Longest Length

[Good Cheer]

Gents, I'm looking for input.
There's a .40 caliber 1" octagon percussion drop-in barrel 38" long that I'm going to do something with.
A very real possibility is having it rebored to .46 bore with a fast twist to use paper patched .45 rifle bullets and seeing how far away I can hit something. Thing I'm wondering about is with .46 bore and more or less 450 grain bullets, just how much barrel length will be enough or excessive?
The 1884 Model had about a 32" barrel...
Any thoughts and suggestions would be welcome.

[rhbrink]

I would think that 38" would be plenty long and 32 to 34 about right to my way of thinking. If you were to ever shoot grease groove boolits in the 38" barrel there would be the possibly of running out of lube. Paper Patch I don't know how long you can get by with. Guess if you found some reason that the 38 is too long after shooting paper patch for a while you could cut the barrel back and re-crown.

Richard

[mooman76]

My Trapdoor has a very long barrel and is 45. I'd have to measure it to see but I have a hard time fitting it in my safe and my car also. I measured it and it has a 32" barrel. I would have bet it was longer but I didn't account for the trapdoor. I do however have two 32 cal MLs and they have 40" barrels.