a little fun with the C. Sharps rifles today

[Gunlaker]

The paper patching forum seems a little dead in the last while so I thought I'd post something, along with some nice pictures.

Today I was playing with two of my rifles, a CSA 1885 in .38-55 with a 28" #4 barrel, and a CSA 1874 in .45-110 with a 32" heavy barrel.

100669

100670

I've had a decent load for the .45-110 for a while now, and today I was just verifying a load for the .38-55.

The load is 58Gr of Goex FFg Express and a 0.030" Veg King wad compressed to 0.167" from the case mouth. The bullet is a 20:1 Brooks Elliptical paper patched bullet that is 1.29" long patched to bore with 8lb Seth Cole.

100671

The bullet is breech seated ahead of the case with a 0.060" LDPE wad under the bullet using my ugly home made seater:

100672

I've shot this load previously only a handful of times, but it seems reliable so far. At 100m off of the bench it put 8 of ten shots into about 0.5" high and 1" wide. At 200m prone it did 8 of ten into just a hair over 1 moa of vertical, and today off of the sand bags at 200m it put ten into 2.5" wide by 2.5" high, with 6 of the ten into 1.15".

100676

Breech seating bore diameter bullets seems to work very well in the .38's, as long as the bore is kept very clean. I've managed to do a fair bit better in my .38-50 Rem Hepburn, but it's stocked for bench shooting where this rifle has more of an offhand stock.

Hope you like the pictures.

Chris.

[MT Chambers]

Breech seating BP rounds is a pain in the a&&, I've had to wipe the chamber/leade area, after every shot to allow bullet seating, not a problem with smokeless.

[Gunlaker]

Well, it's definitely a time consuming way to shoot. I wipe between shots for all of my black powder shooting anyway. With paper patching I just wipe a little more. With this rifle it's 3 damp patches followed by a dry one.

Chris.

[bigted]

which leads to the question of the quality of shooting a person is looking for. I can not get my rifles to shoot any bore size boolits patched with any of my chambers ... they do well with groove diameter boolits ... however ... this manner and diameter of patched boolit takes a lot of space in the case.

now I can shoot duplex loads with the bore diameter with pretty good success. matter of fact I just did attempt the bore diameter and did real well with them and then realized I had shot some of my last duplex loads I have had loaded for some time.

I do NOT read about the ODG buff hunters having to swab their bore after each shot so even as much as I read and ask questions ... I still cant wrap my feeble brain around what they did so different ... OR ... maybe their expectation of accuracy was a bit slacker then ours today ... don't know but ... I am still on the hunt for my answer to this question.

my problem is and always has been with the fouling control required with paper patching with straight blackpowder loads. big or small lube cookie and all. I will get there maybe but till I do ... I relax back into the greasers as I do well with them and the no fouling control that I perceive is my trouble with the patch boolits.

[Gunlaker]

I'm not really interested in shooting dirty if I can get better accuracy by wiping. To me the goal is maximum accuracy with straight black powder regardless of timing. I'd like to shoot a perfect 250 on the German ring target at 200m with one of my schuetzen bench rifles. That's a good long term goal that I'm interested in. Shorter term would be a 100-10x at 200m prone with any of my rifles :-)

As a result of my goals, none of my PP loads for any of my rifles are good for hunting, or even silhouette for that matter.

Not that I don't respect the guys who do that sort of thing. I find the accomplishments of some of those guys to be pretty amazing. I remember a group posted somewhere a while back by rdneck that was nothing short of amazing. As I understand it, the secret is smaller bullets, thicker paper, and adequate lube cookies. But that's based on my reading, not my doing. I'm pretty sure that Don and Kurt have both done this sort of thing.

I once played with my .45-70 loads to see if I could maintain accuracy with one damp, and one dry patch, which I could manage in silhouette. I only gave it a brief try and was unhappy with the results. One of these days I will order a set of Bore Dawgs from Gentleman Jim and give it a serious try, following the advice of Brent D. i.e. bore pigs/dawgs, whatever, and a dry patch, all on the same pass of the cleaning rod.

Chris.

[rbertalotto]

I've read where buffalo hunters back in the day did in fact swab their barrels. And some pissed down the bore!

But remember, if they were a good shot and had a good set up, they only fired the rifle 5 or 6 times in a day. They couldn't skin much more than 5-6 buff in a day. And they had to conserve lead and powder.

