Been doing some ballistic tests this morning...

[Snargfargle]

I thought it was going to be warmer this morning but was 40 degrees with twenty-five mph wind gusts from the north. Thought I'd go out shooting anyway. I didn't even have to open the gate to the old buffalo wallow where I shoot as the cattle are off of the pasture for the winter. My shots were all over the place due to the wind but I had fun anyway.

 

The place I always put my 25-yard targets up is in an old blow-out whose sides act as a good backstop. I've been shooting there for at least thirty years because that's where I first took my nieces out to shoot .22s when they were five and seven, and the oldest is now thirty seven. The youngest was a bit little to shoot on her own so I held the .22 rifle for her but let her sight it and pull the trigger. She hit the target every time.

 

Edited February 14 by Snargfargle

[Asym]

Brave man with the weather.... 

What caliber and load data?  I can't help but to ask....

[Snargfargle]

3 hours ago, Asym said:

What caliber and load data?  I can't help but to ask....

My load data would be the cheapest .22s I could find at Midway when they were having a free-shipping sale the last time the ammo bubble burst, which would have been a few months before COVID hit. Remington Thunderbolt, 40 grain lead round nose. I'd say a little above 1,100 fps out of a 5.5" pistol barrel if the charts I read are accurate. I tend to think that they are as the speed of sound at my elevation is 1,100 fps and I'm pretty sure that I can hear the bullets "crack" while going through the air.

This is my current pistol. It's a 1989 model according to the serial number. I suppose that it's about as accurate as any pistol I've owned. Someday I ought to get me a box of match-grade .22s just to see what accuracy it's capable of. I've had to replace the plastic recoil buffers and a tiny spring but that's it. The recoil buffers are sort of a consumable item so I bought a spare set the last time I had to replace them. If I had known that the price would jump from $4 to $12 for these over the past three years I'd have bought a couple more sets.   

 

Edited February 13 by Snargfargle

[Asym]

1 hour ago, Snargfargle said:

My load data would be the cheapest .22s I could find at Midway when they were having a free-shipping sale the last time the ammo bubble burst, which would have been a few months before COVID hit. Remington Thunderbolt, 40 grain lead round nose. I'd say a little above 1,100 fps out of a 5.5" pistol barrel if the charts I read are accurate. I tend to think that they are as the speed of sound at my elevation is 1,100 fps and I'm pretty sure that I can hear the bullets "crack" while going through the air.

This is my current pistol. It's a 1989 model according to the serial number. I suppose that it's about as accurate as any pistol I've owned. Someday I ought to get me a box of match-grade .22s just to see what accuracy it's capable of. I've had to replace the plastic recoil buffers and a tiny spring but that's it. The recoil buffers are sort of a consumable item so I bought a spare set the last time I had to replace them. If I had known that the price would jump from $4 to $12 for these over the past three years I'd have bought a couple more sets.   

 

We have a 22 match group, a monthly competition,  where it is actually an Arms Race...  I have a couple of Olympic level 22's and several steel challenge 22's as well...

But, I do not compete with those ^^^^^ guys.  They are using 4 to 6K rifles....and, wind stations that are tied into a Laptop....  They don't shoot blackpowder and I don't shoot 22.....

[Snargfargle]

1 minute ago, Asym said:

We have a 22 match group... But, I do not compete with those ^^^^^ guys. 

I shoot tin cans, which should tell what level I compete at. When I was in the Army I was a pretty decent shot though but who isn't at 21? I was TDY'd to a Boy Scout camp as their medic one summer. There, we had Civilian Marksmanship Program surplus rifles at the shooting range. There were four of us soldiers there; a medic (me), a rifle instructor, and two cooks. The rifle instructor and I would have contests on who could drive more finish nails at 50 feet without missing one. The Scout who came closest to guessing then got to shoot my .45 black powder rifle. I wish I had one of those heavy-barrel Mossberg rifles with their Lyman peep sights as they literally were tack drivers. They were heavy though, which stands to reason as they were originally Army training rifles back in the M1 Garand days.

