ROA hunting research

[subsonic]

I've been searching for info on this subject and find two schools of thought. Shoot the pure lead roundball as fast as you can OR shoot a flat nosed conical as fast as you can.

I also see that for $60 I can have the chambers deepened or for about $1000 I can have it converted to .488" (.50) caliber by Clements custom guns.

I also found a fellow that was loading hard cast 22bnh 250gr bevel base SWCs with an arbor press over 35gr of 777 and getting over 1000fps.

I have found the biglube.com moulds and I think there's not enough driving band on the ROA specific 210gr, but the other 210 and 255gr moulds for cartridge use look interesting.

One thing I keep running into is that recoil can pull the other boolits at a certain level. It seems like the way around that would be a hard alloy and wide bearing surface in the chamber - which seems to also improve velocity with 777 by allowing more boolit pull just like in a cartridge firing revolver. But the con to this pro is that the loading lever isn't up to seating something hard with a lot of bearing surface. Hence the arbor press mentioned above.

Straight seating seems to be another area of concern. A rebated base or beveel base seems to be the answer as well as using the arbor press which allows more control. The arbor press can also have a nose (top punch!) that fits the boolit instead of the rammer that is shaped to seat round balls.

Anybody else experimenting?

[subsonic]

Oh, and Jim/44man, can you post a pic of your ROA with the UltraDot on it?

[NickSS]

I have only fired RB and Lee 220 gr conicals in my ROA and have found that either works well for varmints and small game. I do not hunt big game with a hand gun as I am not a great handgun shot and bullet placement is the name of the game for clean humain kills.

[Lloyd Smale]

i had mine back bored by clements and it did make an appreciable differnce. I had mountain molds make me a 220 swc and a 240 wfn to fit them. I dont remember how much powder i was using now as its long gone but i remember it held 7 more grains then stock and recoil was pushing close to heavy 44 special/light 44 mag levels. I took one doe with it and it dropped it on the spot at 50 yards. Had 3 old armys at one time but now own none. I just detest cleaning guns to much to fool with black.

[subsonic]

Lloyd, what powder and cap did you use? What alloy? Did you have to use a loading stand?

[Hickory]

I have thought of having an Old Army Ruger
built in 50 cal., but the $'s aren't there.

[Lloyd Smale]

P triples 7 dont remember the cap, probably a cci though. Bullets were all cast out of pure and lubed with a mix of crisco and olive oil and didnt have a loading stand but it would sure have helped as getting those plain based bullets started straight was a hair pulling ordeal.
Lloyd, what powder and cap did you use? What alloy? Did you have to use a loading stand?

[Lloyd Smale]

When dave first started doing the 50s i was real interested. As a matter of fact i was one of the guys that got him going on it but they were just to expensive for me at that time. He was the one that suggested boring out the cylinder a bit and it definately puts the old army with the right bullet into deer hunting power levels and does it for a few bucks vs a few thousand.
I have thought of having an Old Army Ruger
built in 50 cal., but the $'s aren't there.

[saz]

WOW! Makes my 51 Navy replica seem incredibly anemic.