uberti '73 accuracy

[salvadore]

Started out with pyrodex and gave up on it and went to 2400. Accuracy pretty much sucks. 4" to 6" and beyond @50yds. The best group so far was a 2.5" @ 50 with a Lee 250 gr fp. Looking down the bore its squeaky clean, but I see a wash of lead at the muzzle. I believe the Lee mold doesn't hold enough lube for a rifle. Unless someone can offer a cheaper solution, I'm thinking of one of accurate mold's 250gc designs casting with ww, if that doesn't help I will heat treat said bullet and try again, The shooter seems to have pretty shallow rifling.
btw, I've been fighting this for years.

[KCSO]

Slug the bore first as these run a little ovesize. I had one in 45 Colt that needed a 454 bullet to shoot.

[salvadore]

I'm unable to get a good bore size due to the number of grooves and the rifling is so shallow but at least two of the bullets I've tried went .454 or better.

[missionary5155]

Greetings
If you think it is lack of lube... why not try smearing some extra lube on the nose of a few, load them individually and see how they shoot.
Then you can also make a "lube cookie" to place beneath the bullet base. Powder.. a wax paper wad, a "cookie of lube" about 1/16 th thick, and boolit on top.
I have worked with some very fat throated 44 WCF's down here. They all worked best when I used the fattest bullet possible I could chamber. I looked at my notes yesterday and one SRC took a .434 bullet. I realise you are with a caliber .45 but you might want to do a throat culture on that chamber. Have shot Trapdoors that needed caliber .464 boolits with Pyro. Real Black Power will bump a soft lead boolit up to throat diameter. WW will not bump up.
So remember the basics.. Oversized boolits shoot best. On the caliber .45 I look at .0015 - .002 over throat diameter IF it will chamber. You must measure diameters. Otherwise you are going to do alot of hit and miss trials with mostly misses.
I just started with a 1896 made 44 WCF last week. 1st thing I did was get my diameters. That one hour of slow tedious work pays off by knowing what diameters I need to work with IF I am shooting none Real BP. My first two 5 shot loads were small nice little holes. I encourage you to get those diameters. Find the fattest diameter that will chamber. Use the facts to your advantage.
Mike in Peru

[w30wcf]

salvadore,

I have shot the Lee bullet with smokeless at close to 1700 f.p.s. (not for '73's) in my Marlin Cowboy rifle (24") and experienced no leading.
I was using the traditional 50-50 NRA lube. I was sizing at .454" and bullet was made from w.w.+2% tin.

Perhaps a change in lube may help.

w30wcf

[salvadore]

I still wonder if I don't need a need a harder bullet with a gascheck to deal with the shallow grooves. I have quite a few Lee's loaded and some 454190 HPs, so will go to the range and try extra lube. Thanks gang'

[curator]

Lots of "details" inherent in the Winchester 73's design can affect accuracy at longer ranges. To begin with the sights are crude and not very precise. The fit of the magazine tube and forearm are important as is the barrel/magazine tube band. Neither Pyrodex or 2400 are known for fine accuracy in a .45Colt rifle (I assume it is .45 Colt although you didn't identify your cartridge) The Lee .45/255RF bullet can shoot quite accurately if it fits the bore. Mine cast at .454 from WW+2% tin. Try loading 7.5 to 8 grains of Unique or Herco and try using a different lube like the old NRA50/50. You do need different lubes with black powder than with smokeless. The Lee bullet does not have sufficient lube groove capacity for black powder, but works fine with smokeless in my .45 Colt rifles. Don't get too carried away with hardness. You may find that accuracy will be very good with BHN 6 to 8 at M73-safe pressures.

[salvadore]

Have a Marble tang and a Smith Enterprise ladder plus a so called fiber optic front. I went to 2400 because Brian Pierce and Dave Scoville seem to like it in their SAAs, plus a casual mention of using it in '73 Winchester, but no specifics. I've used Dar formula with pyrodex and 2400 along withsome Lyman black stuff that looks like the same thing I used in the 70s, and a beeswax, lanolin, castor oil and maybe paraffin mixture I put together a long time ago. Sorry about leaving out the type of round, it is chambered for the 45 Colt, and I believe my Lee mold also casts to .454. The ,454 round ball I pushed thru the bore seemed to fit very tightly.

I bought a new Marlin 94CL in 25/20 along with a friend around 1990. We tried everything to get those rifles to shoot, including removing the forearm and magazine tube. I even lapped the barrel on mine. They were both finally sold at a loss along with a great LBT mold. I purchased another 94CL about 5 years ago in 32/20, the first cast bullet load I tried shot ten rounds into 2.25" with eight going 1.25"@ 100yds...not important, I just like telling people...I just don't know what to do with magazine tubes and forends.

