Antique Box of .45-70 ammunition

orpington · Apr 27, 2019

This is neat, I was pleased to recently acquire this unopened box, goes nicely with a Winchester 1886.

Union Metallic Cartridge Company, .45 500 ammunition, produced some time between 1898 and 1911 when UMC was bought out by Remington. Neat in that not referred to as .45 70 because it's smokeless and the 70 refers to 70 grains of black powder.

bannockburn · Apr 27, 2019

Very cool! Would love to find something like that for my .30-40 Krag!

milemaker13 · Apr 27, 2019

Them newfangled 'central fire cartridges'. I dont see them catching on.

Cokeman · Apr 27, 2019

Cool. I actually learned 2 new things from your post.

Riomouse911 · Apr 28, 2019

Nice find! I must say that paper looks in really good shape for how old it is, I would expect a lot more water staining/mold from Guv'mint storage.

Stay safe.

Shanghai McCoy · Apr 28, 2019

Riomouse911 said:
Nice find! I much say that paper looks in really good shape for how old it is, I would expect a lot more water staining/mold from Guv'mint storage.

Stay safe.

Maybe it was stored in Warehouse 13 ? :scrutiny:

Jim Watson · Apr 28, 2019

If you look closely at the label, you can see the headstamp includes "S" and "H". Stands for Solid Head as designed by UMC Thomas. What we would call a balloon head case now, but in those days they still recalled the folded head ammo.

I don't have anything on the 500 gr, but in 1901, Sears & Roebuck was selling .45-70-405 smokeless loaded with 29 grains of SOMETHING.
Looking in Sharpe, it might have been Lightning powder.

orpington · Apr 28, 2019

When were Solid Head balloon cases produced? Maybe I can further narrow down the 1898 to 1911 range? I'm surprised that a month and year is not evident on this box as this was commonly stamped on boxes during this era.

orpington · Apr 30, 2019

With regards to the second post. I thought I could oblige. I thought I had an antique box of .30-40 Krag that I could post and I might still have a box to post. But, while looking for this box I found these other 5 boxes I had forgotten I had gotten somewhere. And I don't even collect this stuff, but I find it fascinating.

TRX · May 4, 2019

After the Sandy Hook trials the testers recommended the Army dump the wimpy 405-grain load in favor of the manly 500 grainer, but I'm not familiar enough with the history of the cartridge to know if the Army followed through.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/843705/posts for anyone not familiar with the ".45-70 at Two Miles" report.

Antique Box of .45-70 ammunition

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