Topic: Antique ammo disassembled-a few surprises

Retrieved: 12/24/2014
Last Post: 04/19/2008

I obtained 10 rounds of .38 CLMR ammo produced by UMC sometime in the distant past.

I pulled the bullet from 1 round, dumped and scraped out the black powder and tried to fire the primer, but it was dead.

The bullet was the most interesting part of the round. It has a small .220 meplat and 2 very shallow and narrow lube grooves. Not sure what the lube is, but there isn't much of it.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is the fact that the bullet base is not flat. It has a concave depression with a narrow band around the circumference. I don't know what the band really accomplishes, but I would think it was intended to allow the base of the bullet to seal the bore.

I'll weigh the charge and the bullet and get back to you on the specifics, and I'll post a few pictures.

w44wcf
March 19, 2008

Thank you for the report. Neat that you were able to find some old UMC cartridges. Most likely they were made sometime between 1886 and 1911.

Those old mercuric primers only had a life of about 20 years at the most. I could never get any of the ones to ignite that I tried to fire either.

I have also found bullets with the concave bases in the antique .44 W.C.F. / .44-40 cartridges that I dissected. No doubt, the concave base with the thin skirt would ive a little more insurance of bullet upset to fit the barrel.

A pre-1886 factory .44 W.C.F. cartridge (no headstamp) even had a .04" hard paper disc between the powder and the base of the bullet.

It is a wonder how those early swaged bullets with shallow grease grooves carried enough lube for a rifle barrel. Must have had some great, moist burning b.p. back then.

Dutch Bill
March 19, 2008

Back in the 1980's I was buying original BP cartridges at gun shows. I would pull them apart for a look at the powder, put them back together and pass them on to a buddy who was a cartridge collector.

As long as a particular round was being loaded with black powder the bullet base would have a concave base. Once the factory started to load the same round with smokeless the hollow bases would be gone and both the BP and the smokeless rounds would use a flat base bullet.

If you look at a large number of these original BP cartridges you see specific cartridge companies using specific base designs.

The design of the hollow base gave a fair indication as to what sort of pressures the cartridge operated at.

The one I found most interesting was the various loadings of what was called the .43 Spanish. A concave base with a thin ridge around the base acting as a skirt. The width of the skirt varied with the loading. One cartridge showed a musket type powder, another a rifle type powder and then there was the Spanish load that used a sporting type powder. The Spanish loading had a wad under the bullet. Punched out of what looked like a thin kid's school book. Print still visible.

So there I sat in the lab looking at the wad and the print on it.

Heh, Jose. For why are you punching my school book? For to shoot Gringos!

There was a distinct different in the base design of a UMC .45-70 versus the Frankfort Arsenal loading. The UMC bullet base had a V-shaped base cavity with a wide skirt. The Frankfort Arsenal bullet had a shallow concave with a hole extended up into the bullet that ended in line with the rear edge of the rear lube groove.

And when you look at bullets pulled from these old cartridges look at the lube in the groove. Under magnification if you have something like a 30 or 40 power hand held magnifier.

Some lube will look almost bright green in color. That is the Japan wax in the lube. If the lube has the normal color of beeswax look for tiny pink beads within the beeswax. Those pink beads are bayberry wax.

The use of the term wax with this is a misnomer. Bayberry and Japan waxes area actually plant fats, not waxes.

There are several schools of thought on the hollow base bullets in bp cartridges. The base design evolved out of the various concepts for hollow base bullets during the Civil War. One school of thought suggests that this was a way of dealing with some degree of variation in bore sizes within a specific caliber designation.

Another note here.

Different cartridge companies relied on different powder companies for their powder supplies. After the Civil War Lammot Du Pont formed what an organization that split up the country into areas of marketing. Each company being assigned an area and amount of powder to be sold in that sales area.

This "trust" bought up all of the BP sold off by the govt. at the end of the Civil War. After previous wars the govt. would sell off surplus powder at very low prices which would kill the powder companies business for several years after a war. So du Pont saw to it that surplus powder did not reach the civilian market without first going through the hands of a powder company.

The .45-70 cartridge was originally designed around Civil War surplus musket powder that was run back through the powder plant's corning mill to break it down from the 1F grain size to both 2F and 3F. Loaded into the .45-70 at Frankfort Arsenal as a 50/50 blend of 2F and 3F. Once the supplies of surplus musket powder was gone they (Frankfort Arsenal) then loaded the .45-70 with du Pont rifle type powder. In the same grain size mixture/blend.