[Wolfswetpaws]

3 hours ago, Snargfargle said:

My load data would be the cheapest .22s I could find at Midway when they were having a free-shipping sale the last time the ammo bubble burst, which would have been a few months before COVID hit. Remington Thunderbolt, 40 grain lead round nose. I'd say a little above 1,100 fps out of a 5.5" pistol barrel if the charts I read are accurate. I tend to think that they are as the speed of sound at my elevation is 1,100 fps and I'm pretty sure that I can hear the bullets "crack" while going through the air.

My experiences with Remington "Thunderbolt" .22LR gave me the impression it was worth the price I paid for it.
(A high percentage of dud primers.  Inconsistent muzzle velocity.  Larger-than-average sized shot-groups.)
Long story short, it was not satisfactory, for me.
But, I paid my money and took my chances and learned from the experience.

That said, my best .22LR firearm was only capable of providing 3 m.o.a. performance.  (Given the price of the firearm, I figured that was okay, though.)
So, trying Eley Tenex wasn't in-the-cards, because it would be a waste of the ammo's potential.
I did try a variety of ammo (that was about 15% to 25% more expensive than "Thunderbolt") and found several that were satisfactory.

[Snargfargle]

Just now, Wolfswetpaws said:

Inconsistent muzzle velocity.

I've heard that some people sort their cheap .22 rounds by weight. The theory is that bullets are mostly uniform in weight and if there are slight differences in the weight of the powder charge from round to round it will show up. If I can ever find my precision scale again I might give this a try.

[Asym]

17 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

My experiences with Remington "Thunderbolt" .22LR gave me the impression it was worth the price I paid for it.
(A high percentage of dud primers.  Inconsistent muzzle velocity.  Larger-than-average sized shot-groups.)
Long story short, it was not satisfactory, for me.
But, I paid my money and took my chances and learned from the experience.

That said, my best .22LR firearm was only capable of providing 3 m.o.a. performance.  (Given the price of the firearm, I figured that was okay, though.)
So, trying Eley Tenex wasn't in-the-cards, because it would be a waste of the ammo's potential.
I did try a variety of ammo (that was about 15% to 25% more expensive than "Thunderbolt") and found several that were satisfactory.

I shot for four years in High School on our rifle team.  I was the only left handed shooter so my weapon for four years was a left handed BSA Martini MKIII...  We had a disabled Marine from VietNam as our coach.  We shot the NRA A-17 (4x3x4) targets and stapled sighter targets for the 4 left col and 4 right col circles.  So, that is 19 total targets with 10 scoring.   My 4 year average as 100-7x.  In my Junior and Senior years, I shot what was called an "Anneskuwitz" - which was named for a local man that shot those 19 total targets, for a perfect target 100-19x (All pinwheels.)  I shot my targets without my Coach spotting, from a cold rifle.  I have one in my secured personal effects - the school had the other (if it still exists...).  As far as I know, I am the only shooter to do it twice.....  That's 55 years now.  Several years ago, they closed down all High School rifle teams I have been told....   

Now, I don't compete with our club's 22 competitions.....  It's an Arms Race and I never have wanted to spend the money to be competitive....  They measure their 100 yard targets with a scanning system....  It gets down to the thousandth of an inch with those custom made rigs....  Now, they won't even try shooting black powder with the crew I compete with nor, Cowboy Action.... 

[Wolfswetpaws]

1 hour ago, Snargfargle said:

I've heard that some people sort their cheap .22 rounds by weight. The theory is that bullets are mostly uniform in weight and if there are slight differences in the weight of the powder charge from round to round it will show up. If I can ever find my precision scale again I might give this a try.

Variations in the gunpowder (quality) and quantity of gunpowder and variations in bullet weight (and shape) and variations in the primer ignition can all affect the outcome of a cartridge propelling (or failing to propel) a bullet.

