Kodiak Fifty Doublegun

[Cosmoline]

I recently picked this pup up for a good price. Needed refinishing, a cleanup and some simple shimming and stock repair but it's turned out quite nice. I've searched the forum here for info but can only find threads on the larger bore Kodiaks. I'm hoping to shoot maxiballs with this, but the previous owner said it works best with a .44 cal XTP sabot.

I haven't done any BP shooting since a teen, but I'm experienced with smokeless. I'm looking for any input into good loads with these .50 cal double rifles. The sights will be replaced soon. I can't stand beads and buckhorns. I'll probably use an aperture of some kind in the back and a nice stout sourdough front for fast target acquisition. Thanks!

 

[F.G. Ford]

Fine looking rifle!
I've had a double .58 for years, great rifle, no problems, of any kind.
I have to be careful and not tighten the lock screws too much, or the main springs will bind on the wood.
My 58 shoots best, with round ball.
Old Ford

 

[Swampman]

I'd try a patched round ball. Very nice piece.

 

[twogunjay]

Sure is pretty! Let us know how she shoots.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Use real black powder, not the subs. If you are into " smokeless powder" you should have a chronograph. Use IT! With any double gun, you have to work up separate loads for each barrel. You have two different guns of the same caliber, mounted on the same stock, in effect. Don't think the same load is going to give the best accuracy in both barrels. Don't expect the barrels to be regulated to hit the same point of aim, with any load.

Google the gun on the net to see if there are any loads recommended by the factory.

I suggest starting by measuring the bores of both barrels, as well as the groove diameter. The Bore diameter is the distance from one land to another land opposite it. The Bore diameter will tell you what size ball( or bullet) will work in the barrels. They may be different! The Groove depth gives you an idea how thick a cloth patching material you will need to shoot well.

I recommend beginning with using a PRB in the barrels. Most .50s will shoot the .490 RB fairly well. Some shoot better with .495", or .500" balls. You want a ball that is at least .010" smaller in diameter than the bore diameter, for most purposes. Patch thickness has to be chosen with the understanding that a cloth patch compacts when wet, to less than half it dry thickness, so that if you have a groove that is .008" you are probably going to need a patch that is .018, or .020" thick to make the gun shoot well.

Invest $15.00 to buy Dutch Schoultz's Black Powder Accuracy System. Its well worth the money and will help you understand how to work up accurate loads for your rifle.
http://www.blackpowderrifleaccuracy.com/

I recommend using a RB over a bullet for starters, because it allows you to do a lot of shooting for a lot less money, and you do need to shoot this gun a lot to get to know its triggers, hammer fall, balance, and pointing characteristics. RB loads also tend to recoil less, and you don't need recoil when learning the gun.

Try a load of 50 grains of FFFg powder. This will probably not give you the most accuracy, but it will put you on paper at 25 yards, and at 50 yards. work up and down by 5 grain increments to find out what load seems to be the most accurate. Typically, you will find an accurate 50 yard load at 55-65 grains for a .50. Work with each barrel separately. Use separate targets so you don't confuse yourself as to which load works in which barrel. When you have the most accurate load for each barrel worked out, THEN you can attempt to see if you can get them to hit close to the same POA.

You indicate that you want to shoot Maxiballs out of this gun. Why? This is not a .50 caliber Sharps rifle, and never will be. You need to know what the rate of twist of the rifling is, before you try finding a conical bullet to fire in the barrels. The faster the twist of the rifling, the heavier a bullet can be fired, generally. But again, this is not a Sharps Buffalo gun. Its still a Black powder muzzle loading rifle. You get TWO shots, and then its going to take you time to reload the gun. How fast you can reload depends on you. I would not use such a gun to hunt dangerous game unless I had someone backing me up with a high powered rifle.

Penetration of live tissue depends more on the weight of a projectile than its velocity. Just do penetration testing with any bullet, using light and heavy loads to see what I mean. You don't get more penetration using MORE POWDER! You get it using a heavier bullet. With RBs, you can improve penetration a bit by casting the balls from an alloy of harder lead. Adding tin, or antimony, or both will reduce the ball's flattening on impact, giving better penetration, but at the sacrifice of a larger wound channel through the tissue that a flattening ball makes going through vital organs. Mind you, you still have a 1/2 inch hole going through the animal, but using a soft lead RB will create a much larger hole.If you are new to BP shooting, that is a difficult concept to accept, as it seems counter-intuitive to everything you have worked with using modern smokeless powder cartridges and jacketed bullets, fired at high velocity.

