Now .36 Caliber itch is satisfied

Well looky what I just won on Gunbroker ! Half the price of what I had to pay for a T/C .32 rifle last year ! Also it is a "side slapper" which is kinda Unique ! Made in Italy, I don't know by who yet, has excellent sights and a reasonable 25" barrel I like a lot ! Nice wood ! I have 3 or 4 .36 BP pistols and I hope the .375 round balls will work I cast . This just may be my favorite plinking muzzle loader yet, I KNOW I won't be going away from my .50 HUNTING rifles, which are all ready for the up coming season.



Oh MY GOODNESS ! Looks like it's a Pedersoli !

Mike 56 said:

Gorden, I have 36 T/C rifle I shoot .350 balls. Are you going to shoot it without patches? I checked mine with .375 balls looks like you could grease them up and start them without a patch. I have some Richmond Lab heeled bullets I think they could be started with a plastic hammer. 36cal rifles are a blast to shoot. enjoy!

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I have a bunch of .36 Caliber Oxyoke wads I use under .375 balls in my revolvers. I don't see why I can't seat a wad on the charge and use a ball starter to engrave a lubed ball over it and have it work. I have confired most of these models in .36 will take a .375 ball after starting with a reasonable push of ram rod after starting/ engraving rifling. I think that is actually a more accurate method than a .350 ball with a .015 patch . I don't like to cut patches around the muzzle. I do it but don't like it, generally. I tell you in a couple weeks. High fire dangers right now. I won't shoot unless it's on a public range in fire season

Ok even tho it was crazy hot yesterday I went to a wet land area that was deserted as far as I could see to shoot my ne .36 Mule ear short rifle. It is very petite and makes my Cherokee .32 seem rather chubby . I am using #10 Remington caps and they fit very tight I use the leather cushion against my thumb that acts as a safety for the hammer to seat them . The side pointing nipple if the cap was loose would fall rather easily, but I do have a .45 Underhammer and am aware of that problem ! I started with 30 grains of Goex FFFG and used a .350 ball I sprung for a box of and used .015" precut and lubed OxBow .36 patches to make things easy on my self to began messing with this gun. It has a very nice , strong delrin ram rod that takes my worm, ect. too . I lubed the gun with Balistol when I got it and everything seems fit. The front sight had been replaced with a pretty tall front sight and arrived driven over to the right a bit. The rear sight was a very fine micro adjustable sight that indeed looks like an Italian LPA design ! At 25 yards from a sand bag off a cooler dead center aim put the first two about 4" high and [retty well centered. I noticed the rear leaf was adjusted pretty much to center, explaining the front sight position. I backed off to 50 yards and found about 2" right and 2" high in 3 shots .
I decided to use my Moose milk and clean the bore after first five shots. It cleaned well , and easily. I corrected the sight a little left with a brass drift wanting to keep the micro screw driver sight adjustments centered where they are. I was rewarded wit a 2" 3 shot group that was 2" high at 50 yards . I moved the target to 100 yards and strapped on the chronograph at the muzzle. The load averaged 1515 Fps with 125 fps variance . The group was well centered about 3 or 4" with 2 close together and one 2" away. Too small to hunt deer with legally.,Coyotes would be in a hurt as would a human out to 200 yards I reckon

Yes I have found data on loads for smaller bores that is interesting. #1 the T/C manual referenced has the starting load with a ball as 35 Grains of FFFG , mine was actually 32 . There velocity for 40 Grains and the .350" ball is 1700 FPS from a longer barrelled Seneca. My barrel is 25" so my velocities were pretty good . That load should keep a ball super sonic till 100 yards ! The Maximun T/C load with a ball is 60 grains of FFFG ! I won't be loading that ever, that is the charge I use behind a Maxiball in my .50 Lyman for hunting , well almost. T/C says the 60 grain charge is good for 2100 fps behind a ball in a Seneca .36 ! You can shoot a Maxi ball bullet with 50 grains at 1700 fps !
These velocities are not what I bought the smaller calibers for, tho the Cherokee .32 I have is fun to shoot with a 25 grain FFFG load at 1800 FPS. from it's 26" barrel. The next time out with the .36 I might try up to 50 grains, but I am a powder mizer when fooling around. Loading my 10 ga SxS with 100 grains of FFg freaks me out

Apparently this .36 has a 1 in 48" twist BUT the Cherokee .32 I own has a faster 1 in 32 twist ! T/C was thinking it was gonna be shot with Maxi balls mostly and apparaently from my reading a faster twist is used on the smaller bores generally, even balls require 1 in 48 in .36 for best accuracy.unless the barrel lengths get super long, over 40" .