Proper amount of BP

[roundball]

The only "rules" that I have heard of are:
1 1/2 X the caliber ie 1 1/2 X 54 = 81 grains

1/2 the weight of the ball

I am sure their are others also.

And don't forget that other old time honored extremely accurate way of measuring:

"put the ball in the palm of your hand and cover it with powder"
:grin:

Like Stumpy said, it's more important to measure powder the same way every shot than what is used to measure it.

In fact, the palm of the hand approach will be a good thing to experiment with at the range and see just how consistent it is regarding accuracy...I bet at 50yds the accuracy probably won't vary much at all, if any

 

[flaming canvas]

Since the powder isn't contained in a case and restricted by volume, a small variation isn't that critical.

"covering head with arms and ducking"

The variation in velocity due to a 1 grain deviation in the powder charge can probably be equalled by the differences in seating pressure.

:imo:

 

[Zonie]

Several years ago, MuzzleBlasts had an article about the "cover the ball with powder" method.
The author, knowing that hands have different shapes, used his wife, his daughter and his son each place the ball in the center of their palm and cover it with FFg powder.
He then collected each persons "measure" and weighed it.
This was done several times to obtain an average for each person.

As I recall, he did this with several calibers of balls.

I don't remember exactly what his numberic results were, but the bottom line is each person was kinda consistant and all of their "loads" would be considered to be very mild loads by todays standards.
Something like 55 grains for the .45 and 70 grains for the .50 (don't quote me on the numbers).

For those wanting to measure your powder weights (on an actual powder scale) vs the numbers on your measure remember , the weight is for Black Powder Only.
ALL of the new psudo-Black Powders weigh less.
Even though they weigh less, they have roughly the same amount of Power as Black Powder, volume for volume and they all were designed to be measured with the powder measure just like Real Black Powder.

I mention this because some time ago, a member was increaseing the size of the measure so it actually measured a true 100 grains. The problem was he was shooting Pyrodex so his powder charge was the equivalent of a 130 grain black powder load.