At the .22LR end of the metallic cartridge spectrum, consumers have a lot of options available.
Some are economically priced for "plinking" and beginning marksmanship endeavors.
Others are priced a bit higher and offer more consistent performance, and might be suitable for specific purposes (hunting or entry-level competitive shooting, for example).
If a person decides to "get serious", then high-priced ammo (with correspondingly consistent quality of manufacture and performance) begins to make sense (providing one has a firearm capable of utilizing the ammo's potential).

Because a cartridge is made from components (primer, case, gunpowder, bullet) the weighing of finished cartridges isn't going to reveal the entire picture, so to speak.
A slightly heavier bullet with a slightly under-weight powder-charge might weigh the same (theoretically) as a cartridge that is truly to "specification". 
Thus the preferred procedure for weighing cartridge components is to weigh them before they're assembled into a finished cartridge.
Of course, the precision of the measurements relies upon the measuring devices. 
A low-priced scale might not be able to discern differences of a hundredth of a grain, or whatever level of precision is necessary.

I've yet to hear about a handloader custom-loading their own .22LR ammo, though.
So, typically, center-fire cartridges are the benficiaries of a hand-loader sorting bullets according to their weight.

[Wolfswetpaws]

1 hour ago, Asym said:

I shot for four years in High School on our rifle team.  I was the only left handed shooter so my weapon for four years was a left handed BSA Martini MKIII...  We had a disabled Marine from VietNam as our coach.  We shot the NRA A-17 (4x3x4) targets and stapled sighter targets for the 4 left col and 4 right col circles.  So, that is 19 total targets with 10 scoring.   My 4 year average as 100-7x.  In my Junior and Senior years, I shot what was called an "Anneskuwitz" - which was named for a local man that shot those 19 total targets, for a perfect target 100-19x (All pinwheels.)  I shot my targets without my Coach spotting, from a cold rifle.  I have one in my secured personal effects - the school had the other (if it still exists...).  As far as I know, I am the only shooter to do it twice.....  That's 55 years now.  Several years ago, they closed down all High School rifle teams I have been told....   

Now, I don't compete with our club's 22 competitions.....  It's an Arms Race and I never have wanted to spend the money to be competitive....  They measure their 100 yard targets with a scanning system....  It gets down to the thousandth of an inch with those custom made rigs....  Now, they won't even try shooting black powder with the crew I compete with nor, Cowboy Action.... 

To each their own, I guess.
Personally, I feel that ballistics is an interesting study topic, regardless of which type of gunpowder (black powder or smokeless powder) is used.  🙂 

[Navalpride33]

I think the main reason, the move to smokeless powder was made, was primarily to avoid detection and increase concealment. 

Now in the civilian world.. I dont think it will affect gun performance if either powder is used.

 

[Snargfargle]

5 hours ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

Variations in the gunpowder (quality) and quantity of gunpowder and variations in bullet weight (and shape) and variations in the primer ignition can all affect the outcome of a cartridge propelling (or failing to propel) a bullet.

I looked around the basement just now and found these. How small of a group at 25 yards do you think I can get out of them?

[Wolfswetpaws]

7 hours ago, Navalpride33 said:

I think the main reason, the move to smokeless powder was made, was primarily to avoid detection and increase concealment. 

Now in the civilian world.. I dont think it will affect gun performance if either powder is used.

 

I think the first sentence is correct.
The other benefit was the reduced "fouling" created by the burning of the gunpowder (smokeless creating less gunk than blackpowder).

I think if one were to use an AR-15 with cartridges loaded with blackpowder, the results might not be pretty and may require a far-sooner-than-normal cleaning.  🙂 

I'm not sure how much variety of burn-rates that blackpowder is available in.  (Edit:  Perhaps @Asym will know?)
But, I know that smokeless powder has a large number of product variations which have different burn-rates and sizes & shapes of powder granules.

