Sight settings

[flatsguide]

Hopefully, next month I will compete in my first Silouette shoot. So I’m try to hurry along to get ready. well at least as fast as a 80 yo old guy can hurry,lol. I won’t have much time to work up a load but will start with a recommended load of the following. 45-70, PP BACo 535gn elliptical, 1:16, 80 gns Swiss 1 1/2. I think it was Brent’s load.
It would help if I had some rough, ball park elevation sight settings for Silouette for the DZ arms scope I bought with their Unertyl mounts. Front base .175 rear .225.

I just finished D&T ‘ing my Browning.45-70 BPCR for aDZ arms 8x scope...



Thanks guys,
Richard


The load

[BrentD]

Give me your sight setting for one distance, any distance, and the distance between the center of your sight mounts. The rest is easy.

[flatsguide]

Will do Brent...hope to start shooting later this week. Oh! That would help...7.20 inches

[Distant Thunder]

flatsguide,

I have those same DZ mounts and spacing on my .40-65, but a Leatherwood 6X scope and I would think the come ups would be close. At very least you could use them for comparison to what Brent comes up with. I'll get my book a bit later today and post my settings then you'll just have to adjust the numbers to a setting for your rifle/load and it should be in the berm at each animal.

I'm shooting a 385 grain ppb over 72.0 grains of 1 1/2 Swiss at about 1350 fps, but I'll check that speed.

I love those DZ mounts and I'm happy with the scope. The combination sure works well for me. Using bore pigs and with Brent's help I found shooting ppb for silhouette to be absolutely no problem and very accurate. You actually have plenty of time, you just have to be organized and that's not easy for me. With a little practice even I can do it!

I really don't know how a man could have more fun than knocking down a bunch of steel critters with ppb and gun powder. I'm really looking forward to my next match.

Go and have fun!

[Distant Thunder]

So here is what I have:

Critter----------------Setting - Horizonal/vertical hold.

Chickens ------------.085 Top of the back, center body.

Pigs------------------.110 Just behind the front leg, center body.

Turkeys--------------.135 Leg/body junction, center of leg.

Rams-----------------.174 Nose high, center body.


I use the same bullet for all animals. I've included where I hold and in the case of the chickens where I try to break the shot. For me a high break on chickens results in more dead chickens than a low break, which gives those frustrating rail hits.

I double checked the fps at 1355. With 80.0 grains of 1 1/2 under your 535 grain money bullet you're probably around 1260-1270-ish. So the higher BC of the money over my round nose design may just balance out over the 500 meters.

My pigs, like Brent's, have a rubber washer on the tail end, that and the dry patch pushing them through removes all of my wiping solution leaving the bore dry. I use a water soluble oil water mix at 10 to 1, water to oil. I have come to believe my pigs can't possibly be too wet. I haven't had any fouling issues doing it this way. I do run a couple wet patches and a couple dry patches through the bore after the 5th animal and the 10th animal then it's not on the clock. I have enough pigs to shoot a 40-shot match that way and I just clean my pigs at the end of the day.

I've been using these same pigs since 2009 or 2010, at first with just a soaked patch on the brush and more recently with the felts. I like the felts because everything stays together and cleans up easily.

I hope some of that is useful to you. Good luck and I look forward to hearing how it goes for you.

[Gunlaker]

That velocity estimate is likely very good. I shoot 80gr of Swiss 1.5 and the BACO 446535 money bullet and get 1277 fps from a 32" barrel.

Chris.

[flatsguide]

Jim, thank you very much for your detailed reply. I have enough bore wipers from BACO to last though a Silouette match with sights. They use the felt wipers you mentioned. I will practice using them before the match.
It has been very hot here in Eastern Tennessee lately I have been waiting for it to cool off a bit like last year but it looks like I’m going to have to suck it up and start casting outside this week.
What do you all think? Should I start a new thread or just start posting my progress here ?
Thanks for all the help guys.
Best Richard

[flatsguide]

Hi Brent, here is the load and settings for my .45-70. Load; BACo 535 elliptical slick, as cast 525 gns, 79.5 gns swiss 1 1/5, CCI br2 primers, Starline brass. Scope, DZ arms 8x, bases on 7.2 centers. Milk container and newspaper wads, one each no compression, seating depth .125 inches.
5 shots at 100 yds, 3 in .130 inches and two flyers. Shooting prone on a very uncomfortable down hill slope.
Sight setting was .093 elevation for 100 yd zero. So it would help if you can post the sight elevation settings for the chickens, pigs, Turkeys and rams.
Loading match ammo for bpcr shooting is way more involved that loadingfor jacketed bullets.
I was a bit concerned that I would not have sufficient time to wipe the bore between shots but it was done with plenty of time to spare using Baco’s bor pigs and a dry patch as Brent described.
Sunday will be my first match
Thanks much
Richard

[BrentD]

Richard, I'm sitting in the Whittington Center West Campground right now. It has a little wireless that seems to be working this morning. It is beautiful here and in a little bit, I will have lead in the air and hope in my heart, once again

I have to dig a bit for a 100 yd sight setting but here is what I have got.

from your 100 yds setting, come up 0.14" for 200 meter chickens. This is assuming that your 200 m benchrest and 200m offhand zero will be the same. For many of us, the bench or crossstick zero will be ~0.02" lower than offhand.