[RPRNY]

I can't see harder bullet as the answer to this question just yet. Harder lead isn't going to do shallow rifling any good.

I think you need to slug the barrel and see if you have a tight spot up near the muzzle. If we rule that out, I'd take a page from the Marlin microgroove book. .456 - .458 bullets in soft lead 10 -12 BHN at 1500 - 1700 fps is where I would want to start. I would also think about H110 or 4227. Plenty of barrel to burn it all and a good hard start to get the obturation that will settle that bullet in the rifling.

I've never met a less than capacious 45 Colt chamber, so I would not aggressively resize and just get the bell out of the case mouth. Nothing else works, think about paper patching.

[salvadore]

I don't think my Uberti will handle 1500-1700fps.

[RPRNY]

I can't see why not. With either the 18" or 20" barrel, you should see up to 400 fps more than a 5" revolver load, especially with these "slower" powders. 1700 may well be a stretch but let's say 1300 -1500. All the more reason not to go for harder lead.

[w30wcf]

I still wonder if I don't need a need a harder bullet with a gascheck to deal with the shallow grooves. I have quite a few Lee's loaded and some 454190 HPs, so will go to the range and try extra lube. Thanks gang'

Salvadore,
I really don't think so at 1200-1300 f.p.s. if the bullet is filling the shallow grooves. The reason I say that is that years ago I was working with an oversized '73 44-40 made in 1882. It had a .434" groove and a .425" bore. I was shooting .428" bullets (12 bhn) using PSB to prevent gas cutting and the bullets shot fine at 1200 f.p.s. and they were only gripping the rifling .0015" per side.

w30wcf

[hightime]

I had a lot of trouble with my 1873 also. They finally gave me a new rifle. It shot a lot better, but not great. The bore seemed tighter near the chamber then tight by the rear sight dovetail and loose at the muzzle. I lapped the barrel a lot and got it to hit a paper plate at 100 yrds. Now I can at least hunt with it. I'll say this, After lapping it isn't fussy on what load. I have gave up on my own cast and just use .455 Rem swagged rnfp. They work great.

Owen

[salvadore]

I can't tell you how much I appreciate the input from you guys. Am I working under a false assumption that the rifling is less likely to grip a softer alloy in front of the chamber than a harder alloy?
w30wcf, I guess I don't know what PSB is. I had a Colt SAA in 44spec. with .427 throats and .434 groove, talk about gas cutting, it's now a .45 Colt.
Owen, I think I have two or three hundred of the Rem, What kind of load do you feed your shooter?
I cleaned the barrel yesterday and took the rifle to the range along with the 255 grain Lee bullet loaded with 16.5 or 17gr. of 2400 and some I loaded for an Uberti revolver. It was loaded with 5.5gr of titegroup using the lyman 452490 gc @.451. Loading the Lee load cartridges singly into the chamber I was getting maybe 5" @ 50yds groups at best. Doing the same thing with the lyman load I was getting 3.5" groups.

Some of my problem may be the tang sight which has a small amount of play and may not assume the same position after each shot, so I will replace it with the ladder sight which is rock solid and try again.

If I get the load info from Owen I'll put some of those together and take them also.

Thanks again gents

[w30wcf]

Salvadore,
My .45 Colt rifle is a '94 Marlin Cowboy (24"). It has pretty much the same twist as your rifle......1/38. When I first got the rifle back in '97 I tried a number of different bullets in it using the standard .45 Colt loading data. One think I found out pretty quick is that the SWC bullets ...454424 (similar to your 452490) for whatever reason, did not group nearly as well as the standard RNFP designs.

Based on my experience, you have a better chance of better groups with faster burning powders at up to 14,000 psi (max SAMMI pressure for the standard .45 Colt) than you will with slower burning 2400.

The best bullet of the three you mentioned for accuracy would be the Remington swaged bullet. You may find happiness at 5.5 - 6.0 Titegroup. If you have any Trailboss, try 5.7 - 6.5 grs. Those loads shoot really well from my rifle. Trailboss has the ability to bump up soft undersized bullets due to its faster millisecond pressure rise so if your Remington bullets are undersized, Trailboss may just be the answer.

w30wcf

[hightime]

Yes, like he said. Although I've had good luck with 16 gr. 2400 and grain of cotton filler in back of that 455 dia. Rem rnfp. I am also satisfied with 8.5 Unique now too. I've been using the tang peep also. I'm not too sure of my eyes anymore. I did have a lot of leading. After a long, long bit of cleaning it shoots a lot better. Good luck.
I have been thinking about what w30wcf says and I think that's exactly what's going on. Try some trail boss.

Owen

[salvadore]

I love that verse.......one of my favorites! Thanks for posting :)