Hard or soft?

[Old and grey]

Hi, I’m a new member to the forum and fairly new to guns in general coming from the UK.

I shoot a Sharps 1874 Pedersoli predominately at 100 yards, using Swiss #3 2fg using a 530 grain Postell, 60-65 grain load with card wad, my question is what should be best for accuracy, hard cast or soft?

[Texas by God]

Welcome, this site is the place to be. Your question is outside of my experience, but someone will be along that knows pretty soon.

Sent from my SM-A716U using Tapatalk

[Stopsign32v]

I think a mod should move this to the holy smoke section

[mehavey]

Sharps 1874 Pedersoli predominately at 100 yards, using Swiss #3 2fg
using a 530 grain Postell, 60-65 grain load with card wad, my question
is what should be best for accuracy, hard cast or soft?

Dead Soft. Pure lead or 30-1 at most.

[charlie b]

I am assuming this is a .45-70. If so look in the Black Powder Cartridge section of the forum. You'll get tons more experience people there.

[Wayne Smith]

Sharps cast their bullets at 16-1, Remington cast theirs at 20-1 back in the day when they wiped out the bison. Seems as if that was both accurate and adequate.

[sd5782]

Go to the “single shot” sub forum. Lots of info and knowledgeable folks there.

[Rebel Dave]

Use pure lead, or as soft as you can get. You want the bullet to obturate into the groves as much as they can, for better accuracy.
Also use only black powder compatable lube, on the bullets. The trick is to have enough lube to keep the blackpowder fowling soft. Use beeswax based lubes.
Check out the Black Powder Cartridge Forum on this sight.

Dave