45-110 that will not group.

Hey all,
Been awhile since I first logged in here. 2012 I think
Anyway a friend bought a Cabela's Pedersoli "Quiggly " rifle in 45-110. I loaded up his rounds from all new brass. It would throw lead all over. He shot it 4 times. Too Brutal he said, so offered his whole kit to me andi bought it.
I tried many different things , bullet hard or soft, seating depth,primers, and powder granulation. Card wads grease cookies and bullet lubes. Bullets cast at . 459 Lyman posted at 535 with #5 lead.
I have moved several times till finally landing where I am now in Indiana with lots of room.
Now I'm finally trying to get this rifle to shoot. I finally cast the muzzle end and chamber. I'd at bore is .450 x 455. Chamber cast is same. I have freebore at .460x .375 long. After firing unsized bullets will slide into brass. I do not crimp. I use a veg was over powder and 1/8" grease cookies. No leading in bore very little fowlind as I wipe between shots. Still at 200 yards 2 out of 10 will hit a 36 x 24 target. No keyholes. There is very little angle to the lead in( throat) and very short. I'm still at a loss I think I need a smaller casting mold. Thanks for reading all of this.

I had a pedersoli 1874 Boss gun, wouldn't shoot except bore diameter paper patch.
After using that ,it would shoot very well.

Randy, if you don't get an answer here, try the Shiloh forum

http://shilohrifle.com/forums/

I might suggest doing a search for Kenny Wasserburger's wad stack. He can also be found on the Shiloh forum. He knows his stuff about what it takes to make them shoot well. Good luck and keep us posted on your results

My 45/70 roller was like that, took a while, finally went to a bigger diameter bullet in pure lead and kept the FPS to 1200fps, card wad over powder, cork wads with a 1/16" thick plastic wad under bullet, with no air space, went to blackhorn209 with a mag primer, now will hold the x ring at 1000yds, if I do my part.

Your bullets probably need to be .460 and cast from 16-1. Scrap the grease cookie go with a fiber or poly wad .060
1 1/2 or 1 f powder probably somewhere between 98 and 102 grs of either is where you’ll find a good load

You dont give the powder manufacturer grin size or charge, these would be helpful as would lube.
This is for true black powder only.not smokeless or subs.
Start with a charge that fills to base of bullet with no compression and no airspace.
A heavy wad and use a couple tracing paper wads on top of the grease cookie. The grease cookie and lube may be causing the heavy wad to stick to the base of bullet.
Start with oal length just shy of the rifling by .010-.015
A very light neck tension to start
Work up from the starting in 1 grain increments increasing charge and compression, compress in a separate step with a die using the heavy wad as a cushion. Compressing with the soft bullet may distort it.
I use 20-1 lead tin occasionally 30-1. For lube its SPG or emmerts improved. Wads are seated when compressing the powder and bullets are hand seated onto the wads. Id you can chronograph the loads during work up watching not only the velocity but extreme spread and standard deviation. as the compression goes up these numbers go down then rise again. For me the postel does very good around high 1100 fps to low 1200 fps.
I dont shoot a 45-110 but do shoot a 45-90.

I sure will thanks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Randy Nichols

Hey all,
Been awhile since I first logged in here. 2012 I think
Anyway a friend bought a Cabela's Pedersoli "Quiggly " rifle in 45-110. I loaded up his rounds from all new brass. It would throw lead all over. He shot it 4 times. Too Brutal he said, so offered his whole kit to me andi bought it.
I tried many different things , bullet hard or soft, seating depth,primers, and powder granulation. Card wads grease cookies and bullet lubes. Bullets cast at . 459 Lyman posted at 535 with #5 lead.
I have moved several times till finally landing where I am now in Indiana with lots of room.
Now I'm finally trying to get this rifle to shoot. I finally cast the muzzle end and chamber. I'd at bore is .450 x 455. Chamber cast is same. I have freebore at .460x .375 long. After firing unsized bullets will slide into brass. I do not crimp. I use a veg was over powder and 1/8" grease cookies. No leading in bore very little fowlind as I wipe between shots. Still at 200 yards 2 out of 10 will hit a 36 x 24 target. No keyholes. There is very little angle to the lead in( throat) and very short. I'm still at a loss I think I need a smaller casting mold. Thanks for reading all of this.

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Get rid of the grease cookie - make sure the boolit base is clean and dry so theres no possibility of grease sticking the overpowder wad to the base - some guys make grease cookies work but thy fail about as often as they work -- you are wiping between shots anyway - dont need the cookie for that reason.

