Time to continue load development with my .44-77.

[Distant Thunder]

Mike,

Sorry for any confusion. This latest round of development with my .44-77 began with a new mold from Steve Brooks. It is an original Sharps style round nose and was ordered with a flat base. The mold came with a cupped base.

With the cupped base I found that seating a .060" LDPE wad on top of the powder and then a .060" HDPE wad on top of that accuracy was better. The high density wad resisted pushing into the cupped base and the low density wad under it sealed the bore behind the bullet and hard wad.

Steve made a new flat base screw for the mold but it was too big. I finally removed some from the diameter and put it in the mold a couple weeks ago. I then cast up some bullets with the flat base. I had loaded 82 grains under the 2 wads and it shot well with the cupped base. I thought I would start with the same load when I switched to the flat base bullet. The results were not good with 2 wads and the flat base, too many fliers.

So on these targets today I went to just 1 wad, the LDPE wad, and upped the powder to 85 grains to maintain the same seating depth and compression. The targets I posted today used just 1 LDPE wad and 85 grains of powder. I left out the HDPE wad.

HDPE wads are much harder than LDPE wads. The softer wads, LDPE, seal better, the harder wads, HDPE, hold their shape better. With the cupped base bullets and the HDPE wad against the base the cup didn't cause any problems because the hard wad bridged across the cup well while the LDPE wad sealed the bore.

So yes, only 1 wad today.