Cordite

@Sash got it right. At least some, maybe all, British produced Mk VII standard ball ammo used Cordite until the end of its production life. There were 'z' (non-Cordite) 303s - some in other marks that needed a denser chopped nitrocellulose; or a cooler burning powder for high round-count use in automatic weapons; or were standard Mk VII ballistics but loaded in North America with their powders including US Lend-Lease supplies. One of these interesting historical footnotes is that the very popular Hodgdon BL-C(2) powder started out as a Mk VIIz propellant. The Olin Corporation's Winchester-Western ammunition division was completing a huge Mk VIIz Lend-Lease order at the end of WW2 which HMG promptly cancelled. They were demilled and B.E. Hodgdon bought the powder calling it 'Ball Lot C'. As WW had a trademark hold on the word 'ball' for propellants, Hodgdon renamed it BL-C and it was a huge hit with his customers. When the surplus 303 powder was used, Olin produced a replacement in the form of the powder that derived from that old 303 propellant and adopted as part of its contracted T65 development work for the US Army which in turn became the 7.62mm Nato cartridge. Initially at any rate (things may have changed over 70 years), the new grade, renamed H. BL-C(2), was as per Olin's 7.62 M180 ball cartridge powder, but with the flash suppressant coating omitted.

The Hodgdon story is an interesting one. Here is one version of it: "Praise the Lord, and reload the ammunition" to paraphrase.

An Official Journal Of The NRA | Hodgdon: The Inside Story

The 280 British was chopped nitrocellulose from day one, hence its designation as Rifle Cartridge 7mm No.1z during its brief period of official adoption at the tail-end period of the post-war Labour Attlee government (in the face of fierce opposition from the USA and threatening to derail the creation of NATO as a military entity as the US were insisting on a 30-cal design, in effect their T65E3).
Lots of bad things happened around that era, the Americans were very jealous of our superior technology, and forced cancellations of all sorts of things things like TSR2, Blue Streak, Black Night, even were anti Concorde. later.

From the New York Times:

Dec. 28, 2006
LONDON — Britain will transfer £43 million to the U.S. Treasury on Friday, the final payment on a debt used to finance the World War II defeat of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

The U.S. extended $4.34 billion in credit in 1945, allowing Britain to stave off bankruptcy after devoting almost all its resources to the war for half a decade. Since 1950 Britain has made payments on the debt, the final payment of which is worth $84 million, at the end of every year except six.

At the time it was granted, the loan strained trans-Atlantic relations. British politicians expected a gift in recognition of the country's contribution to the war effort, especially for the lives lost before the United States entered the fight in 1942.

"The U.S. didn't seem to realize that Britain was bankrupt," said Alan Sked, a historian at the London School of Economics. The loan was "denounced in the House of Lords, but in the end the country had no choice."

The loan, the equivalent of £119 billion in today's money, was double the size of the British economy at the time. Today it's a tiny fraction of Britain's £550 billion debt burden, about 36.4 percent of the economy.

Ed Balls, the British Treasury minister, hailed the loan as a mark of friendship between the two countries, which currently are allied in fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those conflicts have cost Britain £8 billion since 2001.

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"It was vital support which helped Britain defeat Nazi Germany and secure peace and prosperity in the postwar period," Balls said in a statement. "We honor our commitments to them now as they honored their commitments to us all those years ago."

The need to borrow followed a decision in 1945 by the administration of President Harry Truman to end the lend-lease program used to supply Britain since 1941.

By that time, Britain owed £4.2 billion to foreign creditors, while its income from overseas investments and exports had been halved since before the war.

John Maynard Keynes, the economist and lawmaker who was then the top adviser to the British Treasury, likened his country's financial situation to the military rout at Dunkirk. Prime Minister Clement Attlee dispatched Keynes to Washington to seek support.

Instead of a subsidy, Keynes came back with the loan, fixed at 2 percent interest to be reimbursed in annual payments that were structured like a mortgage. The payments were mostly interest in the early years and shifted toward capital later on.

