best group at 100 yards

[Eterry]

That group was out of a 1st Gen (Birmingham) PH. Bullet was RCBS Hogdon cast pure lead, sized to bore. Mold drops just over .579 and I sized to .575. Lube was lard/beeswax. Minies were weighed and visually inspected. Seating during loading was one firm stroke, none of thar ramrod pounding stuff. All ramrod pounding does is deform the nose and screw up aerodynamics and accuracy. Powder charge was 43g 3f Old Eynsford. Powder quality matters. Best powders are probably Swiss and Old E.

Let me be more clear... NO WHERE did i say POUND, HAMMER, SLAM, BEAT, or otherwise DEFORM the minie.
I saw a guy use bathroom scales, setting the musket on it, then using a loading rod with a tip matching his minie ball he seated the minie to a prescribed number of pounds... like the old shotshell reloading press did with wad pressure. IDK if it was the uniform pressure, his minie balls, or the phrase of the moon... but...
The size of his groups made all doubters true believers.

 

[dave951]

Uniform pressure is key. I mentioned the thing with the ramrod cause I've seen guys use it like a jack hammer to seat a minie and then make excuses as to why it didn't shoot well. A couple of them are on Utube with reenactors propagating that myth. Also filling the base is a sure fire way to causing problems. I've dug quite a few out of the berm with bases filled with crisco.

A while back, I read a thread in an old black powder forum where the author was talking about how the change in the crisco formula caused a loss of accuracy. I decided to test that theory out since I'd been shooting crisco all along. Bought a new crisco and a new unsalted lard from grocery. Head to head, crisco lost and that was the final step in getting the musketoon and PH shooting as well as they do now.

 

[jdw276]

Shot yesterday off a bench, 75 yards. Working on a load and filing fixed sights to make a rifle. Rifle specs. 58 green mountain barrel, durs egg left hand flintlock, davis trigger. Need to settle on a load and try 100 yards. No way am i doing off hand. I would not even hit paper. Ignore the bottom row of bulls. That gun blew up the patches.

 

[biliff]

Upper picture is back when I was adjusting sights on my .54 Mortimer, trying to get the fixed and leaf sights where I wanted them hitting. Three shot cluster at 50 yds was 1/2" CTC and 100 yd group was 2 3/4" CTC which turns out to be pretty typical for this rifle from a bench given ideal conditions. Bottom picture is a recent offhand 50 yd group (we were using a 100yd NMLRA target) using my .58 flintlock with three of five touching in the X ring. Probably as good as I'm ever going to get offhand.

 

[Sparkitoff]

I went to the range with 2 unfired rifles on Saturday. There was a steady 12-15 MPH left to right wind that was something to contend with. The first rifle is a flintlock I received in the mail literally that morning. It was made for me from a barrel and lock that I sent to the maker. I loaded what I consider a versatile load - 80 grains FFFg Goex, .018 pillow tick patch cut at muzzle, 7:1 water/ballistol dry lubed, .530 swaged ball, 1.5 grains FFFFg Goex prime in the pan. In order to save time (or waste it) I started at 75-yards. Luck was on my side, the first shot hit the edge of the 9 and 10 ring at 1 O'clock. I swabbed between shots with alcohol and put 5-shots into an inch and a half. I made one sight adjustment and put 3-shots into an inch at 1 O'clock on the red bullseye circle. I left it shooting slightly right due to the wind. I then fired 2 shots at 100-yards. They were even spaced one-inch apart starting on the bullseye at 3 O'clock and continuing vertically to the right. I was trying to get my shot off when the wind seemed to ease up but considering it never quit entirely a 3" horizontal group is great.

I took out the second rifle, this one a percussion that I actually purchased in November but had never shot. I loaded 80 grains 777, FFFg, .018 as above with same ball. Used Remington #11 percussion cap. There was a slight break in the wind when I lined up the sights. First shot was in the red bullseye. I did not swab between shots with this rifle. I was pressed for time and I wanted to know if the Triple 7 would get hard to load after a handful of shots. The wind picked up again but I put 5-shots into 2.5" from 12 O'clock to 2:30 on the 10/9 rings line. I loaded one more and shot 100-yards. It hit in the red bulleye circle. That's all I needed to see. I packed up and will be taking these two rifles hunting this weekend. Without the wind I am certain these rifles will shoot 1" groups at 50-yards and not more than 2.5" groups at 100-yards if I load carefully and do my part right.

 

[THBailey]

That's some good shooting right there! We Hunt Mule deer out west in the wide open sagebrush country, so we sight in at 150 yards. This was at the Sac Valley Shooting Center 300 yard public range last year, confirming zero just before my son Mike and I headed to our hunt in Utah. Warm morning, light breeze. "Dad's" is my TC Black Mountain Magnum, "Mike's" is a TC with a replacement Green Mountain LRH barrel. Both are 50 cal and using 300gr unmentionable sub-caliber projectiles over 100gr Goex 2f. Cleaned between each shot.

 

[hanshi]

Although not in the same class as some of these targets, I did some pretty good shooting - for me, that is - 3 or 4 years ago at a bit over 80 yards with my .36 SMR flintlock. The targets were plastic soda bottles and the load was 20 grains of 3F, a .350" ball patched with mattress ticking & Hoppes BP Lube. A couple of shots were fired to gauge elevation to start with. Then I shot, loaded, shot etc, over and over; consistently hitting the bottles. With my eye problem being worse, now, I doubt I could do quite that well.