To carry on where we left off...Smokeless in a Mauser M1871 or 71/84

[Patrick Chadwick]

This load was developed for shooting at 300 meters and above:

470 gn GG bullet with 3% tin in pure lead (NO wheelweights).
Sized to 0.446" (slug your bore and size accordingly).
Bullet inserted in case so that case mouth is on front grease groove.
In my M71, this is about 1 mm off the lands. Going closer makes problems in military competitions where you are not allowed to clean between shots!

This is the first step, as you need to establish the seating depth BEFORE deciding on the powder charge.

In case: powder, shake down powder by tapping the case on the bench, two wads from milk carton, 0.5 cc of lube from a medical syringe, wad, bullet.

The amount of lube will vary according to mix and whether you want to shoot military competitions without cleaning between shots.

Powder: Swiss No. 4 to fill space under bullet/wad/lube/wads stack. Empirically: 67 gns. No compression, as that would be yet another variable, and reports say that Swiss powder doesn't like it!

It too me quite some time to establish this load, so if you work up a satisfactory load with BP for the 350 gn bullet I would be grateful if you would post it here, to save me some work! My estimate is that, with the shorter bullet, about 75 gn will fill the space without compression. That combination should produce a significantly higher muzzle velocity, and may well perform better at 100 meters, than my load, which is intended for long-range shooting.


Patrick

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[Patrick Chadwick]

It too me quite some time to establish this load, so if you work up a satisfactory load with BP for the 350 gn bullet I would be grateful if you would post it here, to save me some work! My estimate is that, with the shorter bullet, about 75 gn will fill the space without compression. That combination should produce a significantly higher muzzle velocity, and may well perform better at 100 meters, than my load, which is intended for long-range shooting.

So much for theory. I tried this out on Saturday. The original load performed better.

Patrick