Smokeless/Duplex Martini-Henry Load Data

[762mm]

This is a picture of a document I've made for myself a few months ago and I think it would be also nice to share with the rest of you.

It has some selected quotes and load data that I was able to track down on the net by searching through some American firearm forums dating back all the way to the nineties (ancient history by computer standards, lol). The neat thing about it is that this information was published in the late seventies and you most likely won't see it printed again in any firearm magazines. Enjoy!



P.S. I've rearranged the load info into table form... as it first came to me in the form of garbled text that was very poorly formatted (the OP that wrote the initial post did not know how to reproduce a table, so he just wrote it down & posted the best he could). Please be advised that I have not personally verified these loads in practice, therefore I can't vouch for the accuracy of any of this information (in other words, use it at your own discretion). That said, I will definitely give these loads a shot when time allows. Here it is:

“Handloader Magazine” article (Nov-Dec 1978) by Jim Jukes gives the following data:

A few examples of recommended loads are as follows, with 400gn bullet 16gns of Unique/Green Dot/Red dot (around 1,100fps). With a 475gn bullet, 19gns Blue Dot (1,075fps), 22gns Blue Dot (1,220fps). With a 500 gn bullet there appears to be a degree of unreliable ignition creeping into the test firings with only IMR 3031 (45gns) giving 1,582 fps and IMR 4759 (27gns) giving 1,170fps being the most reliable. As you must appreciate these figures appeared in an American Magazine some time ago and as such are for your academic study only. It is certainly illegal to use nitro in a BP only proofed rifle.

There is also a good article in Target Gun (March 1992) by Geoff Allen on reloading for Martini in 577/450, mainly black powder and pyrodex, but there are some smokeless loads mentioned. Good detail of patching and lubing.

 

[762mm]

Crap.. looks like photobucket resized my image to smaller size! And now it's tiny & barely readable... let me see if I can correct it.




Edit: Ok, so it looks like photobucket won't allow images taller than 500-something pixels... I cut down the image and left only the table. The quotes are posted separately above/below the image. Not as pretty as the document I've made originally, but will have to suffice. Cheers!

-762mm