777 advice

[tacfoley]

I have just bought a Parker Hale 3 band Enfield .577 and was thinking of using 777 as I have a good supply of this powder...Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Sir, I have just heard from a bunch of dedicated muzzleloading shooters from the USA, any and all of whom have more BP shooting experience in their ear-wax than I have in my entire body, and HERE is the advice -

'"The hollow base bullets shot in an Enfield have a habit of blowing out the skirts if they are fired with too great of a powder load. This needs to be recognized especially when using a powder that creates higher pressures than real black powder, like 777 does.

For this reason, if you wish to shoot your 777 in your Enfield I recommend that you limit the powder load to 50 grains maximum. Even with this small powder load the skirts of your bullets may blow out as they leave the muzzle thereby ruining any possibility of shooting tight groups.

If your groups are poor with a 50 grain load of 777 try reducing the load to 45 grains."

Best

tac

[lilguy43uk]

Dear Mr Simon - I'm sorry indeed that I come over as a condescending and prissy ar$e

Condescending I might be, and prissy arse, probably

Tac

After my misunderstanding of one of your previous posts you have, indeed, gained enormous stature in my eyes by coming up with such a fabulous term as "Gloontrumpet."

[tacfoley]

Tac

After my misunderstanding of one of your previous posts you have, indeed, gained enormous stature in my eyes by coming up with such a fabulous term as "Gloontrumpet."

Yark.

tac

[DaveJW]

Just found an American site for Cival War bods where a guy says they shoot FFF 777 with 500gn "bullets" getting "very accurate" results at 100 yards. Does anyone know if these would be solid base bullets - unlike the ones Steve Medlock kindly supplied with the gun? I am still going to organise some Swiss No 2 but I was just curious.

[tacfoley]

This is from 'hamkiller' -

'I had good sucess shooting T7 3f out of my Enfield Musketoon at a local trailwalk. I had developed a 3f black load of 42 grains for use at trailwalks shooting unsized Lee 500 grain traditional Minies and .575 sized Lyman Parker Hale 566 grain Minies. I loaded up a cartridge box full of both projectiles and taking into account the 15% greater power of T7 cut the charge to 35 grains of T7.

The course of fire was 30 rounds at targets mostly under 50 yds and the T7 rounds worked fine.
I could not tell difference in performance from black powder except no sulfur smell.'

You could do a lot worse than try, I'd guess.

tac

[DaveJW]

Hi again.

I joined the American site that tac recommended and saw that he was kind enough to mention my question over there. The concensious seems to be that you can use 777 FFFg but only in light loads with the traditional Minnie bullet (and only at short range). The recomendation was 50 gn and drop it to 45 if the groups are too big. Tac said he would put a correction on this site and I'll wait for that as they were talking about various bullet weights - which was going over my head a bit at this stage of my BP career.

It's a good site by the way and the guys over there are very friendly.

[tacfoley]

Hi again.

I joined the American site that tac recommended and saw that he was kind enough to mention my question over there. The concensious seems to be that you can use 777 FFFg but only in light loads with the traditional Minnie bullet (and only at short range). The recomendation was 50 gn and drop it to 45 if the groups are too big. Tac said he would put a correction on this site and I'll wait for that as they were talking about various bullet weights - which was going over my head a bit at this stage of my BP career.

It's a good site by the way and the guys over there are very friendly.

Please read the post above yours.

tac