Edited February 14 by Wolfswetpaws

[Wolfswetpaws]

28 minutes ago, Snargfargle said:

I looked around the basement just now and found these. How small of a group at 25 yards do you think I can get out of them?

If memory serves me, those are "snake shot" or "rat shot" versions of .22LR cartridges.
Used for niche purposes of pest control or perhaps as a close-quarters defense against poisonous snakes while adventuring in the wilderness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Winchester Super-X Ammunition 22 Long Rifle 25 Grain #12 Shot Shotshell Box of 50
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/2900246859/
 

[Ensign Cthulhu]

7 hours ago, Navalpride33 said:

Now in the civilian world.. I dont think it will affect gun performance if either powder is used.

Smokeless burns cleaner and more efficiently, at much higher pressure, and has more inherent power. Black is viciously corrosive, and much closer attention has to be paid to cleaning.

Antique firearms of a sufficient age are completely unsuited to smokeless, while some others can be used safely but factory ammunition is typically loaded very weakly to keep pressures within safe limits and enthusiasts with stronger guns prefer to buy powder, primers and projectiles and assemble their own ammunition to individual spec. 

[Snargfargle]

12 hours ago, Navalpride33 said:

I think the main reason, the move to smokeless powder was made, was primarily to avoid detection and increase concealment. Now in the civilian world.. I dont think it will affect gun performance if either powder is used.

The performance you can get from black powder loads is severely limited by the powder's rather primitive makeup limited and burn characteristics. This goes for the black powder substitutes too. While it's lots of fun to shoot like our forefathers did, no modern army would ever think of going back to black powder.

Black power is mostly salt, not table salt but a salt (potassium nitrate) none the less, and thus causes quite a bit of rusting issues. You have to use water to clean your black powder guns after firing them, followed by a rust preventative oil. It is really gummy too and creates a lot of fouling, necessitating your having to clean the barrel and moving parts of the gun more frequently. My cap and ball revolvers needed to be cleaned about every four cylinders of rounds fired through them or they would gum up and the cylinder would no longer rotate. If you don't use patches soaked with spit or some modern anti-fouling lubricant, after a handful of shots you will find that you can no longer load your traditional "Kentucky" or Hawken rifles because the bullet will no longer fit down the fouled barrel. The Mine ball of the 1860s alleviated some of this loading problem but the number of shots you could fire without swabbing the barrel was still limited. You can fire hundreds of smokeless powder bullets through a barrel before you need to clean it. I live in a dry climate where guns and only clean my .22s once every 500 rounds or so.

Black powder velocities depend on the volume and grain size of the powder, the bullet weight you are trying to propel, and especially the barrel length of your firearm. It's no use at all to load muzzleloading pistols with huge amounts of black powder because the unburned powder just spews out of the barrel. Burning black powder creates much lower pressures than modern smokeless powder does too. Even saboted lightweight bullets shot out of modern black powder hunting rifles are limited to less than 2500 fps, which is actually pretty good compared to the old US Army .45-70's velocity of 1200 fps, which is about as fast as a .22 long rifle bullet flies.

The faster your bullet is, the less drop it has over distance and the farther out you can git your target without having to adjust your sights. Modern smokeless cartridge bullet velocities are pretty much only limited by the pressure the firearm can withstand and the fact that the bullet will melt due to the friction of flying through the air if its not made out of something like tungsten or depleted uranium. My great uncle had a .220 Swift that he tried to shoot hard lead-alloy cast bullets out of once. The bullets disintegrated before they hit the target, not to mention they metal fouled the barrel like nobody's business. 

 

Edited February 14 by Snargfargle

[Snargfargle]

11 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

If memory serves me, those are "snake shot" or "rat shot" versions of .22LR cartridges.