From chickens to pigs come up 0.10"

From pigs to turkeys come up 0.11"

From turks to rams come up 0.17"

That should get you on or darn close.

Brent

[Don McDowell]

Good luck in the lever gun matches Brent.

[flatsguide]

Brent, thanks so much! Like you say ,this should get me in the ball park tomorrow. Good luck on your shoot!
Regards, Richard

[ian45662]

where is your shoot at?

[flatsguide]

Well I sure hope other fellows matches went better than mine...Most all of my critters managed to laugh off mt attempts to knock em down Lol.
I really did not have time to test my loads before the match and it showed. The shots were all over the place and the ones I managed to hit was pure chance.
The load was .45-70, BACO Prolate bullet at 1:16 patched with .0018 tracing paper to bore diameter of .450, Swiss 11/2 79.2 gns, Star Brass, CCI BR2 primer, Two wads over powder was milk carton and over that was news print paper. No compression Bullet seated .125 into case.
Looks like the wad stack failed and got fire cutting
Unfired bullet on left

[flatsguide]

Im surprised on how much slumping occurred. The metal came from roto metals. Im going to test it again with my Lee tester and post the results. Also the slumped bullets varied in diameter top to botom. .4493 to .4538 at the base. I shot these into my pool. The bullet on the right is not symmetrical, I think it is from hitting the water at an angle.
Thanks Richard

[Don McDowell]

The nose slump isn't hurting things as much as the gas cutting. Try a .060 fiber wad in place of the milk carton.

[Gunlaker]

How snug were those bullets in the bore? I'd try a 0.060" LDPE and seat them further out, like 0.010" in the case.

I've had gas cutting with wads that weren't LDPE, or with faster powders like Goex FFFg Express.

Chris.

[flatsguide]

I’ll give those fiber wads a try Don. Chris, do you mean .100 ? .010 is only the thickness of three human hairs, not much for the case to hang on to.
Thanks guys
Richard

[Don McDowell]

Another good wad material under patched bullets is the rubber cork gasket from NAPA auto parts. It comes in 2 thicknesses .

[Gunlaker]

I’ll give those fiber wads a try Don. Chris, do you mean .100 ? .010 is only the thickness of three human hairs, not much for the case to hang on to.
Thanks guys
Richard

Sorry Richard . You are correct, I meant 0.1"

Chris.

[Bent Ramrod]

What did your bore look like after the bore wipe and patch went through? It looks to me like you may have had some fire cutting on the paper but it also picked up a fair amount of fouling on the way out.

You said you got a 0.130” three-shot group at 100 yd “with flyers.” How far away were the flyers? 100 yards, of course, is a tricky range for load diagnostics, but your shots should have stayed in 2” pretty consistently. Also, unless you know you are a shooting machine prone off cross sticks, a bench rest setup is best for ammunition testing.

Check all your fired shells for length, and check also for turned-in case mouths. I find them to be pretty treacherous in this regard; a few samples before loading will look all right, but a certain number out of 50 will be long and/or turned in after they have been loaded and fired. Whether I let them lengthen over several loadings without noticing, or perhaps left some residual moisture at the end of the chamber after wiping, this condition seems to correlate with those matches where my “classic load” that worked so great in testing or practice (or even in the last match) doesn’t seem to hit as many rams as it should have this time. I use my bore pigs dripping wet, because for me anything less than a pristine bore is inviting trouble, but it may be that the residual wetness is a little much for the cloth patch to pick up completely, especially when cleaning on the clock.

I’ve never just “picked up” a paper-patch load from somebody else and used it successfully. For me, every rifle, with paper patch boolits anyway, seems to be a law unto itself, requiring its own development. However, your powder and charge, patch thickness, primer and boolit weight, diameter and alloy nearly duplicates what I’ve used successfully myself, including the seating depth. You might try a few “nuances” like changing your wad material (as previously suggested), annealing case mouths and putting a primer wad at the bottom of the case ahead of the powder. These extras may or may not be pure Voodoo, but every time I’ve tried to do without them, my target diagrams (exasperatingly) seem to be a little larger than when I do them. So I do them.

Anyway, congratulations on your first match. As far as I can see, you are starting out absolutely normally. Unless you have a herd of buffalo 400 yards away, or a horde of Comanches attacking, shooting in matches is the best way to determine how well your gun and load really shoots. There will be a learning curve, but afterwards, you will wonder why it was so difficult.