JT
THE SIMPLICITY OF SHOOTING BLACK POWDER SIXGUNS
Saturday, July 31, 2021, 11:18

Serious shooters/handloaders know how much work it is, or at least it can be, to find a really good load. There are so many choices of powders and bullets that the search for the best load from one particular gun is endless. Shooting black powder sixguns is so much simpler. All one has to do is dump a little powder in the chamber, seat the ball, cap and shoot. So simple. Or is it?
Looking for the best load for percussion sixguns is not all that different from cartridge firing sixguns. There is an endless possibility of choices. Consider this. Getting ready to load .44 black powder sixguns I have a total of eight choices when it comes to powder be it black or black powder substitute. There are four different size /brand caps in my shooting box so we already have 32 choices just with these two components. For bullets I have .451”, .454”, .457”, and .456” conical. Now our choices are up to 4×32 or 128. What about lube? I can go without lube or use a wad or any one of four different homemade recipes I have. That gives me 10 possible lube choices which now factors us up to 1,288 possibilities. We haven’t even considered powder charges yet. With a .44 the normal range of selected charges are anywhere from 20 grains up to 40 grains. That would give us 21 more choices, however to keep it “simple” we could go with increments of five grains which gives us five choices and we now have multiplied up to 6,440 choices BUT that is only with one .44 sixgun while I have 30 .44s at my disposal for testing. So now we are up to 257,660 possibilities. WHEW! Oops we forgot the number of shots needed. For each combination I would need to fire a minimum of six shots which brings us up to over 1 ½ million rounds fired. I think I better go get started.