Lyman book

[little joe]

How accurate is the data in the Lyman Blackpowder Handbook?

[Mad Monk]

That depends on which Lyman Handbook you are looking at.

Use it as a rough guide.  Do not think that if you duplicate the charges shown in the book for a particular caliber at a particular barrel length you will see the velocity given in the book.  This has been an issue with BP loading manuals going way back.  This was often a subject of debate back in the days of the Buckskin Report and then the Black Powder Report.

Over the past 15 years there have been changes in all three popular brands of black powder.  In a way, a steady evolution in increase in performance.  Changes in raw material sources and quality and in processing techniques.  The handbooks then become a rough guide.

Published BP Handbooks were informative but most shooters felt that results on the target were a better guide.

Bill K.

[Daryl]

For example, I have a 24" barreled Enfield model 1861 or Italian make with the proper progressive depth rifling, .003" at the muzzle and .011" deep at the breech. 

Lymans BP Handbook for a 25" .58 ZOUAVE shows a .562" ball with a .020" patch and 70.0gr. of G-O 2F producing 1,077fps and 80gr. of G-O 2F as producing 1,163fps.

With a .562" ball and .022" patch and 75gr. GOEX 2F- 3 years ago, my 24" Enfield rifle produced 1,308fps.  I have raised the charge for plinking to 82gr. (3 drams) and get a whopping 1,380fps for my troubles.

As Monk noted, the powders are better today than in 1975 when the Lyman Black Powder Handbook was written.

[Kermit]

It''s a starting point, not gospel. You can extrapolate some beginning approximations, but my own experience is that that's about it.

[Bill of the 45th]

Total Ballpark, and somewhat dated. Just because you have a barrel of "X" length, and Caliber, use "X" brand powder, at "X" degree's temp, and humidity.  "X" grains of powder, "X" size of ball, and thickness  of  denim/cotton/linen/flour sack patch. Oh! and don't forget the phase of the Moon, and time of year.  The book is just a guide, to at least keep you from blowing yourself up.  It's there to give a shooter a starting point.  The shooters skill, practice, and dedication is the final proof of the guns accuracy.  Just my two cents.  I had the book back in the early 90"s, and gave it away.

Bill

[Candle Snuffer]

The muzzle loading community is fortunate to have such a book available to them, especially the new comer. It's an excellent guide to get you on track and to get you started off in the right direction. My book is so old and tattered from at least 30+ or more years of enjoyment and I still enjoy it to this day. It's a great starting point for anyone interested in this hobby.

[Daryl]

I get a kick out of some of the loads used in it.  I am particularly referring to the .58 Zouave loads using the G-O 2F powder and the Lyman #575611 casting a .577" 530gr. Minnie & the seemingly quite different pressures produced by barrel length differences.

For example - the bullet and powder noted above in a 26" barrel.

maximum load - 190gr. for 1,314fps at 10,180LUP- (Lead Units of Pressure) which is not mathematically convertible (as far as I know) to either CUP (Copper Units of Pressure) not to PSI - LOl.

The same bullet powder and again, Zouave barrel of 24" length, a powder charge of 110gr. C-O 2F produced 1,117fps and generated a whopping10,020LUP. With this powder charge, the 26" Zouave barrel is noted as producing 1,024fps at 6,140LUP.  The numbers don't make any sense, do they.

All Zouave barrels. One assumes they shortened the standard 32" bl. for these tests.

22" bl. 100gr. 1,146fps 09,700 LUP ?? speed and pressure
24" bl. 110gr. 1,117fps 10,020 LUP ?? speed and pressure
26" bl. 110gr. 1,124fps 06,500 LUP ?   presssure
28" bl. 110gr. 1,024fps 06,850 LUP ??  speed and pressure
32" bl. 110gr. 1,049fps 06,320 LUP0?? speed and pressure

now the whoppers with the same bullet, make make and grade of powder, maximum loads only listed

22" bl. 100gr. 08,970 LUP
24" bl. 110gr. 10,020 LUP
26" bl. 190gr. 10,190 LUP
28" bl. 160gr. 09,580 LUP
32" bl. 150gr. 10,000 LUP

However, some of the data & verbiage is quite useful, like the picture of the patched ball after being seated and pulled from the barrel- showing cloth weave marks from the lands and the bottoms of the gooves.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

I much prefer to gather my own statistics.  I have these old books but don't rely on the information.  I collect my own data and test targets...means a lot more to me than something someone sells.