Best wishes. :thumbsup:

 

[Cosmoline]

I'm looking to conicals because the ROT on the .50 cal Cabela Kodiaks is listed as 1 in 24, which isn't roundball territory as I understand it. Still I expect to shoot them as plinkers. From info I've found so far people have best accuracy with these using very carefully calibrated maxiballs or sabots.

Not expecting to hunt anything dangerous with it. At most it would be for moose at woods ranges. Though I can think of worse things to carry for bear defense, it's a little heavy for use as a trail gun LOL Would be a heck of a workout though.

 

[paulvallandigham]

Ou should have no probem shooting RBs out of a 1:24 ROT barrel. You can't over stabilize a RB. You may have to reduce the velocity, or use a OP wad between the powder and PRB to insure proper gas seal if you choose to use more powder, but the gun will handle RB just fine.

As to using conicals, you will have your work cut out for you. It is much more difficult to zero each barrel with conicals of any type, than with RBs. If you can find reloading data for the .50-70 Black Powder cartridges, I would recommend using it, as a basis for not only choosing the right length of conical( and weight) but also the right powder charge.

You are not likely to be shooting much beyond 50 yards with a double gun. Most of the large Double rifles used in Africa were actually regulated to put their bullets to the same POI at 35 yards, not even 50 yards. For some reason, American prefer to zeror their DB rifles at 100 yds. IF you can get both barrels to strike within 4 inches of each other at 100 yds, you have an outstanding rifle. 6-8 inches is more likely what you should expect on your good days, from a rest.

You don't have to send the bullet out of the barrels at much more than 1100 fps( the speed of sound) to get both good accuracy, and more than adequate penetration with these large bullets.

I recommend using a flat based bullet, rather than a hollow base " minie ", and then use a OP wad to protect the base from being melted in the barrel by the powder. 50-70 grains of powder will be more than enough, if you use the longer bullets, in the 530 to 570 grain weight ranges. Any time you exceed one ounce in weight for a bullet, you have no longer any need to worry about penetrating an animal. One ounce= 437.5 grains.

By way of example, a couple of years ago, a writer in a gun magazine went to africa shooting a modern Marlin Molde 1895 lever action rifle in .45-70, using 430 gr. CorBon bullets. He killed two Cape Buffalo with one shot, when neither he nor his PH saw that another buffalo was standing behind the one he was aiming at. That is the kind of penetration you can expect to get with your conicals in this double gun, shooting cast lead alloy bullets. This is a percussion gun, so stick with FFFg Goex powder. If you don't want to use an OP wad, protect the base of your bullet with a filler, such as corn meal. About 50 grains by volume will fill the bore nicely and protect the bullet. The other benefit of fillers, or OP Wads is you get an increase in velocity, and the corn meal cleans the grooves of crud for you. Walter's Fiber Wads, makes a good .50 cal. wad, as does Circle Fly. Check the links here to find contact information.

 

[Bountyhunter]

http://davidepedersoli.com/pdf/BlackPowderLoads.pdf

The Word--according to the maker.

A couple of posters on other forums have mentioned that they had problems getting theirs to regulate and ended up getting the best luck with 450 gr bullets. Pay attention to the alloy in your bullets. Black powder and hard bullets do not mix. In our black powder cartridge loads, often going from a 1-20 tin lead alloy to 1-40 tin lead alloy is all it takes to bring it where you want it.

 

[Cosmoline]

Thanks for the input! Elsewhere I've seen FG loads. Is there any major difference with using FFG or finer? Or is that expressly for roundballs?

 

[paulvallandigham]

If you are going to hunt deer, the light Maxiball 360 grain bullet will work fine. for larger game, and because you live in Alaska, I am assuming your reason for buying a double rifle is to hunt something larger than deer, the slugs in the 400-550 weigh classes are more appropriate. I would not personally load anything heavier than 430 grains, myself, but that is based on my years of experience shooting heavy bullets in my .45-70, followed by some personal enlightenment doing exhaustive penetration comparison testing.

