternate propellant. Now...if we could just figure out how to make primers at home.
remember the blackpowder .303 velocity was out of a 30" barrel lee meford......the longer barrel and the shallower meford rifling will aid in velocity gains
Heyyy you actually did it. Very nice to see the difference between loads and how much, or little it actually differed. I will probably still load mine to the 70 grains compressed, just for the historicity's sake, but like you said, it is a pain in the neck. Luckily I'm only using a single shot rifle so, they don't go as quick for me anyways.
Pretty sure I saw it mentioned on another thread, but I think the brit BP loading of 215gr@1850fps is out of a full rifle barrel. I bet with a full-length Lee-Metford barrel and toilet paper powder, you could equal their muzzle energies. One of your mathier viewers could probably figure out how much burn time you're losing through the SMLE barrel. Anyway, just feeding the algorithm, keep doing you.
They put 303 British on the box because there is also a ounce very popular 303 Savage that was chambered in the very popular model 99 Savage rifle. They are absolutely not the same cartridge. I don't know who told you that it's just a 303, but don't let the uninformed out here get you in trouble.
Since I have exactly zero experience handloading black powder cartridges, I might be wrong, but would you benefit from dividing your powder charge in half, compressing the first half then add the second half and compressing that, I understand that a purpose built tool would be needed, I’m thinking a brass punch that’s modified to thread into an old die that’s been tapped and rigging up some mechanism so you compress to a consistent pressure, perhaps another tool or fitting that would allow you to remove your press handle and use a torque wrench in its place. When I saw your process that was something that came to my mind. Then you would have a consistently compressed load compressed to a consistent “weight” or pressure for lack of a better term. There ya go! There’s a whole series of videos for you!
I appreciate you taking the time and trouble. We all gain some knowledge from it. We never know what the future holds and the time may come when we are all shooting Black in our cartridge weapons. I'm interested in how my 06 will fare with some of those compressed loads. I'l sacrifice an "M" die to do the compression, it'll be easier than pulling that bullet out 4-5 times and speed things up.
Lot of good stuff in this video! I noted your comments on Maximum Spread and feel I am thinking the same as you. I think MS might a quality indicator as my really bad powders early in the game had MS sometimes in the 3 digits. I also have settled on 50 as a quasi-boundary between a powder that needs more work (usually more milling) and a load that needs refining.
If I remember back in the good old days buying 303 from the newspaper shop I am sure it just had 303 on box . That was in Australia, Moranbah in about 1976 or 1977.
You could fire form 303 in a 410 to make it straight wall then load it up with black powder and compress it. Then resize it back to 303 to kinda sort of mimic the original method.
@@cameronlamb7274I don’t think he means .410 shotshells. The Ishapore .410 muskets used an un formed .303 case. In original production, the powder pellet was inserted in the case, and then the case went into the forming die. The powder was already formed into a pellet, with a flash channel through its centre to give better ignition. The same loading procedure was used with cordite. The cordite was inserted, then the case went into the die.
More trivia but the American 30-06 round in British service (RAF and Home Guard) was designated 0.300” and a red paint band put on the rifles and machine guns to prevent some dimwit trying to shove .303” down them. Post Great War the French used many German Maxim guns in 7.92mm Mauser but they changed the French standard round to 7.5mm and that could cause severe issues if they were mixed. They then changed the French round length so that it would not fit inside. Accurate names matter.
I guess in the UK they just call it 303, but ive always heard it called 303 british, like, everywhere outside of the UK. Like pretty much the entire world ....
That “almost got it!” can drag in the mind until finally exceeding the objective… The accuracy is consistantly noticeable using diff powders, is what stuck out in my mind. I guess the max spread is also part of that mystery…Another fun video! Thank you!
What I did was using home made bp fill and use the bolt of the tumbler to vibrate the powder down with a tooth pick down the center fill repeat , worked great no speed just worked great.
I use an RCBS decapper body as a kind of universal dye for flaring and expanding. I bet you could make a compression mandrel with a long pin that would compress your charge and leave you with a hole down the center, and would be a lot more convenient than seating and pulling a bullet multiple times. You got higher velocity with a faster / smaller kernel, so maybe you need to burn the charge faster by exposing more of the powder column to flame?
I enjoy your heresy of putting FFFFg in a rifle cartridge, against recommendation and thus, getting a good result. Too few people stray from the norm, and only by straying you discover new things. Your legendary balsa did great, don't forget about the TP! Enjoyable video as always.
