Grease contaminating BP under bullet

[villiers]

Am still trying to accurise the short Werder carbine. Principally working on loading the smaller carbine cases. They look perfect, but I took the bullet off a case recently and found that the grease behind the bullet had been pushed behind the closely fitting fibre wad and had contaminated the top layer of BP. Don´t quite see how this can be avoided. Any ideas?? I can get some rounds that are quite accurate at 100 metres. But the rest go all over the place and am glad that they at least end up on the target.

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[Patrick Chadwick]

I have had the same experience. It helps if you can store the loaded cartridges with the bullet down, so that at least gravity is working in your favor. Nevertheless, when in March this year I dismantled a cartridge for the M1871 from a box that had been left over winter from the last BP competition of the previous year, the powder sitting on the wad had still absorbed a bit of moisture from the grease and the last two millimeters or so had become glued together. No surprise, since most BP lubes have some water content, and this will tend to evaporate from the grease and condense in the powder.

I shot about 5 of these rounds, and they worked OK, but the vertical spread was a bit more than usual. So I dismantled the rest, and now I only load BP cartridges a day or two before going to the range.

[villiers]

Think I´ll try melting approx. 2mm of some harder type wax in a pan, letting it set and use a .45 case to stamp out some clean fitting wads that´ll hopefully not contaminate the BP but evaporate in the barrel.