Alright, school me.

[thx997303]

Okay, so some time in the future, I'm going to have a 45 cal muzzle loader to shoot.

It will be a while, and I will have to figure out the specifics when I get there, but I know a few things about what this muzzy will be.

First, the barrel will be a 45-70 barrel threaded for a breech plug. The twist will be 22" so it will be a conical shooter.

I am unsure of the basics on shooting something like this.

I'm assuming the boolit should be just a bit over land diameter, for ease of loading? And soft lead?

Could it be shot with a lubed felt wad?

I guess I'm just lost.

[DIRT Farmer]

You are looking at what the long range muzzle loaders do. I built my first rifle with a Green River 45 1/20 that was set up on a Thompson Center Hawkin. A .451 440 grain grease grouve bullet for the Volenteer rifle loaded over 85 grains of Goex ffg and a felt wad shoots better than I can do.


I set up a Thompson Center Hawkins with a Green River barrel 1/20 to use as a long range muzzle loader before I went more sierous. I bought a after market breach plug and fitted it to the barrel, and had a little more than 200.00 in it
I loaded a 440 grain 451 grease grouve bullet afelt wad and 80 grains of Goex ffg. It would burn the nipple in 5 to 10 shots but was much more auccreate than I could see. I have never tried PP in it, I will some day get a platium nipple for it and try the 439 bullet for the 43 Spanish PP up to fit. Idaho Ron also works with a simular gun I think. I can be a cheep way to get in the game depending on what you spend on sights.

[thx997303]

This one wont have a nipple.

Inline primed with a 38 spcl case.

[DIRT Farmer]

Sounds like you have an idea. The barrel will work and there are several systems with gas sealers. A long time ago I built a bolt gun that used a 46 acp case to match the bolt face. I scraped the deal as I had to load over a live primer. It did shoot very well. I was thinking of going the other way and putting a platium flash hole liner in for a flint long range rifle. If it were ever shot on a line though, it would stick it in somebodys ear way down the line.

[wgr]

just make a threaded breach plug that will take a 209 primer

[thx997303]

Yeah the design is very interesting.

Anyway, I was thinking about shooting the Lyman 454616 in this thing assuming it fits.

Anybody think that's a good boolit?

[northmn]

When people use a barrel like that with 45-70 bullets they cut off a small chunk of barel and make a punch so they can "prerifle" the bullets by pushing them through the cut off. fouling can cause problems with that system. But they are accurate. If you are going to make a rifle of that type, I would use lonber 400 grain plus bullets.

Northmn

[John Taylor]

I use to build 54 cal rifles for long range. One of the "tricks" was to use 2" of barrel and make a bullet sizer. The short piece of barrel was shrunk down about .005" and tapered on the inside about half way to help the bullet size without removing any lead. The bullets were easy to load because they were a bit undersized and had a mechanical fit to the rifling. These rifle were built on the old H&R shotgun actions and used 209 primers. I quit making them when Idaho changed the law, requiring percussion caps for hunting.