In addition to the U.S. funds, Canada granted a loan of 1.25 billion dollars, or $1.08 billion at current exchange rates. Britain will also clear that debt with a final repayment Friday.

Germany, the former enemy of Britain, the United States and Canada, takes over the leadership of both the European Union and the Group of 8 industrialized countries on New Year's Day.
 
I have loaded some 10x 7.65x53s with 150 grain soft point bullets and will touch them off with string to the trigger and the rifle tied down to an old tyre. It was a fiddle getting the strands into the more bottlenecked case.
 
When loaded for magazine rifles the really heavy hitters have to use tubular powders with heavily compressed charges with full power loadings to avoid recoil driving bullets back into the case for the unused rounds held in the magazine.
The above is not correct.
A variety of different powders are currently used in different kynoch ammunition nowadays. Most loads are not compressed at all and some have rather a lot of spare case capacity.
Bullets are generally heavily crimped into the canelure to avoid recoil dislodging them.
 
The above is not correct.
A variety of different powders are currently used in different kynoch ammunition nowadays. Most loads are not compressed at all and some have rather a lot of spare case capacity.
Bullets are generally heavily crimped into the canelure to avoid recoil dislodging them.
This.

David.
 
The above is not correct.
A variety of different powders are currently used in different kynoch ammunition nowadays. Most loads are not compressed at all and some have rather a lot of spare case capacity.
Bullets are generally heavily crimped into the canelure to avoid recoil dislodging them.
And you of all should know. Since you make them ;)
 
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The above is not correct.
A variety of different powders are currently used in different kynoch ammunition nowadays. Most loads are not compressed at all and some have rather a lot of spare case capacity.
Bullets are generally heavily crimped into the canelure to avoid recoil dislodging them.

There is apparently more than a single view on this by those who load the real heavy-kickers commercially. Arthur Alphin wrote on the subject back in the 1990s as follows in the A-Square reloading manual Any Shot you Want:

"As a bolt action rifle recoils to the rear, the cartridges are pushed to the rear only after they bounce off the front of the magazine box. This tends to drive the bullet down into the cartridge. It can be held in place with neck tension and the crimp. However, if augmented with powder compression behind the bullet, you will have much better ammunition.

Powder compression tends to support the bullet at the base and place a pre-tensioning pressure on the bullet forward against neck tension and crimp. This acts as a pad when the nose of the bullet is battered on the front wall of the magazine. If only neck tension and crimp are used to hold the bullet in place then all the force of the blow is transmitted through the shoulder of a bottleneck case. This can cause a bulge at the shoulder body junction. Such a bulge can cause a cartridge to jam in the chamber.

Powder compression goes a phenomenally long way in stopping bullet set-back and in eliminating negative effect on the cartridge case for those cartridges in the magazine"


The other string to his bow on the subject is that at the very least mild compression is desirable as it markedly improves ignition reliability and charge burn consistency in the huge charges being used in the largest of these numbers.

All in all, he devotes six closely printed pages to 'Compression' (looking at its potential pitfalls too and how to avoid them), alongside the same number of pages on crimp issues.

As a registered physical coward, I have no intention or desire to ever find myself shooting the 458 Lott or even more powerful numbers, so have never found the need to handload them myself. My interest in the subject is therefore academic, and I look forward to your critique of Alphin's very different views on the topic.
 
I have no need to start a discussion about the above with you as I am fairly well placed to know what you stated originally is not actually the case.
 
Apropos to not a lot I have vague memories of strips of rubber glued to the inside front face of the magazine box to reduce the impacts under recoil. I was also warned, just in an information passing sort of way, by someone who culled a lot of elephants that people should beware of just stuffing in rounds and when the opportunity arose load the rounds left at the bottom of the stack to the top and fire them before they compressed the load and the bang was rather more substantial than usual. I guess this is just anecdotal but some of those guys really knew what they were talking about.

David.
 
I always preferr a compressed charge over slack.
I loathe hearing powder loose in a loaded round, rifle that is, I know some pistol rounds it is pretty mandatory though.
 
