The 110 Year Old 1892 goes to the range with Black Powder...

[rbertalotto]

Yesterday I competed in a Cowboy Action Shoot. I had loaded some 38-40 cartridges with Black Powder for use in an 1889 Marlin and a 1873 Winchester I use with the holly black. But yesterday I only had my Uberti 1866 "Race Gun" with me. The Black Powder cartridges were primed with Winchester primers which the light hammer fall of my 1866 would not set off. (This Uberti must use Federal primers which have been near impossible to source lately)

So today I took the 1892 that I'd bought this week to the range to fire off these soft hit rounds.

Now if you remember in a previous post, the 1892 with smokeless loads was going through the target sideways. The rifling in the last 2" of barrel, near the muzzle is nonexistent. I couldn't hit a 24" X 24" target from 25 yards.

But these Black Powder loads were not only stabilized, they were quite accurate. About a 5" group at 25 yards!

Amazing how Black Powder will obturate the bullet and force it to fill the bore where smokeless will not.

I ordered a liner for the rifle and I'm still going to reline the bore as I think I can wring much more accuracy out of this old gal.

[TXGunNut]

Congrats! Those old guns are a joy to shoot. A friend has a couple of pre-1900 1873's in 38-40 that we've been shooting lately with BP. Sights were dead on for BP. We also shoot some very early 94's with SP and cast boolits, old guns like old loads!