dirty dave
Member
Fixed a kentucky pistol to shoot today, tried it with 30 fffl grain loads.how much can be shot safely?best results?round ball or mini?
cva kentucky pistol
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.45 or .50 cal?
Maximum safe load is over 50 gr ffg, but I've never exceeded that. The stock, through the wrist, will be the limiting factor; I would imagine it would not take too much more than 50 gr. The barrel has the same dimensions (except for length, of course) as the CVA Kentucky Rifle, which shoots up to 90 gr ffg.
My best load in a .45 cal is .440 rb, 0.015 lubed patch and 35 gr fffg black powder. The long sight radius helps accuracy but the sights are not ones I can use well.
Maximum safe load is over 50 gr ffg, but I've never exceeded that. The stock, through the wrist, will be the limiting factor; I would imagine it would not take too much more than 50 gr. The barrel has the same dimensions (except for length, of course) as the CVA Kentucky Rifle, which shoots up to 90 gr ffg.
My best load in a .45 cal is .440 rb, 0.015 lubed patch and 35 gr fffg black powder. The long sight radius helps accuracy but the sights are not ones I can use well.
Brillo
Member
50 grains of powder in a pistol sounds on the upper edge to me, especially in a smaller caliber pistol. If you are using black powder I doubt that the barrel length is long enough to get anything near a complete burn, so you are just wasting powder and adding to the weight of the charge. If you use a substitute like 777 the story changes somewhat but then you might have to worry about barrel pressures, especially with anything other than a round ball. 25 to 30 grains of 2F or 3F should be fine. Also, I don't see the point in using conicals. Besides the fact they are more expensive I doubt they will be more accurate. Pistols often have a faster twist rate than BP rifles of the same caliber. The reason is that with down loaded powder charges the muzzle velocity is not high enough to effectively stabilize anything other than a round ball. At pistol shooting ranges you will likely not see an improvement in accuracy with a conical, and it may even be worse. Remember, projectile stabilization is more strongly dependent on revolutions per second, not revolutions per distance traveled. If you use conicals, use a very short one like a ball-et.
Chawbaccer
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I concur with Brillo. You want to concentrate on accuracy instead of brute force. 25-30 grains should be fine with a prb. Heavier loads will just hurt your hand more and affect accuracy. With a bit of practice you will probably become adept with the sights on the gun.
dirty dave
Member
Its a 50 cal. with the longer kentucky barrel.going to range this week to try a few things.I make my own conicals so expense is cheap have a mold for a light weight one thought I might try this.I know it easy to load.I poured these out of pure lead.
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