Driftwood Johnson
March 19, 2008

There is a very doggeared page in my Kuhnhausen's SAA Shop Manual. This page describes the early iterations of the 45 Colt cartridge. Kuhnhausen specifically states that at least with the 45 Colt cartridge, hollow based lead bullets were used for 'reasonable accuracy in .45 caliber revolvers with different chamber, chamber throat, and barrel lands dimensions.'

I would not be surprised if this practice was common with many revolver cartridges for the same reason.

Lt. Col. J. Mark Flint
March 19, 2008

Well I promised some more details, here they are.

Bullet OAL was .600. Weight was 178 grains. Lube was green Japan wax as noted in Dutch Bill's post.

Powder granulation was hard to determine after compression for a hundred years, but it looked more like FFg than FFFg.

Bullet was much softer than modern hardcast. 3 light blows with a hammer shortened it .035. 3 similar blows to a modern cast bullet only shortened it .005 I'd say it is about 30-1 or possibly softer. Easily scratched with a thumb nail.

I can see how a bullet with almost no grease grooves might be more accurate, but I'd have a hard time accepting that such a round could have been fired more than a couple magazines full without the barrel being filled with hard fouling.

I could not get all of the powder out of the inside of the case, it is still clinging to the walls a bit. What I removed weighed 34 grains (Volumetric measurement of previously compacted powder was not practical.)

The cupped base is only maybe 40-50 thousandths deep, the outer ring was what I found interesting.

Dutch Bill
March 19, 2008

I wouldn't jump to concussions about the lube and its perform in that .38 caliber round.

Prior to about 1910 most pistol cartridges up to and including the .44-40 round were loaded with a good fast burning sporting powder.

When I had looked at UMC loadings and took the powder apart it appeared to have been made by Laflin & Rand. A cut above du Pont to say the least.

I would be most hesitant to judge the worth of that cartridge when it was new based on our experience over the past few years with the exception of Swiss BP in pistol cartridges.

And in anyone wonders.

When I would break down those old powders I would separate the charcoal from the sulfur and run just the charcoal through the particle size analyzer. Each powder company had their own little tricks in powder making and the charcoal particle size distribution curve usually pointed to who made the powder. I had to work up a fair size library of known brands before I had enough info to use the particle size curve to identify the maker.

John Boy
March 20, 2008

J Mark - are there any mold lines on this bullet? I've read that the gun companies (Winchester) were using machinery to make swaged bullets in that era.

Lt. Col. J. Mark Flint
March 20, 2008

The lube grooves have fine serrations like on the edge of a coin. I suspect they were swaged. As I noted they are very soft, though perhaps not pure lead. It would be worth knowing if there were an easy way to analyze the alloy.

w44wcf
March 20, 2008

U.M.C. and W.R.A. Co. did use pure lead bullets in the .38-40. The Lyman 40143 is the factory replication bullet.

http://www.buffaloarms.com/browse.cfm/4,1544.html

http://www.buffaloarms.com/browse.cfm/4,245.html

Wills Point Pete
March 20, 2008

Y'all should bear in mind that very few people fired very many shots at a time back then. A dollar a day was a pretty normal wage. Yes, the powder back then helped but really, who cared about more than one or two magazines full out of a Winchester? The average person would fire just enough cartridges to put the critter or bad guy down.

Who had money for just shooting?

TAKAHO KID
March 21, 2008

I noticed the same vertical serrations in the lube grooves. when I took apart a 45 Colt round. Unfortunatly it wasn't head stamped.

However, the powder was quite coarse, 1F?

Lt. Col. J. Mark Flint
March 21, 2008

Quote from: w44wcf
The Lyman 40143 is the factory replication bullet.

Thanks, I have that bullet mold, but the base and lube grooves are very different, still it is a better bullet than most I see for sale commercially.

Lars
March 21, 2008

Quote from: Wills Point Pete
Who had money for just shooting?

Pete,

I won't dispute what you write about "average" person in late 1800s. I will provide some answers to your question "Who had money for just shooting?" There were at least four groups that had plenty of money in late 1800s western USA.

Some of this money was spent on latest in guns and ammo, American-made as well as European and British guns (Mauser pistols from Germany, for example) Guards at large mines were well armed, usually with latest repeating rifles (Winchester 73 for example, and newer models as they became available) and later with Mauser pistols.