My grandfather who was a professional soldier said that some of the men who wanted a couple of days off would swallow a few strands of cordite and it would make them jaundiced.
I'm certainly not going to test that one.
I have loaded a few old British calibers with IMR3031 because it is supposed to be the closest modern powder to cordite.
 
My grandfather who was a professional soldier said that some of the men who wanted a couple of days off would swallow a few strands of cordite and it would make them jaundiced.
I'm certainly not going to test that one.
I have loaded a few old British calibers with IMR3031 because it is supposed to be the closest modern powder to cordite.
It pallors the skin
 
We used to dive HMS Argyl a lot in my diving days … ww1 battle cruiser drove onto bell rock off arbroath…
The seabed was literally covered in what looked like twiglets the savory snack …. My first time, I watched a lad come up with some … o asked what it was …. Standing on tue deck of the dove boat still in kit l, the stuff still dripping wet, been submerged 80 plus years & someone hands him a lighter and up it goes ! Like a guy fawkes sparkler on steroids !

Paul
 
As kids we used to frequent an old army range where they used to dispose(blow up or burn) explosives and propellants during the '50s. My father used to regale us with stories of bales of cordite from naval and artillery guns spread out over a field and set on fire, the flare could be seen a mile away. We used to dig around there and find cordite sticks of various sizes and light them(and throw them at each other, don't tell my father!)

We also found out that about 5-6 sticks laid on a square of tinfoil with one hanging over the end and rolled into a tube with the other end crimped makes a very erratic rocket when lit

er, we, being good boys never did any of this you understand, it was a older boy who did it and he ran away, no, I didn't know him, I'm not lying.......
 
Apropos to not a lot I have vague memories of strips of rubber glued to the inside front face of the magazine box to reduce the impacts under recoil. I was also warned, just in an information passing sort of way, by someone who culled a lot of elephants that people should beware of just stuffing in rounds and when the opportunity arose load the rounds left at the bottom of the stack to the top and fire them before they compressed the load and the bang was rather more substantial than usual. I guess this is just anecdotal but some of those guys really knew what they were talking about.

David.
That's why much British ammunition was stab crimped. .455 Webley (the last of the six rounds loade) will pull itself, by inertia, if not crimped.

Indeed the 1929 Textbook of Smallarms says the bullet in a .455 Mk Ii cartridge should hold a weight of a set weight of pounds without being drawn from the case.

And the further sample test was one round selected from that batch should not lose its bullet while twenty-four other rounds were fired from the same revolver.
 
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That's why much British ammunition was stab crimped. .455 Webley (the last of the six rounds loade) will pull itself, by inertia, if not crimped.

Indeed the 1929 Textbook of Smallarms says the bullet in a .455 Mk Ii cartridge should hold a weight of a set weight of pounds without being drawn from the case.

And the further sample test was one round selected from that batch should not lose its bullet while twenty-four other rounds were fired from the same revolver.
You willl also find..Dminio
That's why much British ammunition was stab crimped. .455 Webley (the last of the six rounds loade) will pull itself, by inertia, if not crimped.

Indeed the 1929 Textbook of Smallarms says the bullet in a .455 Mk Ii cartridge should hold a weight of a set weight of pounds without being drawn from the case.

And the further sample test was one round selected from that batch should not lose its bullet while twenty-four other rounds were fired from the same revolver.
You will also find on some straight wall HEAVY bullet Nitro Express rounds a smooth rolled in cannelure below the bullet's base. To act as a "shelf" to stop it from being pushed deeper into or withdrawing into the case.
 
I had a pack of 12 .303s that came with a sporterized Enfield German style with set trigger and a full stock. They had been ground off at the tips to look like hollow points reputedly in 1946 in Northern Germany with a British C/Os permission. I had no desire to try leaving jackets in the bore so I have just delabbed them and saw the card over powder wad and the cordite strands which after picking them out to weigh ranged from 34 to 38 grains. I am curious if the cordite would work in a 1909 Mauser 7.65x53 bottleneck case with a modern boxer primer. Perhaps I am just tired of living :coat:
Wouldn’t those be dum dum style bullets? I think they would have shot just fine.
 
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