Cast bullet Engineering (downunder) makes a copy of the Lyman postel mold specially for Pedersoli barrels - it will drop .460 -.461 - a quality brass mold and with exchange rates where they are now you would land it in the US dirt cheap. It carries enough lube in the grooves to shoot (28"barrel) with a blow tube and clean after a session

Wads ? There a hundred different answers - in 45/70's and 45/75 I use a 45thou HDPE wad over powder - before I load the bullet I wipe the base on a cloth I nail to the bench - one part is wet with WD40 and the rest of it dry - takes only a couple seconds to clean and dry the bullet base ( I think this achieves the same end as other fellers get using a newsprint wad ?)- shot over clean ground you can pick up every one of those OP wads purt near the same distance from the muzzle

Pedersoli says they taper their barrels to the muzzle - I cant recall if I even slugged mine (a Uberti 1876) but its a common call that Pedersolis like fat boolits - I have three Italian barrels that are so so with .458 and shoot real nice with .460.

The Lyman 535 needs soft lead and a stout charge to bump the under sized bullet to groove diameter. Then it'll shoot from Italian rifles well.

Been working quite a bit lately. Ok I am using 1 F Goex powder. I have not filtered out the fines and this powder has moved to Kentucky and back to Indiana. I have not chronographed any shots yet. I am not using any tension on neck of cases. I use a powder compression for set at 3/16" compression. My charge is 103 grains with a.060 veg was over powder and a grease cookies under bullet. My Lyman postell mould is dropping at .459 and my sizing die is barely touching bullet at all when lubing
My lead is dead soft. My bullet is finger seated to be only about 0.020 from rifling. I am going to load more this weekend with no grease cookie and poly wad under bullet. Also taking hardness up to 20-1
I'll let some fly and repost my findings.

Before I went up in hardness, I’d go up a bit in powder, with apologies to Don McDowell, under the theory you need more compression if using 1F

Ok I'll load 5 up with 5 more grains. How much compression can I really apply. I think it was much easier when I was in artillery shooting charge 8 red bag

102 is the sweet spot in one of my 110’s the other one does well with 105
The first one mentioned also does well with 95 under the rcbs 82084 bullet
But both rifles do their best work with bullets cast from 16-1
Fouling control is very important

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Randy Nichols

Hey all,
I have freebore at .460x .375 long.

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Randy I have a Pedersoli Quigley rifle I got about in the same timeframe as yours and it has the free bore like what you have.
I burned up a lot of powder and lead finding what will make it shoot past 50 yards with any type of accuracy.
Someone on here suggested, I think it was Montana Charlie, not sure anymore, that I should have Steve Brooks make me a paper patch mould that patches to groove diameter or if I want a grease groove to make that mould like a postell without a bore riding portion, sort of like a GG with grooves at groove diameter.
I did that and the rifle now is a fine shooter.
A free bore chamber that is .400" long will have gas blow by that will cut the sides of the bullet no matter how hard or soft it is. Soft is better than hard. By soft I say 30/1.
The rifle will shoot with a proper bullet design.

Goex Fg needs about .380 compression and at a minimum 108 grs. Then a wad stack. In the 45-110.

I got the Gold medals that Say Scope National Champion on them to prove it. And multiple times, wasn’t an accident.

KW

Definitely lose the lube cookie.

If you have that much freebore you definitely want the bullet at freebore diameter. A cylindrical freebored rifle will shoot well unless the freebore diameter is wrong for the groove diameter. Or the bullet is too small in diameter. Matching the bullet to the freebore gives the bullet no room to bump up off balance. Your freebore diameter seems a lot bigger than your groove. Are you sure about the 0.455" groove?

My best 1000 yard score was done with a Borchardt in .45-2.4" with a 0.475" long cylindrical freebore. In that rifle the groove is 0.458" and the freebore only 1/2 a thousandths larger in diameter. The chamber was cut very well. I use a 16:1 Money bullet seated out to fill the freebore as much as possible and still be able to close the breech block.

As far as the .45 2-7/8" case goes, I have one and basically copied Kenny's PP load. The rifle shoots great, but it's a Shiloh :-). My second best load is a BACO Money grease grooved bullet in 16:1 with Swiss 1.5 seated out to touch the rifling. Just a single 0.060" LDPE wad with a newsprint wad on top. I wipe between shots and let the chronograph and the target tell me how much the gun wants to be wiped.

Chris.

Oh one more thing. Check the firing pin. The previous owner may have broken it, causing you to chase your tail.

Chris.

One other thing to check before getting a bullet to fit the throat ( Pedersoli's are well known to use a bullet of their design in 461 diameter) is did the previous owner leave the grooves completely full of lead? A good bit of lead mining may help things a bunch but until the bullet diameter matches the freebore , the throat will fill with lead again in short order.