36 in a 45 bbl?

[TraprMike]

Has anybody ever shot a .36 RB out of a .45 cal rifle with any luck?

Just read on another board that someone wanted to do this for squirrel hunting this year. He was going to double or triple patch the ball.
this would save a lot of lead and powder if it works.

 

[M. De Land]

One could make a sabot of scored paper I suppose to shoot a sub caliber ball. It's done all the time with modern inline muzzle loaders. MD

 

[750k2]

It works - leather is thicker :hmm:

 

[BrownBear]

Got to the range one time with .490 balls rather than .530, and tried multiple patches rather than drive back home. It was a credible solution with pretty fair accuracy deer-wise, but I'm not so sure I'd rely on it for head shooting small game. There were a few unexplained fliers that wouldn't have been an issue for deer bodies, but would for bunny heads.

Tried it another time with .490 balls in a 58, this time looking for what might cut down on the fliers. Looked to me like the fewer patches I could get away with (i.e., the thicker the patches), the better the results. Guessing about future trials without actually doing it, I'd be looking to find soft leather the right thickness to allow single patch shooting.

 

[Rifleman1776]

It will shoot out but what kind of accuracy you will get is highly suspect.

 

[ohio ramrod]

I know for a fact you can double patch a 45 ball in a fifty with good results. I was on a trail shoot with a man who had a fifty and his ball bag had a rip and he lost his balls and he borrowed some 45 balls for his last five shots and hit them all. But going down to 36 in a 45 would be a lot larger step. But you could try it and see? :idunno:

 

[BrownBear]

...someone wanted to do this for squirrel hunting this year....save a lot of lead and powder....

Kinda begs the question WHY for me. Reduced powder can be used with the existing 45 cal balls for stellar accuracy if it's not a super slow twist, so there goes any savings for powder.

With a .350 ball weighing 60 grains and a .440 ball weighing 128 grains, you're talking 68 grains saved per shot. That's roughly a pound of lead or $2 per hundred shots fired. Unless a guy is using free patching material or cutting his own from cheap fabric, you're likely to eat up all the savings just in the extra patching for the smaller ball.

On the plus side, I use all my rifles from 30 cal up to 62 cal with reduced charges under standard balls for head shooting small game. Dandy.

Only real reason I could see for using the smaller ball in a 45 would be fore states that ban larger cals for small game. Then it would be a question of whether or not the bore size is the measurement used by Johnny Law, rather than the ball diameter. Question for the guy in uniform doing the measuring in the field.