Hello Jake the Blackpowder cartridge world we drop the powder into the case from 3 foot up. Packs a lot better initially, get a lot more in without compression RC
Fascinating experiment. I spent a career in the US Army Infantry, mainly shooting 5.56mm. I could not image being on the battlefield with a rifle chambering something as large as .303 British. I suspect that the .303 would produce fewer wounded, as I can't imagine someone surviving a hit with that big joker. Thank you for the fine content.
Statistically it was kind of the other way around, hit probability was just as low as it is today and with fewer projectiles coming out of a bolt action with a 10 round magazine compared to an automatic with a standard 30 rounder one would expect fewer hits, also the training was different and men were sort of less likely than they are today to pull trigger "with intent". Modern training methods and so on.
Jake thank you for videos I love them When I load for-the sharps 45/120. I do drop load , drop the charge down a 3 foot tube it settles he powder uniformly your mean spread may reduce . Just a thought mate ,,,,Reg
I can see I have a lot to learn about black powder loading let alone black powder production. I made black powder as a kid but we always just took the amounts of salt peter, sulfur and charcoal and ground them up fine. We only used it to make firecrackers. lol Firearms quality powder looks much more complicated. Using black powder in centerfire rifles is something I never thought about until watching your videos. Thanks for lighting the fire so to speak. Phil
Out of interest rather than using a 180 grn "powder compressor" would a piece of turned .311" brass that was a bit longer reduce the number of compressions?
Disregard those nomenclature police who lack historical perpective. As already commented upon, the terminology was necessary back when .303 Savage was a thing. They might as well ask "Why do you call it .308 Winchester? Well, .308 Norma, for one. Nowadays we have the same thing with .338, 6.5, yadda yadda. So let 'em eat fish. "And as always", pretty dang informative and entertaining presentation.
Not sure if this was mentioned (I didn't watch the whole video 😔) but Black Powder was only used in the .303 from 1888 to 1890. From 1891 to (I believe) 1917, an early form of Smokeless Power (Cordite) was used. Cordite was the original intended propellant in 1888 however BP was used for a couple of years til the Cordite was developed. I believe in Canada, more big game has been taken with the .303 than any other round. In Some treaties with First Nations Peoples in Canada, A box of .303 ammo is provided to families as part of the treaties to this day.
Going to try this with my Martini enfield cadet, so was initially designed for the black powder loads. It certainly doesn’t like full power smokeless loads other than IVI manufactured ammo. it is nitro proofed.
If you need to increase packing density, try mixing small and large grains. at around 29% of main diameter you can fit smaller grains between the gaps of large ones without increasing volume. This is widely used for concrete where different sizes of gravel and sand fill most of the space with the cement merely acting as glue. It might not fix the problem entirely but it should save you some work on the press.
I"m guessing a slightly smaller aluminum or brass piece might make it faster than having to pull the bullet every time. This is really good stuff. Wonder what a PC'd lead bullet would do? After 30 years without one, I finally have a no1mk3 (very clean) back in my hands!
Thanks for not wanting to offend the Commonwealthers, but it's your video, so offend away if you want. While I grew up around .303 "British" the truth is i didn't even know it started out a BP round until the last video. Always more to learn.
Trivia but it started out as a smokeless round but the smokeless propellant had issues so it was issued as a temporary stop gap with black powder whilst the issues were solved. The solid cake stick put one prior to necking the case was the typical way it was done at that time and leaned heavily on the Swiss research and was similar to the Danish and Austrian practice to name but two. If one looks at the Swiss Schmidt Rubin rifle one can see that it was rear locking to keep black powder fouling away from the lugs to reduce fouling issues with the bolt. However they were able to get a smokeless round ready before it was issued. But then the Swiss had different environmental and transport situations compared to the British who had to be able to support travel across oceans and in ox carts across rough roads etc. in temperatures ranging from extreme desert heat to a Canadian winter and weeks of monsoon rain.
It is 303British, as there is also a 303Savage round, and you wouldn't want to mix the two of them up. So yes, .303British is the correct labelling of the cartridge...
