Paper or plastic?

[Trigger1212]

Morning all,

Brent (or anyone), can you expound on what you consider “carbon fouling” as it relates to BP loads? I know what powder, lead and plastic fouling (shotgun experience). But have not heard of carbonfouling as it relates to BP.

I DO have experience with a “carbon ring” which develops right in front of the chamber on 22LR rifles that can be very detrimental to accuracy and is a bugger to remove. Is this what our referring to?

Almost sounds like your referring to carbon fouling that is affecting a good portion of the bore?

Thanks for the info.

Cheers!

Wade

[gunlaker]

Wade, when I encounter it, it looks like this. I clean the rifle using Butches Black Powder Bore Shine on a few patches. Then run a couple of dry ones down the bore until it looks clean. Then run a tight fitting patch and scrub it a few times just ahead of the chamber, say 6 inches or so. If the patch has black on it then I consider that to be carbon fouling ( assuming it's not lead, which can be similar looking ). I'm not sure that chemically it is really carbon, more likely just baked on fouling I suspect. I've been using MPro-7 to get rid of it and it seems to work pretty well.

In the worst case I ever had it was in Phoenix with my .45-2.4" PP rifle in the hot sun using patches that were a bit too dry. The bore appeared to be clean until I had a closer look in my hotel room. Really tight dry patches scrubbed in front of the chamber came out with a lot of black even though patches with Butches Black Powder Bore Shine came out clean. It took quite a while to get it all out.

I have not had carbon fouling affect grease groove bullets much. With paper patched bullets I find that the velocity is significantly less consistent from shot to shot. I replicated this situation at home while shooting over the chronograph and it was super clear what was going on.

I don't really get much in the way of carbon fouling unless it is quite hot. If my wiping patches are too dry, and it's very hot, it starts to show up. It won't show up at home shooting at a covered range.

Chris.

[ian45662]

My highwall likes the Polly wads better than the fiber ones. I do get case stretching but I am annealing after each firing and the way I size the mouth is where my stretching come from. Maybe he Polly wad slamming into the mouth of the case which has been sized down to hold a bore diameter bullet? The stretching used to bother me but 14 firings into this lot of brass and it is still doing good. The only thing is having to trim every time but I guess it’s part of what I have to do in order to get the accuracy I need. I am getting about .005 per firing I think or there abouts. My greaser ammo doesn’t seem to stretch much if any but once ya go paper it’s real hard to go back.

[desert deuce]

Didn't Dan T suspect at one time that the carbon fouling he experienced was possibly related to the glossy coating on Goex CTG? Or was it Swiss, rings a memory bell a little bit. I know some my older Goex 2F was dull gray, the newer 2F and CTG was very glossy. Of course I don't shoot PP at all but Dan T did both. Can't remember for sure.

[mdeland]

Case stretching seems normal and makes sense to me but I get just the opposite with cases shortening, each reloading, shooting greasers and home cut fiber wads. I don't resize between loadings and anneal at the end of each season so what in the world can make a case shorten up?
I have no explanation nor can I fathom a reason for it's occurrence but that's what is happening. Guess I'll have to go back to poly wads and see if it still occurs.

[mdeland]

I duplex quite a bit for the winter gong matches but that should stretch not shorten cases. I don't remember ever loosing a case in either 45-70 but have retired some brass after several seasons use.
That is one of the reasons I developed my case nibbing method to stretch cases back out to a full 2.133 which is my two guns chamber length cut with the same reamer. The cases that are nibbed shorten slower but they still begin to creep back after several reloadings
Happens with either WW or R-P cases. Go figure.

[ian45662]

Do you wet tumble your brass?

[gunlaker]

Didn't Dan T suspect at one time that the carbon fouling he experienced was possibly related to the glossy coating on Goex CTG? Or was it Swiss, rings a memory bell a little bit. I know some my older Goex 2F was dull gray, the newer 2F and CTG was very glossy. Of course I don't shoot PP at all but Dan T did both. Can't remember for sure.

Zack I hadn't heard that. When that happened to me I was shooting either Swiss 1.5 or OE 1.5.

Chris.

[Tomklinger]

mdeland,
I had a 45/70 that the cases would shorten up. It had a commercial chamber. In other words....it was loose. At the bade you could see a slight enlargement just in front of the web. The more I fired the cases, the more they would expand in the chamber and the shorter they would get. When I had the barrel lined and recut the chamber with a match renamer the shortening stopped. Now when I use tight wads, they stretch...go figure
Tom klinger

[Distant Thunder]

I have been using both .030" and .060" LDPE wads in my C. Sharps .45-70, my Shiloh .45-90, and my C. Sharps .40-65 for at least 12 years and paper patched bullets in the .45-90 for 10 years and the .40-65 for 2 years. I have never had any case stretching, separations, plastic fouling, or carbon build up in any of these rifles. I have used mostly Swiss 1 1/2 powder. I have been wiping between shots for something like 15 years with a mix of water and water soluble oil. If anything the accuracy has only gotten better in each of these rifles.
I do not anneal my brass ever, but I don't size it either. Shoot, clean, load, and shoot again. I use Starline brass in the .45s and Remington brass in the .40.

I have followed the same pattern for the my .45-70 Hepburn shooting only paper patched bullets for the past 5 years with the same results, no such problems whatsoever.

Back when I used W-W brass in my old .45-70 I did have to replace the brass once after many, many firings because I had a few separations, but I did things differently back then. That rifle now has over 8,000 rounds through it and isn't used much these days. Those were mostly grease groove bullets too. It is the one rifle I have that will not play nice with paper.

If you can figure out what has caused all the problems some seem to be having I'd sure be interested so I could avoid them in my rifles.

DT

[kenny s]

first firing with the poly wad.
first shot, CASE SEPARATED
fired 20 more, no problem.

I have no idea if the wad caused the first ever separation, or just a well used case.
40 70 SS made from Craig brass. good clean and annealed brass, but used a lot.
no sizing, just case slightly in fac. crimp to hold PP bullet.

I'll keep testing the poly, just for fun.

GOOD THING A PUSH WITH THE ROD PUSHED IT OUT THOUGH. GOT KINDA NERVOUS ABOUT IT.
Ken

[gunlaker]

I've only once separated a case badly enough that it was stuck in the rifling. That was breech seating with FFFg. Breech seating is harder on cases.

The trick I used to get my case out was to drive a soft bullet from the muzzle to the chamber, kind of like slugging the bore. The bullet grabbed the case and pushed it out.

Chris.

[mdeland]

I too used a commercial reamer but then fired cases don't seem ovesized in any way. Once they fire form and are not resized that should be the end of any thing but stretching longer. I do wet tumble them but don't see how that would effect the length, there is no mouth peening that I can detect.
Also I sectioned some used cases and could see no evidence of case wall thickening any where. Sure is a head scratcher for me.

[Straightneck]

Paper, original and works. The ODG's made it work without PLASTIC and NO PLASTIC POLUTION

isn't there enough plastic pollution

Mason

[BFD]

Paper, original and works. The ODG's made it work without PLASTIC and NO PLASTIC POLUTION

isn't there enough plastic pollution

Mason

Plastic works more betterer. Simple as that. ODG's did whatever they did. But they would have used plastic if they had it. Now the old guys DO have plastic. Pollution from plastic wads isn't really that high on my radar, given all the other issues out there right now.