[Mad Monk]

Lead crusher gun data has little actual value.  Data produced by the crusher gun is relative data rather than actual.  In laboratory work in industry you will see tests that give actual data and tests that give relative data that cannot be converted into any form of true actual data.

When the lead crusher devices were first invented there were questions on individual designs and how they were attached to the gun or the pressure bomb.  In pressure bomb work the events going on in the closed pressure bomb were considered to be static.  In the pressure gun the movement of a projectile creates what is view as dynamic.  In theory the pressure in the bomb or the gun is thought to be uniform all the way around the surfaces of the container holding the explosive being tested.  But once the piezoelectric sensors came into use it was seen that pressures in a dynamic environment may be far from uniformly distributed over the surfaces the pressure is acting upon.

In the lead crusher work no two batches of lead crusher "slugs" will give the same amount of crushing.

[Mad Monk]

The original Lyman Black Powder Handbook showed a 1974 Copyright.

While the data tables do not show production lot number data the powder that came out of the Moosic, PA plant was a highly questionable quality.  Gearhart_Owen (G O on label) was forced to change suppliers for both charcoal and potassium nitrate.  Changes that were not for the better in terms of finished powder quality.  Management anxiety attacks were the order of the day.  Then to improve pounds per manhour they made some drastic changes to the powder processing methods to reduce the plant from 3 shifts in a day to 2 shifts in a day.

The 1974 lots of black powder provided to the U.S. military created all sorts of problems.  The U.S. Army had a 155mm howitzer blow up in a cold temperature exercise that killed two of the crew.  Then the U.S. Navy was having "catastrophic breech blows" in the 5 inch and 7 inch automatic gun mounts they were developing.  Eventually, and after great expense, the Aberdeen Proving Ground staff found the problem involved the G O black powder being used in the intermediate primer systems in these guns.  But they never figured out what was actually wrong with the powder they were shipped.  Simply called certain lots of G O BP as "deviant lots".

About 1990 Col. Vaughn Goodwn, USAF Ret. came to Dixon's Gunmaker's Fair with a large folder.  Pulled me aside and sat me down.  Laid out a pile of pressure graphs and asked me to explain what he had seen in the graphs.

In 1975 GOI (Gearhart-Owens Industries) had tried to market a black powder they would label as "Target" grade powder.  The intended market being the black powder competition shooters.  They took regular production powder and simply re-screened it to a more uniform grain size.  the idea being that this would impart improved accuracy to the various granulation sizes.  Of course it was to carry a higher price tag.
At that time "Col. Vaughn" was a bench gun shooter at friendship and at the same time he was still on active duty and assigned to the Aberdeen Proving ground.  Col Vaughn was on a team that designed the 30mm rounds to be used in the GAU-8/A Avenger autocannon used in the A-10 Warthog aircraft.  The 30mm round using a small squib of black powder as an intermediate primer in the cased 30mm round.
So Col. Vaughn put in a bit of lab time on his own.  Testing the GOI "Target" grade powders in a pressure bomb.
What caught his attention was that in a string of 5 pressure bomb firings he would see an ignition pressure spike that gave pressures far higher than the pressure created by the burning of the charge in the bomb.  When Col. Vaughn had shot these powders in his bench gun he had noted that in a string of 5 shots he would see one very wild shot.  Sometimes not even hitting the paper target.

This erratic ignition spike was seen with what might best be called non-uniform combustion of the powder charge. The "Target" grade powder was no better than standard production.

In 1973 and 1974 the Eastern portion of Pennsylvania had gone through a serious drought.  The powder produced had been made using badly contaminated well water.  Shortly after being produced the exterior portions of the individual grains of powder would undergo chemical changes.  Involving the sulfur and the potassium nitrate.  The grains becoming more difficult to ignite.  The surfaces would also loose cohesiveness.  If subjected to a brissant ignition the initial ignition would mimic a dust explosion.  That was the wild ignition pressure spike Col. Vaughn saw in his pressure graphs.  After the dust exploded the remaining portions of the grains would undergo more normal combustion.

So in Lyman's lead crusher work there may have been lots of powder that did not give uniform ignition pressures and created ignition pressure spikes well above that produced during a normal burning of the charge.  Which would have been reflected in the lead crusher results.

After I had looked at 1973 and 1974 GOI production lots I concluded that Lyman's lab had to have done a lot of "tweaking" of the data to get something that would pass as acceptable in the book.

So again.  The data seen in the original 1974 Lyman Black Powder Handbook is at it's very best just a rough guide rather than factual and actual.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Good reading MM!  There is nothing like education ...