Does any one know what the max cartridge length is in a long cylinder BFR?

As long as the brass is trimmed to the proper length and the boolits fit the throats, I haven't found a limit to seating depth or overall length.
The gun likes bullets, boolits in the 300 gr range anyway.
I have many groups of 9/16" with the Hornady 300 gr and many just over that with 317 gr cast. That is at 50 yd's. I have shot mine to 500 meters with extreme accuracy.
Do not worry about the long cylinder at all, load what you like.
The gun loves 4759 powder.

Thanks for the info. I was worried about it being too short. I've been thinking of getting one for over a year now to replace a 45/70 Contender that I sold for some stupid reason.

If I'm going to shoot a 45/70 I want to use heavy bullets, between 400-500 grains. The 400's wouldn't be a problem, but I imagine the 500's would be to long to fit into the cylinder. I can't remember the exact load right now, but I had a lot of fun shooting 500gr cast bullets at about 1100fps out of the Contender. Easy on the hands, easy on the ears, and hard on the steel plate.

If I'm stuck with lighter bullets, it would make more sense to get a 454 or move up to a 475/480 to use heavy bullets.

im using a 500 s&w in a bfr with a 10 inch barrel shooting 700 grain cast bullets at 1350 fps.

you should have no problem.

My 10" BFR seems to do better with 400's than 300's. I've never tried 500 grain bullets but they should work just fine.

I have shot up to 500 gr boolits but I get much tighter groups with 300 to 330 gr's. It is fun to shoot the heavy ones and they shoot OK but I always look for the smallest groups. The gun is pretty accurate with any boolit.

Thanks for the help. Now all I have to do is actually get around to buying one. Every time I got to the gunshop to buy the BFR, I walk out with something totally different. Last time it was an AR-15, before that was a Springfield XD, a .458 Win Mag, and the list goes on.

Thats funny! A tinker toy and then an elephant gun.

My 45-70 BFR cylinder is 3" long. I think that some of the early guns had a shorter cylinder.
the 475 BFR cylinder is 1.845". That includes the recessed rim. For comparison a Ruger 45 Bisley cylinder with case head measures 1.757".

Conventional thought has always said that the boolit has to be very close to the forcing cone or the gun won't shoot. Freedom goes out of their way to get a load right at the end of the cylinder, to the detriment of using any other boolits.
The 45-70 BFR has trashed that theory in my mind because the boolit goes a LOOOONG way before it hits the forcing cone. I have many, many groups with Hornady bullets at 9/16" and all of my cast boolits shoot an inch or under at 50 yd's. Sometimes, way under, not all the time, mind you, because I am still behind the gun, not a machine. Shooting this gun to 500 meters and getting groups WAY smaller then my BPCR can ever hope to get makes me wish I could shoot BPCR matches with it. The drop with my boolit at 500 meters is around 30 feet. It is 26 feet at 500 yd's. I hit steel by aiming at a spot high up in a tree behind the target. More fun then you can ever hope for shooting 25 yd's.

Thanks for the help everyone. What sort of performance are you getting out of the 45-70 in the BFR? Is it worth the extra weight and bulk of the long cylinder, or does a 454 give you the same performance in a smaller package?

The 45-70 does all that the .454 does with a lot less pressure. Plus you can really go up in boolit weight, over 500 gr's. I use a sling when I carry it hunting. It is big!
If you want a smaller package, get the BFR in .475. It is as accurate if not more so and knocks deer to the ground.
I don't know why but the .454 never appealed to me. Maybe it's because of the five Freedoms guys bring here in .454, none have shot as good as we expected. I don't know what a .454 BFR would do. I have always had the feeling the caliber is picky.
But the BFR 45-70 can be real picky with powders. That large case in a short barrel narrows powder choices but the darn gun will shoot. I have had mine to 1800 fps with the 300 gr Hornady without reaching the max load.
The only thing I know for sure is that I will never part with mine.
I carry a 10-1/2# Hawken up and down the mountains all day, the revolver sure feels a lot better hanging by my hip. You can buy a shoulder rig for it too.

Factory low pressure loads will put a 300 JSP out around 1200 fps-ish( don't remember exactly what it was) and they give very mild recoil.
I have shot 405s up to 1750 fps. the gun was still controllable, but it could get away from you if you're not careful. The brass just fell out of the cylinder with the barrel tipped up. A couple cases needed just the slightest tap before they fell out. It is BIG and weighs almost 5# with the 10" bbl. It is alot of fun to shoot. You'll never be undergunned with it.

I wish that Magnum Research would make a mid sized frame for the 1.6" maximum cases or 500 S&W. I was really hopeing their 500 S&W would have been on a mid size frame. I ended up buying the S&W 500 with 4" bbl.

