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SPG - A History
The following was written by Mike Venturino for the Black Powder Reloading Primer, a joint publication with Steve:
....I added my voice to those already saying that our modern black powder was so poor in quality that nothing could make it shoot accurately in a cartridge rifle. BAH-HUMBUG again! And so that brings us to the second major influence on my shooting life. That's a slim, young, Montanan name Steve Garbe. Steve is one of those figures that no one forgets after seeing. Invariably he's wearing a cowboy hat, and if the weather is cool, he's got on a buckskin coat he made himself. Since he's worked a good portion of his life as an elk hunting guide there's always a big bladed knife on his belt. I guess one of the main indicators of Steve's character is his often voiced motto, "Smokeless powder is a passing fad!" The first thing Steve did for me was badger me until I had that .40 caliber Sharps rebarreled to .45-70. He said no black powder cartridge shooter in his right mind would be without one. And then, as he so often like to tell me, he saved me from the ills of smokeless powder. When we first started to get to know one another I told him about my failings with black powder in my Shiloh Sharps. He said he just couldn't understand it because his guns shot OK. I wasn't buying it; why would my rifles shoot into four foot groups while his by the same company would do "OK". I thought that maybe his version of "OK" and mine differed substantially, so we sat down at the bench together and did some shooting. After he fired a few rounds I indeed was dumbfounded. His rifle did shoot "OK" -- as I remember a 10 shot group at 100 yards was about three inches or so. Nowadays that wouldn't excite us much but at the time I was absolutely slack-jawed with amazement. About this time Steve was winter-keeping an isolated ranch just north of Yellowstone National Park. Therefore he had plenty of time for experimentation. Occasionally he would snowmobile out and spend the day interfering with my work-schedule, and also I suspect to scam a home-cooked meal from my wife. On one of his trips he decided to reveal his secret, and handed me a small baby foot jar full of a yellow waxy substance. He said to smear some of his new SPG (his own initials of course, Steve isn't modest either) lube on my bullets and shoot them over black powder. Before this I had just been using any old lubricant on my black powder cartridge bullets because coming from the smokeless powder end of things I felt that a lube's only purpose was to prevent leading. To make a long story short I did try it and my very first five shot group at 100 yards was a mere two inches! I nearly fainted. What so many of us who had failed with black powder in cartridge guns had not realized was that the bullet lube had two jobs. It had to keep down leading, but just as importantly it had to help keep the black powder fouling soft. SPG does both. I urged Steve to put his product on the market. I knew that shooters would be willing to pay for it. The rest is history. SPG lube caught on very well, or we wouldn't be here now putting out the first edition of the SPG Lubricants Black Powder Cartridge Reloading Primer. ...And, that brings us back to the main topic: reloading for black powder cartridges. Steve and I have put years of effort into this endeavor. We feel that we have a good line on what we are doing. The way we tell to reload black powder herein is not the only method. It is merely our method. Steve, at least, proved his ability by winning the 1989, 1990, 1994 National Championship for BP Silhouette. My own shooting has not been as spectacular. I started as a AA class shooter (scores of 11 or better in a 40 shot match) in 1985, and it took me until 1989 to shoot myself into AAA class (three scored of 17 or better in a 40 shot match). A Master's class (three scores of 25 or more) was added in 1991 and I managed to shoot myself into it the same year. Steve, myself, and our friend, Dan Phariss have shot as a team representing Park County (Montana) Rod & Gun Club since that portion of the competition was started in 1988. We won the team national championship title in 1988, 1989, and 1990 setting a new record in each year. We had a bad weekend in 1991, losing the team event by two points. Steve and I are collectively putting what we know about loading black powder in single shot cartridge rifles into this book. We freely admit that we do not know everything. As you will gather from further reading, we don't even agree about every detail, but we sincerely hope that what is here will be an aid to the reader.
For more information relative to this item, please eMail Dave: mailto:dave@lonestarrifle.com Send mail to Tom Berwick
with questions or comments about this web site.
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