Question for Walker and Dragoon Shooters

[mec]

With several examples I've handled and shot, the Walker will hold 55 grains of Black powder under a ball. None of them will hold 60. The Dragoon will take 45 grains and allow you to seat a ball without undue distortion but will not allow a 50 grain charge. Both will hold 60 and 50 grains/volumn respectively of pyrodex because it compresses enough for seating a ball.

I frequently see magazine articles in which the expert claims not only to have loaded 60 grains in the walker and 50 in the Dragoon but also presents allegedly chronographed velocities with these loads.

Has anybody out there shot a walker that will hold 60 grains of black powder or a dragoon that will hold 50?

 

[Pocomoke]

Interesting when coupled with my reply on the Dupont 1927 BP thread.

Just judging from the 1897 Sears Roebuck catalogue images there was a wider range of powder sizes than what we have available today. And it may well be that the earlier grades weren't sieved the same as today. And of course it leaves open the precision of earlier powder measures

How does the 1927 BP FFG compare visually with modern equivalent? Maybe another photo thread by you is in order for archival purposes, as I've never seen a real photos of the older stuff.

 

[mec]

photo threads are more problematic now as the guy who was providing a lot of people with free photo-hosting got tired of it and dumped all the pictures. In any case, the guy who owns this can of powder looked at it and said that it looked exactly like the Goex we had along.

Gatofeo looked up some references about the F-grading of powders and it develops that there was no real consensus about what screen size was appropriate for say, FFG or FFFG.

 

[mec]

I've gotten some feed back from people who are getting 50 grains of fffg under a ball in the Dragoon. Don't know what I was doing before but it was easy to get that charge in today. Velocities were 980 fps on average at a temperature of 41 degrees. This is about 100 fps faster than I was getting with .45.

I now have the lever staying up even with heavy loads. Combination of pinching the frame for a tight fit and deepening the notch in the lever detent. It took quite a bit of trial and error until I got it right.

Did this today with a charge of .45 Gr/Vol of Pyrodex P

 

[Hellgate]

It is possible that some lots and brands of powder are more dense than others. Elephant seems to weigh a little more per volume than Goex.

 

[mec]

just checked out the walker and managed 60 grains per chamber with fffg. For some reason, we were getting wide velocity spreads but they seemed to be tryng to go about 1040 fps. Our number with 55 grains was 1001 with a 54 fps spread over 6 rounds.

I guess the firt time we tried 60 grains, we eyeballed it and decided the ball wouldnt fit.- wrong.