All I plan on doing is hunting and reenacting with it so I guess RB is best?
Sez it all. In the museums I have visited 1:48" is the nearly 100% dominant twist. It is my preferred twist with 1:56" not far off. I once had a .54 Jaeger with a 1:72" twist. To get a 'sweet spot' for good groups required charges north of 120 gr. It was a real shoulder buster and not fun to shoot.
Probably nothing more difficult to correct than roundballs that keyhole.
I think so, but full disclosure, that's my opinion. Roundballs have less mass being a sphere rather than a conical, and do an amazing amount of damage, so you get less recoil, but the desired result on deer. With a properly worked up load it's very accurate. A roundball's ballistic coefficient is crap-tastic, and it sheds energy very quickly over the distance of 150 -200 yards, which most people think is a negative. BUT..., where I hunt, the hunting zones are small, and surrounded by dwelling areas, so for me the fact that the patched RB at the MV of my rifle isn't going any farther than 200 yards due to the height above the ground and my shooting position, is a great thing. This also means that I must be good at getting close to the deer, or getting the deer to come close to me, and I only hunt from a "ground blind"..., and that's a fancy way of saying that I find a tree or two to break up my outline, and stand their hoping a deer will wander past.
My favorite rifle is a .54 cal. Ithaca Hawkin it has a 1in66 twist rifling and is accurate . I have mentioned this before that It will shoot a round ball with devastating accuracy.I haven't shot past and 200 hundred yards and 90% of the time I can keep a 6 inch group . When shooting at 100 yards I have shot one oval hole with three shots. That is the best target so far. The sights are the buck horn type that came on the rifle. These muzzle loaders will shoot very well once you learn what to do. I use 80 grains of powder and prelubed store bought patches with a .530 store bought balls. Ironically it is what the company reccomended. "If it ain't broke don't fix it"!
You are the first person that shoots the way I do. I am sure there are others that I may have missed that posted the same method. You use 55Grain at 50 yards I use 60 grains is the only difference and like you said hold dead on at both distances. It takes the guess work out of the equation.
I tried coreecting my RB keyholing. Tried different loads, patch thicknesses and finally had a someone cast me up custom diameter balls. Nothing worked. Them I started using Maxis and the keyholing went away. Problem solved.
