doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Lightning Powder by Hercules

Lightning powder was developed by Laflin & Rand in the late 1890's. Then sold by DuPont and finally, Hercules. It was discontinued around WWII.

Anyone have a booklet on Lightning powder circa 1915 or so?

I've got a Hercules tin of it.The fine print usually found at the bottom indicates that it MAY have been made in 2-14. The back label has loads for the more popular cartridges of the period: 25/35 "Win.&Savage", "30/30 Win. Mar.&Savage" 32/40 and 38/55 HighPower", and others. Curiously, 303 British is included but not 30-40 Krag. It's full of powder, too.

Jim, I have some and I'm going to try it, what are the maxim loads it shows for the .25's?

Only one charge per caliber: 16.5 gr. for the 25/36 Marlin and 18 grains for the 25/35. Presumably 117 gr. bullet. I may have some data elsewhere for the 25 Krag. Is this what you have in mind?

Thanks, I'm working with a very early .25 on the Krag case and want to try out some of the original powder used back in the day.

Funny, the barrel was most likley made at Marlin and has a 1-9" twist which as far as I know was only used on the 25-36 Marlin.

So far it seems to like the little 75 grain bullets.

I know you understand ;-).

The is a lot of Lightning info in Sharpe but a later stuff.

Michael, please keep the Lightning in the can until we can do a bit more research. And please don't use it in one of those rare old barrels.
Recently, re-reading a lot of oldish stuff on powder & primers, I came across something written on Lightning by one of the writers of the day. (Whelen? Roberts? Sharpe? Hopefully I can dig it out in a day or two) What the writer wrote was to the effect that many small-bore barrels were ruined by Lightning, with it's extremely high nitroglycerine content (40 %) and that it did not take many shots to ruin a barrel. The old corrosive primers were not the only problem.

Richard

I agree that we should always error on the side of caution and I would be very surprised if you found that Lighting was corrosive. I have at least one barrel that has thousands of rounds through it using Lightning and know of several others.

I will hold off, no rush on my part, until I hear more or investigate it myself.

This rifle has enough challenges on it's own. I had a head separation starting which I can't explain and the rifle likes little bullets but has a 1-9" twist.

If I wanted it to be easy I would have just bought myself a Remington 700 and some factory ammo.

PS: About everything I thought I knew about reloading does not apply to this rifle. If I had any hair I would have pulled it out by now.

Case head separations get my attention. A week ago, I was entered in a 50-shot match for "South of the Border" military rifles. I used my 1895 Chilean infantry rifle. A friend and I were sharing 100+ rounds of 1972 Chilean-made but poorly stored military ammo. I had a case head separation 10 rounds into the match. Had I not been wearing shooting glasses, I would have lost an eye. I have been picking tiny bits of brass and powder solids out of the skin on the right side of my nose for the last week. I finished the match with some handloads I had brought along, but my performance lacked a bit. I was awarded the Dianne Feinstein prize for the worst performance of the day with a rifle of known accuracy.

I have started to dig once more into the old reloading literature.

I doubt if there is anyone alive today with experience with this type loading but have at it. Everyone is welcome.

As you can see by the picture of the chamber cast the neck is the same size as the bullet, .257�.

The case capacity in grains of H2O is 57.6, a .250-Savage is 47 and the .257 Roberts is 57.2.

I can adjust the length of the base-band by using different thickness of washers when I make them and I can also shorten the case neck in the case trimmer.

I have been shooting with the case just touching the back of the bullet and have used floral-foam, thin and thick cork as well as IPCO wads. It seems to like the thin cork wads the best.

If I put a Base-Band bullet into the chamber and fire just a primer it completely seals the bore and after 15 seconds when I open the rifle the MT case will shoot across the shop.

With the bullet ahead of the case, ala Schuetzen, and the high pressure the wads are very liquid one moved all the way down to the shoulder before the pressure trapped it and indented the case.

I started at 100 yards then quickly moved back to 50 to keep the bullets all on the same target. I have over the last two weeks gone from 2� groups to well under an inch at 50 yards and time to move back out to 100.

A load that works one day seems to fall apart the next. I�m now cutting off the case in order to seat a Sierra 75 without a base band and will see how that works.

Like I said before I had one case start to separate and am clueless why.

I was able to locate some reliable data fairly easily. Ned Roberts, in 1913, had a Niedner chambered 25 Krag and recommended a load of 28 gr. Lightning under an 86 grain 25-20 bullet. Roberts estimated the velocity to be 3,000 fps.
Chas. Newton's 25 Special on a full length 405 case (I once had a High Wall thusly chambered) burned 43 grains of Lightning to speed a 117 grain bullet at 3,100 foot seconds. The velocity was measured over Winchester's chronograph.
A period factory ( which one isn't recorded) loading for the 25/35 used 19 grains Lightning for 1,925 fps.
If you have Jenning book on Newton, you might get additional chronographed loads using this powder. Newton was big on the 25 Krag for some time and I know for certain he burned a lot of Lightning.