Duane,
I always soothe myself saying that it is a ''converted'' smoothbore and I wont get target shooting accuracy out of it like the guys with their .45 pennsylvanias and whatnot, but than again comes the logical thinking. Its a rifle with a rear and front sight, it has rifling and good bullets and good powder. If the soldiers back than hit so bad with the rifles they would have re-issued their smooth bores as I shoot the rifle not better than a smoothbore without rifling and sights. Hitting a man at 100yds with that kind of accuracy would be a 70/30 situation and for any rifled long gun that was used on a battlefield thats totally inacceptable. If I would get that kind of accuracy at 100yds with standing position I would be a happy man, but I would have to get twice as accurate to shoot that good as the targets I posted here are 50yd targets from th bench. :surrender:
and even with only 65 gr of Swiss 3F you're getting thumped at the bench which causes a flinch
65 grain of 3FG isnt so bad at all, its not my first big-bore rifle so I dont think I flinch much at all, with 65 grain 3FG I get the kick of a .300 winchester Magnum out of a heavy rifle, and I can shoot my .300 hole-in hole all day long. Pain really starts at 90 grain 3FG when bullets go well over the sonic barrier, recoil is worse than I hanything I have ever shot - unfortunately its the best load for accuracy so far, it makes a fist-sized groups at 50.
. I'd be interested to know when in the series of shots with the 70gr 2F load, the keyholes showed up.
The target I linked here was shot with 70 grain swiss 3FG out of a perfectly clean rifle, if you look closely you'll see that all bullets keyholed, some just endet up pretty straight at the target but still made conical holes.
I beleive you have a lube issue, and or not enough lube or wrong kind of lube.kjg
KJG,
as lube I use 50% beeswax and 50% tallow for my conicals, maybe a bit more tallow to keep things soft, I always dip the whole bullets into the lube to get a thin coat of lube all over the surface of the bullet EXCEPT its base. I never thought that it is a good idea to stuff the base up with lube, I think blowing the skirt into the rifling with the base filled up with lube would delay expanding and accuracy would be pretty bad. I never tested it though. I tried different lubes, especially softer lubes like hand cremes mixed with beeswax and tallow with a lot of fat and water but it wasnt any better or worse so I stay with the beeswax/tallow mix. Fouling is lowest with the tallow/beeswax lube. 50/50 talow and beeswax was, as far as I know the original standart used when the rifles hit the battlefield.
I tried to keep as close to the history as possible, I use the same bullet design and weight, I handle the rifle like the soldier did back then, I even used the same load of powder to be as close as possible to the original battlefield performance of this rifle. But no luck at all
The fouling could in part be caused by blow by from the first shots out of a clean barrel, which is not totally unavoidable with a minie. You can minimize it by giving the minie a few short raps with the rod when you seat it, to flare the skirt
I always seat them with a few raps, I read a lot of that technique here and copied it. Although it does not seem to make much difference at all - but you cant do too much good.
The variable here is that you don't know with certainty what your bore size is.
Yes, I have to admit that I dont know what the bore size is, BUT it must be under .690 since the .691 conicals were quiet too big. I think the bore is .687 or .688 since the .685 minies fit very well even with a bit of fouling and the .69's are way too big. IMO conicals .003 undersized like I have should be ideal. But I'll let the bore measured by a gunsmith anyway. You never cant be too sure, especially with a muzzle loader. :hmm:
