madsend81
Member
Hello everyone.
I'm normally a patch and ball shooter with my .50 Hawken, but I decided to try my hand at an inline. I've heard sabots are supposed to be better performing with the inlines but also are a bit tougher to load. I recently acquired a .50 cal inline and picked up some bargain sabots which came with matched bullets (I wasn't trying to skimp, just thought I'd start with the least expensive load and work my way up the $$ ladder until I found a load that worked).
I took the rifle and bullets home and did a trial fit to see how they would work before I got to the range. That thing wouldn't get past the end of the barrel! I ended up leaving a ring on the face of the lead bullet from the ram rod. Is a sabot supposed to be this tough to load? My patch and balls require a bit of effort, but this is ridiculous! Being an engineer, I whipped out my calipers and measured the I.D. of the bore to be .502 land to land. The sabot with bullet was .507 O.D. That's .005" interference! In my professional line of work (mechanical engineering), that's a huge interference on a 1/2" diameter. A true force fit, not a sliding fit like I would have anticipated.
I'm planning on moving on to a different Sabot/bullet combo, but I would like to get some opinions on an economical sabot that will work. If you can provide specs on the O.D. of the sabot you use, that will help.
Thanks!
Dave in So. CA
I'm normally a patch and ball shooter with my .50 Hawken, but I decided to try my hand at an inline. I've heard sabots are supposed to be better performing with the inlines but also are a bit tougher to load. I recently acquired a .50 cal inline and picked up some bargain sabots which came with matched bullets (I wasn't trying to skimp, just thought I'd start with the least expensive load and work my way up the $$ ladder until I found a load that worked).
I took the rifle and bullets home and did a trial fit to see how they would work before I got to the range. That thing wouldn't get past the end of the barrel! I ended up leaving a ring on the face of the lead bullet from the ram rod. Is a sabot supposed to be this tough to load? My patch and balls require a bit of effort, but this is ridiculous! Being an engineer, I whipped out my calipers and measured the I.D. of the bore to be .502 land to land. The sabot with bullet was .507 O.D. That's .005" interference! In my professional line of work (mechanical engineering), that's a huge interference on a 1/2" diameter. A true force fit, not a sliding fit like I would have anticipated.
I'm planning on moving on to a different Sabot/bullet combo, but I would like to get some opinions on an economical sabot that will work. If you can provide specs on the O.D. of the sabot you use, that will help.
Thanks!
Dave in So. CA