Yes, that "what group do you think I'd get" was joke. I used to use those ratshot .22s to shoot rats in the barn behind our house when I was a kid because they wouldn't damage much of anything after about ten feet. Not to mention that the shot is spun by the rifling so that the shot pattern is so wide beyond that distance that you couldn't hit much of anything anyway. To kill a rat with those old .22 ratshot shells it pretty much had to be right in front of you.

[Wolfswetpaws]

3 minutes ago, Snargfargle said:

Yes, that "what group do you think I'd get" was joke.

I am only just now having my breakfast and morning coffee.  I invoke that as my explanation for not realizing you were joking.  🙂 

[Snargfargle]

8 hours ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

To each their own, I guess.
Personally, I feel that ballistics is an interesting study topic, regardless of which type of gunpowder (black powder or smokeless powder) is used.  🙂 

I was in an artillery unit so I got to hear a lot about ballistics, even as a medic, because I was always interested in what everyone else was doing too. One of the more fun thing we did was fire practice rounds out of the 8" howitzers. They were low-velocity shells sized to be fired in place of the howitzers' primers. They only went a hundred feet or so but the ballistics matched to the actual shells so the gun crews could practice fire missions on the cheap. I don't know why we bothered though as we fired about a 50 WWII-surplus 8" shells every month anyway. The Army must have ordered millions of those things during WWII because in 1977 we were still shooting them up, and that was after the hundreds of thousands that were fired in Korea and Vietnam.   

Edited February 14 by Snargfargle

[Wolfswetpaws]

5 minutes ago, Snargfargle said:

I was in an artillery unit so I got to hear a lot about ballistics, even as a medic because I was always interested in what everyone else was doing too. One of the more fun thing we did was fire practice rounds out of the 8" howitzers. They were low-velocity shells sized to be fired in place of the howitzers' primers. They only went a hundred feet or so but the ballistics matched to the actual shells so the gun crews could practice fire missions on the cheap. I don't know why we bothered though as we fired about a 50 WWII-surplus 8" shells every month anyway. The Army must have ordered millions of those things during WWII because in 1977 we were still shooting them up, and that was after the hundreds of thousands that were fired in Korea and Vietnam.   

If they got the ballistics of the "practice rounds" done right, then it could serve as a small-scale simulation of a fire-mission, I suppose.
The crews could walk around an area the size of a couple of football fields to check their work, instead of relying upon observers using binoculars and radios from miles away.
Set-up a grid and play an artillery variation of checkers?  🙂 
The artillery version of "gallery sniping", perhaps?  🙂 

As for the inventory of projectiles? 
Well, according to what I've seen on Binkov's Battlegrounds youtube channel, the WW-II surplus ammo has been used-up a long time ago.
The *conflict in Europe*, cough, cough, has been consuming artillery ammo and drones at a rate that has suprised military planners (in my understanding).

[Asym]

9 hours ago, Navalpride33 said:

I think the main reason, the move to smokeless powder was made, was primarily to avoid detection and increase concealment. 

Now in the civilian world.. I dont think it will affect gun performance if either powder is used.

Yes, Lawmen in the Late 19th Century found themselves on the losing end of ambushes !  And, there are some very funny stories out in the Plains States about large ranches ordering a favorite Winchester or Marlin lever action and realizing it wasn't black powder driven.  It got so bad, that Marlin made a ""B" grade black powder barreled 1893 in 38-55 to not lose the entire big bore level action market....  everyone was afraid of smokeless powder !!!  "It's actually powdered dynamite !!!  What were they thinking !"  Which is ironic;  because,  Black Powder is an actual Explosive and smokeless powder is a Propellant !!!

Performance:  yes and no.  Cowboy action shooting has a black powder category.  Single shot rifle competitions have a black powder categories...  Both, are just as accurate as smokeless - mind you, filthy weapons that takes a while to clean and the range looks like San Francisco in the morning !  And, many of us use BP in Long Distance rifle matches, because it is efficient and operates at lower pressures (and, those Sharps, Highwalls, Trapdoors and Rolling blocks were designed for BP !)

