Lincoln County Gun Club 200 - 500 yard gong match.

[Distant Thunder]

Kurt,

The biggest reason I hold back on trying is the unknown factor. And I think that is true for other shooters too. The other thing is that a have a good bit of Swiss on hand.

I have tried some of the new lots of Swiss including one 2013 lot that shot just horrible in a friends rifles. I tried it in my .45-70 and it shot really bad. I was just able to hold paper at 1000 yards with it using the same charge weight I always use in that rifle. I bought a pound from him just to see if maybe I could make it shoot. I tried it in my .40-65 with 3/16 inch compression and it shot really, really well in that rifle. That is more compression than I usually use with Swiss. One pound isn't enough to do much development with so I'm just going to use it my .40 and be happy.

My good lot of Swiss 1 1/2 is from 2013 which is about the time people started having trouble with it, but mine shoots well in all three of my rifles, my .45-70, .44-77 and .40-65. I have no idea how much compression I'm at in my .45-70 or my .40-65 with my Swiss, but testing in my .44-77 showed that .150" was best.

My understanding of OE is that it requires a good bit of compression which doesn't surprise me being a GOEX powder. I usually run .200 to .250 compression with my GOEX 2F and it will shoot nearly as good as my Swiss. In my .44-77 the fouling was just too much to deal with in the bottleneck case, though it shoots well.

I will have to eventually try some OE and see what happens. I'm not sure when that will happen, it seems other things keep eating into my shooting budget! Seeing how JKR's .45-70 shot with OE does make me feel more at ease about giving it a try.