A cleaning question

[Bunk Stagnerg]

Will using an unmentioned modest amount of an unmentioned heathen powder when fire forming .44-40 cases to .45 Colt have any effect on the seasoning of my 1866 Henry barrel? The bullets are pure lead lubed with an SPG like BP lube made with beef tallow rather than baby sheep baby fat.
This shortcut to forming saves the time required to clean up mostly the casesbut also the barrel.
The barrel will be cleaned of all powder fouling with moose milk or straight Ballistol
Comments please
Respectfully submitted
Bunk.

[Dick Dastardly]

Howdy Bunk,

Fireforming with a load of heathen fad smokeyless under filler and topped with a wax plug will do your work.  No, the heathen powder use won't give you problems.  Just clean up with Moosemilk and a boresnake when you're done.  I fireform 30-30 brass for my 38-55 this way and it works well.  You may want to shoot a fouling shot before doing any serious accuracy work though.

DD-MDA

[Navy Six]

Bunk,
Since you mentioned using soft lead bullets to fire-form the cases, the biggest problem might be leading in the barrel due to the "unmentionable" powder. I am not totally convinced of the whole bore seasoning concept, even though I use only Ballistol/water for cleaning followed by Borebutter. Once, on the recommendation of a national gun writer, I shot a couple of rounds of the "unmentionable" powder out of my Colt SAA and Uberti 1866 at the end of a Blackpowder shooting session. The calibers were 44-40s' for both using approx. 20-1 lead bullets. The idea was to supposedly clean the bore of most of the Blackpowder fouling. In my experience, I had a real mess to clean the guns later, much worse than shooting straight Blackpowder when using my normal methods.
At the end of that cleaning session, I didn't notice any real difference in the bore of either the rifle or pistol and when using both guns again(shooting Blackpowder), they cleaned up as normal.
So if you are shooting a limited amount of those fire-forming rounds and don't keep switching back and forth, you should be OK. By the way, I have no intention of repeating my experiment, and I beg everyone's forebearance for bringing up such a tacky subject as shooting that "unmentionable" powder.

[Bunk Stagnerg]

Thanks guys i have fire formed .30-30 Akley improved rifle ammo with a wax plug and filler, but hearing the "klink" on the steel target is part of the fun
Bunk

[Sir Charles deMouton-Black]

Thanks guys i have fire formed .30-30 Akley improved rifle ammo with a wax plug and filler, but hearing the "klink" on the steel target is part of the fun
Bunk

Fire form without a bullet if you cannot fire the round otherwise.

In most cases that I see folks writing about, all they want to achieve is a better fit for a case that would otherwise fire in that firearm. If so use your normal practice load and... practice. Next time the case can be reloaded with the minimal sizing you desire.

The concept of the Ackley improvement was to be able to fire the normal factory load for some purposes, even hunting, and then reload once the case capacity has been increased, for future increased performance. Again, no need to fire form without a bullet, just load the normal load of powder & bullet and... practice.

[Coffinmaker]

I'm honestly not familiar with "seasoning" of a Pistol caliber barrel.  The Henry is an 1860.  The 1866 is a Winchester.  ?
I have found however, a "squeaky clean" barrel may not group well.  Usually, an amount of powder residue improves grouping.  We're talking perhaps at a 100 or + yards here.  For CAS distance, lands and grooves are kind of superfluous (sort of).  Minute of pie plate at 10 - 12 yards will usually suffice.
Sometimes it's just plain fun to be a snot

Coffinmaker