One well financed group was those folks operating gold, silver, copper mines - - huge amounts of money flowed into and out of mining towns, such as Telluride, Park City, etc.

A second group was owners and operators of large cattle ranches, agriculture and industrial businesses supplying mining towns and other major population centers.

A third group was the wealthy American, European and British folks that flocked to many places, such as Colorado Springs.

A fourth was bankers and others that financed much of the rapid development from about 1880 on. Probably should also include a fifth, all those dude ranches and the folks that paid to enjoy them. Mining and railroad development attracted some of the worlds richest and most inventive folks.

It is sometimes said that what is now Colorado was really an industrial, not wilderness, frontier, starting shortly after USA Civil War. California was even further along this path of development. By 1873 the USA west was well on way to being a collection of expanding population centers, supported by expanding railroads, industrial and agricultural development. Plenty of folks to buy expensive guns (Ballards, Bullards, Remingtons, Hepburns, etc., as well as top of line Winchesters and S&Ws, and European and British guns) and ammo to shoot as much as they wanted.

w44wcf
March 21, 2008

After the factory produced bullets were swaged, the lube grooves were rolled into the bullet, thus the lines in the bottom of the lube grooves. My guess is that the reason the grooves are shallow is that if pressed in deeper, bullet distortion would be the result. Interesting how the accuracy held up for 30 consecutive shots for Doc Pardee with factory ammo and the shallow grooved bullets.

Way back when, Winchester produced bullet molds do have lube grooves the depth of the current Lyman designs for the .32-20, .38-40 & .44-40.

Wills Point Pete,

Check this thread for the capabilities of repeated shots with factory produced ammunition back in the 1800s.

http://www.theopenrange.net/forum/index.php?topic=5036.0

TAKAHO KID
March 21, 2008

Quote
wealthy American, European and British folks that flocked to many places, such as Colorado Springs

A good book on this aspect of the old west is:"The Champion Buffalo Hunter: The Frontier Memoirs of Yellowstone Vic Smith" by Victor Grant Smith

Smith spent a good part of his time guiding well-to-do sports from across the pond and from the East, Teddy Roosevelt comes to mind.

Its a real good read. Interestingly Smith wrote the book as if he were telling someone's life story rather than his own.

Dutch Bill
March 21, 2008

I never got into bullet lube groove size relative to what brand of BP went into the factory loads. Should have looked closer.

I wonder if the size (depth, etc.) of the lube grooves which determined how much lube was carried by the bullet was varied with where the factory got its powder.

L&R used an alder wood charcoal and they triple refined their saltpeter. Du Pont, on the other hand, used willow charcoal and a less pure saltpeter. There had to be difference in the fouling left in the bore that had to be dealt with.

I had purchased any Ely loading of the .295 Rook cartridge. Very large grain sporting type powder, most likely Australian with a bright red charcoal. Case on half full with a big ball of paper between the bullet and the powder. The bullet had just two very shallow rings. The lube had a very high melting point. Looked like a fossil wax that once came out of Germany. Similar to what was once sold here as "Utah Wax". The load had to produce almost no bore fouling to pull that lube stunt off.

Lars
March 21, 2008

Aside from such things as lube drying up and ruining performance (had that happen to my own BP loads now and then), there were various qualities of BP ammo available, just as there are various qualities of nitro ammo available today. Military 45-70 ammo seems to have been relatively low quality, perhaps 45 Colt and 45 S&W military ammo also. Premier BP ammo for leading sporting calibers was a different matter -- there premium components appear to have been used, just as in today's premier nitro ammo.

As for there being enough well heeled buyers to merit building a factory, that indeed seems to have been case for companies like Ballard, Bullard, Hepburn, etc. Sorta like companies such as Weatherby, Browning, Freedom Arms, etc. in modern times. Low end companies like Mossberg and Stevens must have had their counterparts back then too.

w44wcf
March 22, 2008

The bullets I have pulled from early b.p. cartridges all have lube grooves that average about .015" deep + - a few thousands which is probably due to the set up for which a specific lot of bullets were made. To this point I have not seen any evidence of different lube groove depths for different b.p. cartridges in the samples I have taken. I'll post a pic of some of the bullets later this weekend.

w44wcf
April 19, 2008

Sorry for the delay in posting this pic. of original bullets. Lube grooves average .015" deep. The first two bullets have the original dried out lube in them.