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About to received a period rifle in this caliber . Looking for advice on loads for this cartridge .
Make sure the gun is safe to shoot. I’ve never shot this round but Barnes says to use a 260 gr. bullet with 21 grains of 4198 for about 1450 FPS. I would start a few grains lower. I also would use a chronograph to measure the speed. To be completely safe shoot black powder or one of the substitutes. According to Donnelly’s handloader manual cases can be made from 303 british. It isn’t the easiest process so hopefully you have some brass already and a set of dies.
You could always use Holy Black. Fill the case 2/3 full with FFg, top with Cream of Wheat filler and then a wafer saturated with a paraffin/beeswax/tallow mix, then seat your bullet such that it compresses the load, you want to compress 1/8” to 1/16”. When you seat the bullet, you can sometimes hear the CRUNCH!
November 7, 2015
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If the cases don’t need full length resizing you can use a neck sizer, expander and bullet seating die. Lyman makes the first two and I suspect any seating die for short cases of this caliber will suffice for the third. Do you have a set of 38-40 or 40 S&W dies lying around?
Mike
Chuck, thanks for the advice and reloading info .
mrcus, I am going to try black powder and bought 20 black powder loaded cartridges from Buffalo Arms yesterday .
Mike, thanks for your reply and especially reminding me that a 38-40 isn’t really a 38 .
I have a good quantity of 30-40 krag and I hope I have the right dies I can use to resize to 40-50.
A previous owner put scope blocks on this rifle and everything I’ve read about the 40-50 sound like a great deer cartridge so I think I’ve just got a new deer rifle
I thought I posted 2 sites for brass for sale?? Here is one of them.
https://www.buffaloarms.com/reloading-supplies-accessories/reloadable-brass-cases/39-40-caliber
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