recoil therapy is this coming weekend...50calibre 3" case full of black powder with 500grn boolit on the top.....with luck SWMBO will get some photos and maybe even video.... looking forward to fondling some rilfes well over a century old

Elvis wrote:

recoil therapy is this coming weekend...50calibre 3" case full of black powder with 500grn boolit on the top.....with luck SWMBO will get some photos and maybe even video.... looking forward to fondling some rilfes well over a century old

Ya lucky bugger…sounds like an awesome weekend. Will you be using your home-rolled black, or commercial stuff?

Good luck and have a great time.

Vince,
I like a story with a happy ending. Glad your primer stash is okay. All the best..
Gil

Gil Martin wrote:

Vince, I like a story with a happy ending. Glad your primer stash is okay. All the best.. Gil

Thanks Gil…I’ve always been careful how I store components and always keep a largish pack of silica gel in the safe with primers, so the contents sit in a nice dry environment. I microwave the silica gel every now and again to keep it in good condition to do its job. I have similar in my rifle safes for the same reason.

well got to fire a couple of VERY classy rifles...top end stalking rifles from bygone era..including a whitworth double barreled rifled muzzle loader...that fires a round ball with a fat belt around its edge..like a flying saucer..the belt fits into two grooves in barrel..the rifling. very neat very old gun.
I am happiness filled
Vince..on something as rare and classy as this it was storebought all the way.
found out a few errors Ive been doing in reloading for my .45/70 when using black powder including...I should be using LPP and definately not LRMP .....which is a good thing as SHOULD be easier to find LPP....
should be using a card between boolit and powder
lube WILL corrupt powder
and pop primers before cleaning cases
oh and the cast boolits I had bought are craphola..... have some better ones to try
hopefully these wee tweaks will see it more usable in anger.

Elvis, a Whitworth shooting round balls? In my opinion Whitworth was developed for long pills... I have a Parker Hale Volunteer in .451 which is a dream to shoot, but a PITA to clean... so when I go black, most often the single shot pistol or the Hawkens can join me, all in 45 cal, shooting round balls and conicals (and I prefer the conicals because they load much easier)

I shall have to double check that now.... saw that many rifles its all a bit of a blur... fired only 2 the 14ga muzzle loader that had the jupiter like balls and a break open 50calibre 3"...that one might have been the whitworth perhaps....
will do some digging later LOL.

ok so the 500...3" is a webley


www.nzhuntingandshooti...ion-98540/

Sounds like you had an outstanding weekend Elvis. Shooting rifles of that era would be amazing and very rewarding.

Do ya think Becs would be happy outlaying for one of those smokepoles mate?

The black powder fraternity have got a wealth of knowledge when it comes to shooting black powder. There are so many variables that need to be considered, and they have usually been through each and every one of them searching for that ideal combination of components.

the other is a 14ga dickson belted ball rifle...... handled the whitworth ,thus the confusioun

www.nzhuntingandshooti...96513-new/

the link will clear up anything else LOL

nah Bec's knows I dont need one...its why I built the 45/70...to scratch the BP ITCH...Hopefully now Ive got a few pointers we will be able to obtain useful accuracy and hopefully enough velocity to be even more humaine for deer.

With a round ball usually a patch is used and you chose the tickness of the patch so that you can still get the ball down the barrel and it seales the threading. When you've shot, look for the patch. You normally can find it within 5 m from the barrel. Examin it: it should have a nice black cross and no burned holes.
For conicals I use a beer-card which has been soaked in melted bulletfat and then punched into the right size. I load powder, then card folowed by the (greased) conical.

I would recommend to try jeans for a patch with round balls. You can wet it with cutting oil (the cooling stuff you use when drilling a hole in metal) or saliva. Just put the jeans over the barrel, put the ball on top and push down a little, then cut the material flush with the barrel. It will give you a nice round, well-centered patch.
When you have problem with patches, try toilet paper. Easy to dose (1 to 4 pieces of toilet paper = 1 wad between powder and ball + some on top of the ball when you have a loose fit and the ball could move in the barrel and leave room between BP and load, which is very dangerous!)
With toilet paper be careful when the environment is dry... but then you shouldn't fire BP eather!

And don't worry: when you don't forget the powder, anything you can get down in the barrel will come out when you shoot... even your loading stick

have a squiz in those two links Aloysius...... and the muzzle loader was ..powder,card,greased wad,patchthen ball....all tamped down individually.... the greased wad and patch actually travelled 45 -50 yards almost like they had "stuck" themselves to the ball LOL. be like a funky shuttlecock whirling through the air...

Elvis, the patch fixed to the ball... that's still a way I have to try for slugs in the cal 12. I like to think that a fixed wad or patch could make a slug stabilize like a dart. Even a piece of rope fixed to the slug might do that job.

Did I already mention that there were times they even put 2 roundballs in a load? Maybe even in blackpowder time they were thinking about tearing the kevlar with the first ball so that the second could penetrate better

Aloysius wrote:

Did I already mention that there were times they even put 2 roundballs in a load? Maybe even in blackpowder time they were thinking about tearing the kevlar with the first ball so that the second could penetrate better

I've read that, on occasion, US War of Secession soldiers fired two Minie balls over one charge (60 grains of FFg), the idea being they'd hit two targets. I tried it in a reproduction P1853 Enfield. Lots of recoil from that 1,000 grains of lead going down range. I also tried three patched .58" roundballs over a standard load. As I recall I got about a 3" pattern at about 40 yards.