[bigted]

we must have read different books and articles then ... my reading states in fact that they would shoot up to 70 shots per stand. and no time to swab after every shot either. when the barrel was so caked up that chambering was a problem ... they would either switch rifles for a clean one ... or ... stop and swab it down and in doing so ... cool it off a bit. if memory serves ... the record for a stand was somewhere in the 90 buff killed. so far as the skinning goes ... usually had skinners following along to split up the work for everybody to have a share of the skins.

that pissin chore I read about as well and as I read it I thought ... WHEWWW man what a stink huh>>>LOL.

Chris ... I admire good marksmanship and I do know that there be some that haunt here that do really shoot very fine groups clear out to the end of the rainbow. this is some super achievement and I bow to them ... I don't have the eyes for it and I don't think competition is up my alley ... but I support all that wipe n blow and clean between shots for the accuracy that is surely a blowmind.

good shooting all.

[OuchHot!]

Thank you for the informative post. I really like the 1885. How much does it weigh with sights?
thanks

[Gunlaker]

I haven't weighed it, but with the 28" #4 barrel it's probably somewhere around 10.5 lbs maybe 11lbs max.

Chris.

[Lead pot]

Chris.

If you want to get really serious breach seating you might want to invest in getting a proper breach seater like one Russ Weber of Colorado makes. With this seater you can seat a bullet that is 1/2 way between groove and bore diameter or even groove diameter if you ant as easy as closing the bolt on a rifle and just about as fast. I have two of his seaters so I don't have to change settings for different calibers. Or you can use or make a palm plug seater tool like the Pope seater. The weber tool will do a better job aligning the bullet better in the bore.

http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b302/940Leadpot/IMG_1186.jpg (http://s22.photobucket.com/user/940Leadpot/media/IMG_1186.jpg.html)

[Gunlaker]

Kurt, I've actually got a few of Russ's seaters already for my CPA, and my .38-50. They are definitely excellent tools. For this rifle I was thinking of keeping with a push style seater just so I can "feel" the bullet as it enters the bore as I'm worried about buggering up a patch as I seat it.

I have no machining skills but was thinking about trying to cook up a nicer looking adjustable push seater.

Edit: I think my cobbled up tool does a decent job on aligning the bullet. It's maybe hard to see in the picture, but there is a sliding aluminum cylinder in that brass case that I "turned" to the diameter of my bullet on my drill press. The bolt pushes on the aluminum cylinder to seat the bullet. Depth is controlled by a sophisticated jamb nut arrangement :-)

Chris.

[Lead pot]

That's fine. But you will bugger the patch faster using using the palm seater, but again Pope used one with great effect, but again :) he used lubed bullets.
I used a palm seater before I got one of Ruses tools.

[Nobade]

Ted - I think it all depends on chamber design and type of powder you are using. I have a C, Sharps rifle, 45-70, that has about 3/8" of freebore in it. It will not, no matter what I do, shoot decently with bore size patched boolits. But feed it groove sized ones, and it shoots absolutely lights out. And like you said, they take up too much room in the case. So I just use it with greasers, and am happy. But I have a #1 I built up using one of Dan Theodore's custom paper patch reamers and that thing is a tack driver with nearly any bore diameter PP load I have tried, and using good powder I can shoot it all day by using a blowtube. It is a hair more accurate, like maybe 1 1/2 MOA instead of 2 MOA if I wipe between shots. I can also shoot my original Trapdoor as long as I wish by blowtubing. It just keeps going. Chamber design. Some work for this kind of shooting and some don't. And of course powder is another thing. I can't go very far without wiping using Goex or Diamondback. Maybe 10 rounds. KIK and Swiss are a lot better, but eventually need attention. Maybe 25 rounds. But Old Eynsford - now that is something else. Just keep shooting as long as you feel like it and the bore doesn't seem to change. A couple of breaths on the blow tube and you're ready to go for the next shot. That stuff by itself is nearly as clean as Goex with a duplex kicker behind it, and it is very powerful powder.

Of course YMMV and a lot depends on climatic conditions. Though up where you live you have about the best possible conditions for BP shooting compared to us desert dwellers!

-Nobade

[bigted]

LOL ... yep its true ... all 3 months of it ... course that's if it aint rainin ... and if its dry ... then the smoke makes it so ya caint see hardly 100 yards. it aint all picnic up here either I gotta say.

cant wait to get down to the states to try this wonderful elixir called Old E. everybody rants about it so its gotta be the stuff God intended us to have this whole time.