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Needing boolit advice for new .45 Colt Rolling Block carbine
I recently acquired a beautiful little Pedersoli rolling block carbine in .45 Colt. It appears brand new, with added front and rear sights. The Pedersoli Soule tang sight seems perfectly adequate for those 900 yard shots and the front sight has more than a dozen inserts. I don't expect to use this little guy for anything over 100 yards. Thus I removed the Soule and hope to replace it with a small tang sight. I checked with Lyman and they don't have a sight that will fit. Any suggestions and help on this would be greatly appreciated.
I made it to my range last week and fired my first handloads at 50 and 100 yards. The load was 9.0 Unique with a 200 gr. Acme cast boolit. At 50 yards it made 3-4 inch 5-shot groups. At 100 yards groups grew to 12". I shot some 225 JHP with the same load and similar results. Definitely not the results I was hoping for. My 1866 .45 Colt Uberti carbine with the same loads was making 1 1/2" -2" at 50 and 4-5" at 100 yards. I obviously plan to work with additional loads, but where to start? Heavier boolits? Hotter loads? (with 9.0 Unique cases were not obturating and I was getting leakage to the face). Your suggestions would be most welcome and appreciated.
Here are photos of the carbine. I think you'll agree it's nice!
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Progress with the .45 Colt Rolling Block Carbine
Thanks to all of your suggestions and good advice, I had a better day at the range with my .45 Colt rolling block carbine. I braved the 35 degree cold and plowed a trail into my shooting range. I had dug up some 320 grain cast gas check boolits sized .457" as well as some 300 grain JSP .457". I loaded the 320s with 14.0 grains of AA 5744 and the 300s with 8.3 grains of Unique. Velocity with the 320s was 935 fps and the 300s with Unique was 988 fps. Sights are rudimentary!
As a result, the groups shot at 50 yards shrank from the 4"-5" I got with 9.0 Unique and 200 and 225 grain cast bullets a couple of weeks ago. Here's what they looked like today. It sure seems that the much heavier boolits sized .457" versus the lighter .452" and .454" made all the difference. Thanks again for your help!
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