Reloading is dangerous.  Please read and study and follow published techniques and load data before you use Black Powder.  Remember, Black Powder is an Explosive, not a propellant....

[Snargfargle]

31 minutes ago, Wolfswetpaws said:

the WW-II surplus ammo has been used-up a long time ago. The *conflict in Europe*, cough, cough, has been consuming artillery ammo and drones at a rate that has suprised military planners (in my understanding).

WWII was both devastating and a boon for America. If you didn't get killed or seriously injured in the war, WWII probably raised your socioeconomic status considerably. My grandpas went from barely scraping by as a sharecropper and a sawmill worker during the Depression to working good jobs building bombers at Boeing during the war and later working in the gas and telecommunications industries during the post-war boom.

Now that the old stocks of weapons have been used up, the military contractors can get more government money to design and build new weapons. Quite a few people have pretty good jobs working in the military-industrial complex. Unfortunately for retired schmucks like me, however, my savings decrease in value every time the government prints a new $60 billion in "funny money" to send over to some country that's fighting a war it wants to support. You never hear much about it but the government uses mercenaries extensively nowadays too. They are now called "contractors" and make a heck of a lot more than they did when they were on active duty. 

[Snargfargle]

3 hours ago, Asym said:

Reloading is dangerous.  Please read and study and follow published techniques and load data before you use Black Powder.  Remember, Black Powder is an Explosive, not a propellant....

Unlike smokeless powder, black powder can detonate if your cartridge case or muzzle-loaded charge has an air space. I used to have a Ruger Old Army and a replica 2nd Model Dragoon. For plinking, I'd use a 20 grain charge of black powder so I had to use cornmeal to fill the remainder of each chamber. For my muzzleloaders, I marked where a load was supposed to be tamped down to on the ramrods so I could be sure that there was no air space.

I found the detonation thing out the hard way. When I was in high school I made a small black powder cannon in metal shop. I shot empty 20-gauge shells filled with sand out of it and it was a lot of fun... until the time I didn't tamp the charge down enough and it exploded. I didn't get hurt because I always lit the fuse and then took cover when I was firing it. I used to shoot those 20-gauge shells down the same dirt road I'll be heading out on to so shoot my .22 today. I think it's not going to be so windy so I'm going to go over to the shop and get some sandbags and see just what the pistol itself is capable of when firing those cheap Remington Thunderbolts. In the past, I've shot one-inch groups at 25 yards with it from a rest when using CCIs.  

Edited February 14 by Snargfargle

[Taylor3006]

33 minutes ago, Asym said:

Reloading is dangerous.  Please read and study and follow published techniques and load data before you use Black Powder.  Remember, Black Powder is an Explosive, not a propellant....

Reloading smokeless is pretty safe, even if you are not being safe. We used to sit around in a circle with presses, making ammo, smoking cigarettes, and having a great old time and the worst thing I ever saw was someone priming a case that had already been primed... Scared the poop out of everyone but was it. 

Blackpowder is scary stuff, always used Pyrodex myself mostly because BP does not store well nor very long. Add to that it is pretty dangerous to store just seemed a no brainer to me to go with the alternative.  Course I was never much of a muzzle loader user and never had one until I inherited a 50cal rifle. It is fun to plink around with but would not want to have to depend on it for self defense or putting food on the table. I do enjoy going on about owning a 50 caliber though... Always get a laugh when they see it. 

[Sauteed_Potatoes]

A friend of mine is trying to get me to join the pistol/rifle club he is a member of and he took me there last night for indoor 25yrd prone shooting. He let me borrow his rifle, mat, rifle glove and a shooting jacket. That is the most uncomfortable thing I've ever put on but I must say it does help with aiming. I scored a 173 out of 200 for my first go and came in last.

Those guys spend some serious money on equipment to shoot a 22lr.