Every company makes wrong choices to save money. The 45-70 BFR could have a shorter cylinder too as well as the 500. Freedom makes a mistake on their .475 by not making the cylinder long enough and having the wrong twist for heavy boolits. Many think because of my comments about the freedom guns that I don't like them, nothing can be farther from the truth. I love them but can't afford one. Freedom builds their guns to dominate the silhouette shoots, not for normal reloaders and common components. I out shoot all of my friends guns because they are loading for hunting and using the same components and techniques used in other guns and it just doesn't work with a Freedom. If I had some, I could then outshoot everything I now have by loading for them the proper way. Some calibers need longer boolits and others need shorter boolits but none of the Freedom guns match the standards we are used to. The only one I hate is the .475 because the caliber was designed for really large game with very heavy boolits of 400 to 460 gr's. The Freedom won't take most of them and shoots best at 350 gr's. The smaller calibers need much heavier boolits then standard weights. The freedom will shoot very poor or will out shoot a rifle, it is very picky, there are no in betweens with it. You can't just grab any boolit or load and get accuracy.
That is why I like the BFR's, because I can get them to shoot with what I have without spending a fortune for a gun and additional special molds, etc. Since I hunt with my revolvers now instead of silhouette shooting and am retired on a fixed income, I am very happy with the accuracy I get. Yes the Freedoms are much better but at what cost? Not needed for deer.
It all boils down to what we can afford. The Freedom is the finest revolver in the world but you had better be prepared to spend more to get it to shoot the way it was designed and to do double the work. ( Darned scope base is triple the cost of any other.) No after market stuff for them at all.
For us poor folks, the Ruger is king, with a little more money, the BFR is better. Before I get too old to shoot, I hope to have a Freedom (Not the .475 though, it is wrong like the .500 BFR.)

quote:

Originally posted by bfrshooter:The only thing I know for sure is that I will never part with mine.

Yep, selling the 7 1/2" .45-70 BFR I had was one of the dumber gun decisions I have made. I will buy another eventually, although this time I am tempted to go with the longer tube.

Well, you guys did it. I came home with a 10" 45-70 BFR today.

I'm at the gun shop everyday making a delivery, so the owner and his wife know me pretty well. He asked me more than a year ago what gun I would like to see in the shop, and I told him the BFR. A week later it was in the case and it's been there ever since. Nobody else was going to buy it, so he started to call it the FedEx special (I'm a FedEx Ground contractor). I had to go back to the shop today with a box that I missed the first time. When I got inside, they had the BFR on the counter and said that they were pretty sure today was the day it was going home with me.

The way I see it, it would have been rude for me to walk out empty handed after they went to all the trouble of taking the gun out of the case and all.

I imagine the BFR will quickly replace my Encore in 460 S&W. I just love the look and feel of the revolver. The Encore just doesn't fit my hand as well and I never really warmed up to it.

Now, do you have any recomendations for powders to try? I fed my 45-70 Contender Re 7 almost exclusively with my favorite load being 41.0 grains and a 405 Cast Performance WFNGC. Are there better powders to use in the short barrels?

Congrats on your new beast. You might want to think about loading some light plinking loads also. There's nothing wrong with a 300gn cast bullet at 1000 fps.
Do you cast bullets? You can turn out lots of cast bullets for little $. It's easy to get into spending lots on casting equipment. You can keep things reasonable. Some guys melt their lead on a Coleman stove and use an old pan as their lead pot. Lee molds are affordable and do alright if you take care of them.

collegekidandy

Congratulations on your new gun!

Your contender load is what I use in my 10" BFR and that load works fine under a 405gr. Rem also. Chrony's at 1325 fps. With a 2 to 6 Bushnell 3200 it'll group at 1' to 1 1/4" at 50 yards. For a plinking load that shoots to the same POI as that load (in my gun anyway) you can try 15 gr. of Unique under a 350 gr. Laser Cast.

I thought about getting into bullet casting, but I'm worried about lead exposure with my kids. More accurately, I'm worried about dealing with everyone else's concerns about exposing the kids to lead.

The kids are old enough so that I'm not worried about it (they're 2 and 4yrs old). I'm just sick of hearing their doctor and a few other people whine about me exposing them to such a "toxic" substance.

I'm going to start off with some 300gr loads to break the gun in. Then I'll start having fun with the heavier loads.

The very best so far is SR 4759 and a large pistol magnum primer. For the 300 gr Hornady, .458 HP bullet, I use 32.5 grs. For a 300 to 317 cast, I use 31 gr's and for a 330 gr I use 32 gr's.
I put a tuft of Dacron on top of the powder but can't say it is any better or not.
Once you try this powder, you will forget all the others.

Forget about the lead exposure from casting boolits. Wash your hands after playing with lead. Most casters actually have less lead in them then the general public. Lead is only dangerous to the very young anyway. The temperature lead is cast at will not vaporize the metal. Just don't breath the dust from dross you skim from the surface.

This gun is awsome! I took it out this morning and ran about 40 rounds through it. 300gr Hornady HP's with a full case of Varget make a nice light recoiling load. A 400gr Speer and 44.0 grains of IMR 4198 was the favorite as far as heavier loads go.

I only shot it at 25yds, just to get a feel for the gun. As for accuracy all 5 shots were touching with 6 out of 8 loads that I tried. My eyes aren't to good, so this kind of performance with iron sights and a heavy caliber were pretty good in my book.

I might take the scope off of my Encore before I sell it, but a 2-7x scope seems like a little much for this gun. Besides that, I do love the way it balances with the iron sights.