About that trip to the range,

now that I'm not running in circles trying to take care of various things at once, a bit more about that.

On .45-70, had a experiment to try.  I'd been reading this book, which has a lot of good stuff about loading for buffalo rifles, and one thing he mentioned was that for black powder loads he'd get a custom case expander so mouth and area of the case which covered the bullet is only about .002" smaller than bullet diameter, so as to have less chance of the case pressure deforming a soft lead bullet.  Well, I have a lathe, so...

On the left is the case neck/mouth expander of a Lee die, on the right the expander I made.

Once I got the die adjustment so it would expand the case to the depth the bullet was seated, I ran off eleven: five for Blackhorn 209 loads, five for black, and one to dirty the bore for the black loads.  Not always, but often a black powder load through a clean barrel will hit higher on the target, so one to dirty the bore, then the blow tube, then the shots for grouping.

All these were the Lyman 525-grain bullet, cast of 20-2, and a Federal Large Magnum Rifle primer

Five with Blackhorn

First was way the hell high, then three almost touching, then one to the right.  I should've fired a fouling shot first, I'd bet that's why the first was so high; the fifth was either wind(it was getting gusty at that point) or my fault.  I need to try this again.

Five with 65.0 grains of Goex 2f

I didn't fire the fouling shot for this group, figuring that though it wasn't with black, the previous shots should've nicely fouled the bore.  Not bad at all.  I've gotten a couple of previous groups about this good, but I'll definitely try this again.    The multiple efforts of getting an expander just right(don't ask) might not have actually made any real change, but I had to try.

Shut up, yes I did.

On to other things:
I also had several .40-65 loads to try out, and I did them first.  Because after the recoil of the .45-70 I sometimes am not that precise on later stuff.

One thing I wanted to try was a lighter bullet.  I had some 300-grain from a RCBS mold, and tried them at 100 yards with five 56.0 grains 2f, and five with 57.0.
56.0

57.0

At first test, the 57.0 seems to have a bit of advantage.  Or I blew the vertical on two.  I will find out.  From what I've read most newer rifles in this cartridge, with a faster rifling pitch than the originals, often don't shoot well with shorter bullets, if this is one of those that will at longer distances, it'll be interesting to mess with.

Some other groups were shot, but the wind was giving me some trouble on them, so no pictures of those.  This cartridge definitely has less recoil than .45-70, more pleasant to shoot.

No Chrony readings on any of these, too busy a day to take the time to set it up.  I'd love one of the radar chronographs, but I can't justify that much cash for it.