Birthday Present Decision

[Good Cheer]

OK, I'm a'gonna do it. It's new rifle time.

Got a 15/16" barrel. Breech threaded for 5/8" with a .30" bore x 48" twist rifling.
Gonna have it rebored for use with a caliber of pistol molds.
.357 or .41 or .44 or .45 or .48...

I'm thinking I'd druther go with .42 bore for patching .41's.
So, for even the heaviest of the .41 revolver molds what form of rifling and twist would be best?

Got the twist calculators. And I think that the results are generally showing twists that are faster than actually needed. What's your experience with the calculators?

For paper patching .41's, would a very shallow rifling be best? What type of pattern would you think best?

Any and all input would be appreciated. I have my own ideas from shooting short, medium and long boolits, plain base and hollow, in muzzleloaders but very definitely value what others know.

[pietro]

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Happy Birthday !

If you, your local library, and/or a friend, has a copy of Ned Robert's "The MUZZLE-LOADING Cap Lock Rifle", you'll find that the book is chock-full of paper patching details, besides a whole bunch of other pertinent muzzleloading rifle tidbits.

If you have to buy a copy, IMO you'll find it the best money you ever spent in the pursuit of your goal.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413JSmhSchL._AC_UL320_SR250,320_.jpg

.

[johnson1942]

i like your kind of questions as i love to do the math for a tack driveing rifle. in general if you have a true .41 cal and the bullet is 1 inch long the twist should be 1/22 if you have a bullet that is 1.2 long the twist should be 1/18. now the very best way to do this is get the bullet you want to shoot first and go from their as you can then build the perfect barrel around that bullet. as to depth of grooves. ive had both 5 thousands deep and 4 thousnads deep and they booth shot paperpatch very well. i found with the 5 thousands deep grooves the gun was more versatile. it shot cast bullet well also as well a over sized round balls tapped into the bore over a fiber 60 thousands thick wad. the gun is a .44 cal and has a 1/28 twist. why dont you figure out the very bullet you want to shoot and send me the length of it and i will give you by math the perfect twist for that bullet. now another route you could go as ive done this also and it also shoots as good as a paperpatched bullet is this. have the lands made narrow and the grooves wide and the grooves 6 thousands deep. then have the barrel made 3 inches longer than what you want. when the barrel is done have the 3 inches cut off and sent along with the barrel. put that 3 inch piece on a lathe and have a good machinest just take out the lands and no more for about 1 and 1/2 inches. now you can thread the out side of this piece to fit in your loading press. cast your bullet out of pure lead and lube them and then place them into this 1 and 1/2 part of the stube and useing the lever on the loading press and a wooded dowel push the bullet through the stub, this preingraves the the bullet. to shoot this bullet it is very easy to load. powder down the bore, followed by a fiber wad the place the base of the bullet on the muzzle and turn untill the bullet finds the lands and down it goes. really hard bullet cant be very hard to go down but pure lead goes down like butter and stayes their. you have to push the ramrod slower than you normally do as no air can get by the bullet and it has to bleed out the nipple or the bullet will spring back up the barrel as if their is a spring under it. this method shoots holes in holes. i had a gun built like this after reading a article about a calif shooter who did this method in the 1950/s. i also think their a a very very expensive modern inline sold on the internet that uses this method for thier guns. you could also shoot paperpatch in this gun with out difficulty , just make sure you use a fiber 60 thousands thick wad behind any bullet you use. again, figure out the bullet you want to use and send me the length and diam. and i will send you the perfect twist for it.

[Good Cheer]

The narrow land and five thou deep rifling with the engraving die made from a piece of the barrel is the tech that my forty bore Sheba gun is built around. The technique works well for what it is good for. For this rifle me thinks that the paper patching of .41 molds is going to be the goal. And of necessity, the twist will need to be fast enough for the heavier ones on hand such as the Ideal / Lyman 41028 and 410426 as well as the Lee 238 grain round nose and the 240 grain SWC. Probably wouldn't bother with the 41027 HBWC just because it's such a pain to cast... well, OK, yeah I would eventually :roll: just because it's there.
So a thirty inch twist would probably be plenty fast for those and certainly fast enough for the lighter weights. The biggie might just be trying to minimize the amount of expansion needed out of the paper patched boolit. And there in lies the real rub. Revolver molds are by their very nature of little mass in comparison to the bore diameter. The inertia that aids expansion (to fill the bore) is minimized and the I'm thinking that the rifling needs to be designed to lessen the effect that the low mass will have.

I have to take May Bell for a walk. She's chattering away, impatient for a romp about the property before the sun comes up.
Later.

[Good Cheer]

OK, she's happy. Her idea of fun is to play in the dark, listening in the deepest shadows, running up trees and dashing off to the next, digging down and perfuming mole runs... and I'm not complaining because she wants me to go with her. She's been a bud ever since I pulled her out of a debris pile in Bell County, Texas one May weekend years ago.

So, getting back to the concept, as with any firearm shooting boolits you design for the limiting factor which will in this case be the longest and not necessarily the heaviest pistol mold. Which reminds me there are two more molds I need to check.

[Good Cheer]

Here's some more .41 designs that I'd like to be able to use as well.

http://i791.photobucket.com/albums/yy192/SNARGLEFLERK/NEI%20.41s%20a_zpsaoux2kwn.jpg (http://s791.photobucket.com/user/SNARGLEFLERK/media/NEI%20.41s%20a_zpsaoux2kwn.jpg.html)

[Good Cheer]

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Happy Birthday !

If you, your local library, and/or a friend, has a copy of Ned Robert's "The MUZZLE-LOADING Cap Lock Rifle", you'll find that the book is chock-full of paper patching details, besides a whole bunch of other pertinent muzzleloading rifle tidbits.

If you have to buy a copy, IMO you'll find it the best money you ever spent in the pursuit of your goal.


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/413JSmhSchL._AC_UL320_SR250,320_.jpg

.


Haven't seen that book in forever and need it on the shelf... copy on order!