Loading Calibres Down For Sound?

[Andy]

Thank you! I have all the ingredients, no reason not to try it. I can stick some toilet paper in to keep the powder at the primer end. A super light load would be a lot of fun, and a cheap night out with the Lee Enfield.
Some reduced load data here:
http://www.imrpowder.com/PDF/Trail-Boss-data.pdf

There's no need for wadding with Trail Boss, or other very fast pistol and shotgun powders like Bullseye and Red Dot. Feel free to use it however and experience the annoying papery powder that follows the bullet!

 

[Slamfire]

Thank you! I have all the ingredients, no reason not to try it. I can stick some toilet paper in to keep the powder at the primer end...

I use a bit of dacron fill to keep the powder against the primer as recommended in the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook.

 

[sparkiei1981]

Trail boss is awsome to use and fun in 308 and 30-06 with breaks on them have less kick then a 22lr my kids love shooting it its all about keeping it under 1200fps for subsonic loads

 

[bigedp51]

I used SR 4759 and then started using Trail Boss for reduced loads and fire forming my .303 British cases. These bulky powders will fill the case and not have to worry about double charges and powder position in the case.

Below 100 grain .312 pistol bullets for fire forming the .303 British using the o-ring method. These reduced loads also make the Enfield's brass butt plate "softer" when forming 100 to 200 cases.

 

[Slamfire]

SR4759 also works great for reduced loads. I've burned lots of this in my 45-70.

 

[Rayleigh_Scattering]

.310 seems a bit skinny for a this kind of projectile in a 7.62 barrel. For a soft/short lead ball I aim for 0.002-0.003 over the groove diameter (slugged at .314 on my 1918), so .316.

For a short projectile and low pressures I don't think I can depend on inertial upsetting to seal around the bore even for a butter-soft lead projectile, so I went oversize and let the combustion pressure push the ball through. It's the same size ball as I used for slugging the bore, so I know from experience that it doesn't take much force to drive it in at 0.316.

Obviously you don't oversize like this for a longer jacketed projectile. That causes all sorts of trouble.
Ball is a bit misleading, after ring-sizing it looks more like an inflated aspirin pill.

Also, the .316 size gives me a nice snug fit into the necks of the fired/ringed casings, so no resizing is required.

>a bit of Dacron

I did that for the first batch, but then changed to cotton wool. I never observed any trouble, but I know that incompletely burned PET leaves a sticky thermoplastic mess whereas cotton just leaves charcoal/soot that wipes off. So far a couple of cotton balls pilfered from the boss' makeup drawer have lasted me several batches.

Lastly, I noticed that when (jus pour rire) I upped the loading by a couple of grains to see what would happen it went from a light and cheerful -pow- sound to ... angry -crack-. I only fired one of those and broke down the rest. This business of inappropriately fast powders in rifle cartridges is only for very light charges.

Although in hindsight that may just have been the projectile going supersonic. I might try it again.

 

[Slamfire]

I suppose if a compressed wad of dacron fill is used there would be residue issues. I use just a bit of this stuff without any problems otherwise I wouldn't use it.