Pretty neat. Glad to see somebody try what I've considered in thought a thousand times. Quick question, do you use the same reloading equipment for your smokeless ammo as your black powder ammo? I always do my black powder stuff by hand because I don't want any black powder granules or burnt residue making it into my smokeless guns (for fear of corrosion)
Need more energy.. make a compression tool that has a spike for the hole that the Brit. pellets had and start the compression cycle loading 1/3 or 1/4 at a time (since the Brit. charge pellets had a hole). At least the last compression should still have a hole for faster burn. My other though is that maybe the Brits where using a tad of nitro-cellulose in their BP like modern powder makers use (they use an equivalent that is more proprietary).. Chasing that extra 100 feet per sec. is just going to be elusive anyway and as shown in the .30-06, BP has it's burn limits anyway.
Takes some guts to compress FFFFg in the case into a pellet and light it off in your face without any bench testing. Good velocity though and had it been cast might’ve been better velocity.
Also when they did chrono tests back in the day, they used new or gently used bores which typically produce higher fps. I’m sure the rifling on this Enfield is a bit…worn.
Followed up on a hunch….barrel length in Lee-Metford rifles was 30.5 inches vs. 25 in the MkIII. Maybe not fully burning the compressed powder in shorter barrel?
@@Everythingblackpowder That would track with the velocity differences. Hey my real experience is with a Thompson Center I built as a kid. At the upper load end you just got a fireball of partially burned powder. May be by for some advice if I ever get off my ass and buy dies and cases to load for the pair of .50-70 Springfields I have in my safe.
That would be my guess. I know in a smokeless load that 5.5 inches could cut off ~100 fps or more depending on the specific load. In fact, that was one half of the impetus for the development of the .300 Blackout cartridge - neither M193 ball or SS109/M855 penetrator were designed for the 14.5 inch barrel found on the M4 carbine, and thus deliver less-than-spectacular terminal performance when shot out of the short barrel. A big heavy .308 caliber bullet can do more damage even if it's moving much slower, or so the thinking went. (of course, the other half of the impetus was for a subsonic round that carried more energy than a 9mm and could be easily used in existing platforms with minimal modification)
Really enjoy your videos. I was just wondering, maybe a drop tube would relieve some of the tedium of compressing the load five times. Just a thought. Have you tried your toilet paper powder with this cartridge?
Very well done! I was curious about this too now in some reading I did on the subject there was a hollo channel in the bp cylinder that they formed the casing around, I'd imagine that would give you a more consistent burn. I could also be as crazy as a shithouse rat os take that for what it's worth $0.02. Either way, you've kinda reignited my interest on the subject.
Pretty sure there was a very slight hour glass shape & rounded ends of the pellet , with a hollow flash channel. I believe that gave a larger surface area & allowed the flash to get around all edges very rapidly, that & increased weight & surface area of the projectile & longer barrel of the Medford rifles. Could all of that increase the heat & pressure ???
@@Everythingblackpowder 👍🏻 just saying. My brother played around a lot with diy BP in rocket motors . There’s a lot of tuning & different power levels involved with shapes & surface area . We’ve discussed the 303 pellet topic & his opinion was the British were on top of their game back then & without forming the cartridge around the pellet it would be very hard to equal or exceed their performance!
Could the stated muzzle velocity of 1850fps be due to the use of the black powder .303 round being introduced whilst the Lee Mitford and or Lond Lee variants were still in service? Think they both had approx. 30 inch barrels. I’m not certain on the exact dates but at some point, around the turn of the century the MkII and soon after MkIII smokeless cartridges were introduced whilst the SMLE (as per your demonstration rifle) was introduced in about 1907 with the shorter 24.5 inch barrel. Suspect that the 5.5inch shorter barrel could have something to do with the missing 100 fps. I’m a member of the Lee Enfield Rifle Association (LERA) in the UK and ill ask some of the guys who have older Long Lee’s (and Martini Henri .303 conversions that used the same black powder cartridge) what the service and introduction dates for the rifles and the cartridges are. Fascinating content! Rob H, England. PS - I have not read all of the comments so apologies if someone else already made this assumption/point.
Yes the No1 MkIII has a shorter barrel than the Lee Mitford by 5 inch but I doubt it would be worth 100fps. If I had to take a guess I would say it would be closer to 30 or 40fps.
@@Everythingblackpowder idk if I would worry about it with that small of a bore and pushing a jacketed bullet their should be more then enough pressure to get a mostly complete burn
I love the channel, your lucky being able to own guns. I'm a engineer and i was wondering if a tool couldn't be made to compress the powder into a tube say 0.300" and that could be dropped into the cartridge? I never knew you could compress powder into shapes. Or am I talking BS. 😉
