New thought/idea I'm wondering about.

What would happen if you dropped the bullet into the chamber and then drove it into the throat of the bore using some kind of straight line "seating" tool or method and then chambered a case filled with the usual powder charge capped with a filler or "wad" (of course) and then fired the weapon?

Why I ask this is that this would (or should?) eliminate any bullet seating problems (in the case that is) and also would (or should?) insure total sealing of all the hot gases and pressure behind the bullet. What would be the result? Excess or dangerous pressures? Increased velocities? Better accuracy?

Obviously very impractical, but I'm just curious as to the results. Anyone know of this ever being tried or evaluated?

Did I post this on the wrong forum?

It MIGHT be very dangerous.

If you load a cartridge with enough length that it just touches the lands, you'll get high pressure. It seems to me that this would produce the same result.

Nah, I don't think that would be an issue; you'd just have to do your load development correctly, as always.
Thing is, your chamber would need some serious freebore to fit an entire case and a bullet. Usually they share about .35" or so.

HotCore is right. What little I was around such rifles, they were impressively accurate. But being black powder guns solves a lot of pressure concerns.

Frankly, I think it would be more trouble in a modern cartridge than it would be worth. If I were just hell bent on doing this, I think I'd do it on a Ruger #1 rifle just so I could have the falling block action to give me good access to the chamber.

I have a Ruger No 1 with heavy barrel .375 x 14" twist that is chambered for 38/55.
I load a 315gn Pope style projectile with a breech seating tool followed by 16gn 2400 for 1460fps. No filler or wad is used.
This load will group 1.5-1.8" 10 shots at 200m. Recently I have been experimented with a 300gn bullet with a bore riding nose that is fired as fixed ammunition with the leading edge of the first groove set to just engrave into rifling.

With modern jacket bullets, not a good idea. Real hard to get the bullet aligned straight in the bore. This is where tight chambers and neck turned brass come into play, to align the bullet with the bore. A lot of the bench rest guys have the cartridges set up so the bullet is hard into the lands when the bolt is closed. Gotta use caution and work the loads up, this is a sure way to have big pressure problems, especially if tight necks are also used.

Read some of the old black powder stuff, and books about Harry Pope. The practice then with lead bullets was to use a false muzzle for alignment, and pushing the bullet from the muzzle to the seating position in the throat just ahead of the powder charge. Why? To avoid damage to the base of the bullet, caused by the rifling smearing lead back past the base of the bullet and upsetting air flow on the "Steering End" of the bullet,if the bullet were to be loaded from the breech end. The bullets were a two part alloy, hard nose and soft base to take the rifling easy. Nose was a bore rider, rifling did not engage.

I have shot one of these type rifles, a 45 cal. Quite a chore to put on the false muzzle, push the bullet down the bore, remove the false muzzle, stick a charged case in the chamber, put the rifle on the rest and fire. There were a few tricks to prevent shooting with the false muzzle in place, like sight blockers on the false muzzle or a string on the false muzzle tied on the loading position, at too great a distance from the shooting bench for the string to reach. The false muzzle was used to align the bullet with the bore so it would go in straight when pushed by the ram rod.

sonofagun!! Damned if that ain't exactly what the old-time offhand 200-yard Scheutzen riflemen used to do! As a matter of fact, some of them used a false-muzzle, just like from muzzleloader days, and pushed the slug all the way down the barrel first, then stuck a pre-charged case into the breech after the bullet had been thus seated!Worked too! Just ask Harry Pope! ('Nothin' new under the sun, son!!)

Thanks for the replys so far. I'm really not interested in blackpowder shooting and seating bullets from the muzzle, but am talking modern cartridges seating the bullet from the chamber.

This is a theoretical question. FYI: I have had much experience in shooting all kinds of rifles including bench rest and target so am familiar with this kind of shooting. I'm really looking for answers from anyone who has specific experience with this or can refer to documented results from such experimentation.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the idea that seating into the lands does not necessarily produce increased pressure (can't recall where off-hand).

Several benchrest shooters I know use a light neck tension and load extra long into the lands and let the rifle seat the bullet. These are all tight necked; ultra low brass clearance rifles. They do not resize or touch the brass except to remove and reseat a new primer and to carefully clean the necks. The brass springback is as much as, or more, than the chamber / brass clearance. Will only work with some powders though; as most powders want more neck tension than this provides. Does save work resizing the brass though. They seat the bullet using match grade abor press dies with only their hands for maximum feel. Usually shoot 5 shot groups of 0.10 inch center to center extreme spread if there's no wind.

[ 08-20-2003, 02:56: Message edited by: Old & Slow ]

I would be very concerned with the chamber not sealing and hot gasses blowing in your face. If the initial pressure rise is not inside the cartridge then pressure would be the same on both sides of the case wall. No seal! Hot flash.
No, I have no personal experience at this, but if you are looking for opinions or ideas I'd use a long string to pull the trigger. Not in my riffel!

AIN'T THAT KINDA THE WAY THEY LOAD THE 21" RIFLES ON THE IOWA CLASS BATTLESHIPS? BUT INSTEAD OF A CASE THEY PUT IN BAGS OF POWDER AND INSERT THE PRIMER INTO THE BREECH BLOCK.