.50 Cal Green Mountain LRH Range Report

[54bore]

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[54bore]

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[54bore]

First time out with the new .50 cal green mountain LRH, the first shot was a slight hangfire? I suspect a small obstruction in the nipple/snail? I pulled the nipple, cleaned it well and ran a pipe cleaner through the snail, no more hangfires. The hangfire shot was high and a little right, after cleaning everything up i fired the second shot and it felt great, it ended up beside the hangfire shot, i made a sight adjustment and shot again, that one was stil high so i made another sight move and shot the last 4 shots, my 4th shot was the upper right kicker in the circled group? Go figure! This load was 80 volume grains of Swiss 2F, i found 80 volume equaled 85 weight grains so i weighed each charge on my beam scale (i cant make myself like and trust volume weighing, just cant do it!) if i plan to shoot 80 volume i will check several charges from my volume measure to my beam scale and get an average of what it is weighing in weight grains and then pre weigh my charges and put them in little containers for my shooting session. I think this rifle will do better than this, i plan to try 70 grains another trip and 90 another.
I recovered 6 of the 7 .500 S&W bullets i shot, these are some serious medicine! I dont have a lead hardness tester yet so i have no idea there? My guess is these are fairly soft, they weighed in at close to 460 grains, i only keep bullets that are within 1 grain of eachother the rest go back in the pot. My plan is to harden them up to around 8bhn, its hard to argue with a mushroom like these! These were shot in a sand bank absolutely full of other bullets. Overall i am pleased with everything but confident i can get it better.

[idahoron]

Good first go. What distance were you shooting at?

[54bore]

Good first go. What distance were you shooting at?

It was 80 yards, i can get a true 100 yards in this particular spot but i would have to park on the brush line edge and stand in it, no reason to do that, 80 was close enuf for the first go around, i have my 300 yard range picked out, i can drive my target to it and then go back and park in an old switchback on an abandoned logging rd, its a really good safe spot to stretch your barrel out!

I just got done cleaning the gun, these stainless barrels are the cats meow for muzzleloaders! What a breeze to clean, AND shooting paper patched, absolutely no comparison to bore buttered maxi balls! I can get this barrel clean to cotton white patches in 10 minutes, it takes me longer to get my stuff together than it does to clean the rifle! When i got this barrel i spent some quality time cleaning it, i then polished the heck out of the bore with montana extreme bore polishing compound (equivalent to jb bore paste) about 100 strokes. The guy i got the barrel from had taken really good care of it, he figured he might of shot 80 boolits thru it total and it was obvious he knew his business on cleaning it, no rust, no pitting, etc. it was in really good shape! Ive had to tinker quite a bit with this barrel to renegade stock fit, it definately was NOT a drop in and go fit, the barrel fit to tight so i had to remove a small amount of wood on the channel sides to get it to sit down flat in the stock and lift out without fighting it, i took my time and hand sanded it, tried for fit, back to sanding until it fit properly, then the problem i came across was the ramrod would not quite pass the wedge key lug, and the wedge key fit a little loose, i took the wedge key lug off the barrel and removed small amounts from the bottom of it by running it across a flat file to keep it pefectly even, and kept testing for fit, i finally got it to fit perfect, then lightly coated the bottom of it with alox so it wont rust. My .45 GM LRH barrel was really easy compared to this one, All i had to do to it was remove a tiny bit of wood where it meets the ramrod under lug, i did it with a round saw file and only had to remove maybe a 1/8" is all, the under lug on the GM barrel was a tiny bit longer than the factory TC Renegade barrel and wouldnt quite clear the stock. I have enjoyed every second of messing with these things! I might get back out tomorrow and shoot this thing some more, if so i will post my results, i figure i will try 70 grains and 90 since i did 80 today.