Is that all it takes?

So after something like two years of hauling my two flintlocks out to the club black powder trial days and shooting at gongs out to the side of the trail against the hillside and not having a good idea of where they were hitting I FINALLY took a day to shoot them at paper and get a handle on what charge they like with the ball sizes and patches I've got.

One is a Lyman GPR in .50Cal. The other is an older custom gun with carved details and silver wire inlay that a local builder made to be his own gun. Sadly that was way back and he's no longer with us.

So I start with 30 grains and move up in 5 grain steps. Shooting off a rest block at 25 yards so my eyesight and shaky arms are not much of an issue.

Both of these shot really neat tidy three shot groups of less than 1 inch with 30 grains. And going up from there to 45 the groups opened out progressively worse. I went down to 25 grains with the nice custom gun. And the two shots I took were touching each other like a figure 8. But that amount felt like I was spitting the ball instead of shooting. There HAS to be limits you know...

So what in heck is going on? I'm happy as a clam in butter to find that I've found a frugal charge that provides good groups. But how in blazes would either of these ever be used for hunting? Is it common for the accuracy to open up at first and then close down? Like if I'd kept going up to 55 to 70 grains that I'd be back to having a tack driver?

Meanwhile the sweet spot for my cap lock underhammer turned out to be a pinch over 60 grains. Should I have kept going with the two flint locks up to that amount?

Looking foward to reading what others found that have done this stair step testing and gone further than what I did today.

I wish I'd thought to try a higher charge to see what happens. But I was there for quite a while and although it started out mild and sunny it got cold pretty fast as the afternoon moved along.

I found that my own GPR likes a fair bit more pan charge than I need with that custom rifle. With the small push nozzle horn dropping little puddles of 4f I found that I needed two pushes worth in the GPR compared to just one with the Al Brown rifle to avoid just getting flashes in the pan failures.

When I looked into it earlier I'm pretty sure I found that the Lyman's share a 1:48 twist rate so they are decent with either patched round ball or with sabot bullets.

Which reminds me that I bought a pack of sabot bullets a while back for something totally unrelated. I should try them out in my own GPR for giggles.

The other thing that the other flint shooters put me onto is having a touch hole wire. I tied a leather lanyard to the trigger guard with a wire on the end so it's always there.

If you find it eats flints like a kid going through sweet breakfast cereal remember that post on your other thread that I did about slightly reshaping the point on the frizzen. Other than that enjoy!

Crawdad1 said:

That's pretty much a useless load in a 50 caliber. You might have a lot of work in front of you. Differing round ball and patch thickness combinations could be effecting its accuracy as much as the powder charge. I wish there was an easy solution or formula one can fall back on but the problem is every rifle is an individual and there isn't two on this planet that are the same.

I tried all sorts of powder charges, different caliber round balls, with differing patch thickness combinations in my rife and found out that my rifle like them but what it didn't like was a lot of grease on the patch. It loved a relatively dry patch. Stumbled on that by accident.

Not much help I know but, Good luck.

Click to expand...

I appreciate that. I only did try the one ball size and patch to go with it. A .495 and the prelubed CVA .015 patches to go with them. It was a snug fit getting things started.

On my other custom rifle the .440's with soft cleaning patches and Moose Milk were very easy to ram home. Yet both produced similar accuracy groups with the light charge.

I should point out that I'm only a sport shooter. No muzzle loader hunting in mind. If I have any concern it's about reaching the longer targets without excessive drop.

They would be too thin for the .45. But I hear what you are saying. I'll make it a point to take my flashlight along and find some of each tomorrow evening. I've got some old bed linens I can cut up and try for patching.

Clearly this process is only just starting. I've got ONE solution which I can use in a pinch. But I've got a few other things to try now thanks to you folks.

I've seen the "red spots" that are associated with the ideal charge on a few occasions. Seems to almost come and go with the weather as well as the charge amount.

I know that different patches can really affect how the guns shoot. I've seen that myself. And from the posts here and in thinking about it more myself I will need to try a few other materials and thicknesses to nail it down.

I'm not worried about hunting since I'm purely a sport shooter. So if 30 grains is able to get a reasonable muzzle velocity to hit the more distant targets that's really all I'm concerned about.

What surprised me and prompted this thread was how BOTH guns with patch and ball fits that are so wildly different with one being quite loose and the other quite firm were both printing such tidy small groups with minimal "starting loads" and how both opened up rapidly with rising charge weights.

If it turns out that there's another sweet spot for accuracy up around 50 to 80 grains I'd like to know about it. But if I can get the velocity I need to reach the longer distances from the 30 grain charges I'll be fine with that. It'll save me powder.