As to Fg and FFg powders, the larger granules burn slower, and produce less chamber pressure, and a less harsh recoil " bite ". You also won't get the velocity that you get shooting FFFg powder, unless you use substantially more powder. With the barrel length on that rifle, you are limited in how much powder will burn in the barrel efficiently, even shooting conical bullets. A 450 grain bullet in front of 70 grains of FFg will give you all the velocity and power you could posslby need. FFFg powder will burn a little faster, give more recoil, but usually leaves less residue in the barrel. Fg will leave more residue, produce much less velocity, and require more powder to reach similar velocities you can get with FFFg powder. Its hard enough with a fixed sight gun to zero in a load at a given velocity at a stated distance. Doing so with two different barrels magnifies the problems. Trying to reach the same results using different granules sizes of powder makes the who process much more complex. The only advantage of using the larger granule sized powder is that you will get less recoil for the same volume of powder. I doubt that the same volume of Fg will send the bullet to the same POI as you get from either FFg or FFFg powders. At least that is not my experience.

Yous should be aware that some .50 cal. barrels do better with FFg than with FFFg, and vice versa. You could end up using one powder in one barrel, and the other powder in the second barrel in order to get the two barrels to send the bullets to the same POI, using the same sights. I know of at least one owner of a double rifle who got so frustrated trying to get both barrels to shoot to the same point of aim, that he put separate sights on both barrels!, and adjusted each set of sights to the load for that barrel. I never saw him shoot the gun, and don't know how he saw down the barrel away from his face, but that was his solution! Go Figure. :hmm:

 

[Cosmoline]

This generation of Kodiak also uses the two sight solution. I'm really hoping I don't have to do it, esp. since my own expectations are low. I don't expect the barrels to work together all the way out to a C note. 50 yards would be more than fine.

If I do get slightly different POI with each barrel, I"m fine with it as long as they're close enough for lungs.

I guess I'll pick up some different powder grades as well to see what the rifle(s) like.

Not too worried about having to take awhile with it. If a firearm works well right away I get really bored with it and usually sell it off. I'm like that with women, too. So if you see this thing up for sale, that means it works *too* well and I want one with more troubles.

 

[torn moc]

I know it is late to jump in..But.'VERY NICE RIFLE
I know you could Not Resist...
let us know how she shoots!

 

[Cosmoline]

Thankee! I had to do some basic stock work on it but it cleaned up very nice. There was a crack inside the stock between the lockworks, in the thin part. It was minor though and a perfect job for flexible gorila glue since it's hidden. All in all a good buy for $250.

 

[alaskasmoker]

So your the culprit that got it. That guy had some good deals! Congrats on the score.

 

[Cosmoline]

You caught me! I don't know much about muzzleloading, but I know a deal when I see it.

 

[50cal.cliff]

A deal or a steal! :rotf: :rotf:
Congrats and good luck, she oughta be fun to shoot. You lucky stiff! :grin: What a deal!!!!!

 

[Cosmoline]

Ironically the BP rifle I really want is a Kentucky squirrel rifle with the long barrel.

 

[Cosmoline]

This long winter finally melted enough to let me take the doublegun for a spin. I put about 80 rounds through total, seeing how various conicals and PRB loads worked. The best seem to be 240 grain 45 cal sabots, which stayed in pretty good 2" bunch at 50 yards if I kept the charge moderate. The big 460 grain conicals put on quite a show but were highly variable with even five grains up or down. I think I need more info on how best to load these guys. PRB is by far the most fun to shoot. At 60 or more grain FFG the velocity is too great and the things skitter way high. My fast twist is causing troubles I suspect. But at 35 grains there appears to be a sweet spot that hits to the conical POA. This may be my squirrel load.

The right nipple had 100% ignition, but the left had a number of misfires at the start and at the end as the bore started to foul up with crud. I don't know if the nipple is the problem, since I could hear the things going off but it just didn't reach the charge.

The big problem was the range master kept calling cease fire after I had only shot the right barrel. I had to hold up the line several times as I cleared my left barrel. Nobody expects a second barrel on a smoke pole!

The loose end of the top rib presented zero problems. I just used some electrician's tape and it stayed put no problem. I will get around to sending it down for repair this summer, but it's completely functional as is.

Recoil was no problem at all. I'm used to capping off 200 or more rounds from Finnish Mosins at a sitting, and this 11 lb. beast absorbs a lot of recoil for me. Even with my hottest charge of the day 110 grain FFG behind a PRB, there was little recoil. Lots of smoke and noise, but not much recoil.

The big danger I can see from this double isn't having a round come off its load. I checked mine over and over and over again and nothing slipped off the powder even with max charges. The big danger is actually forgetting which barrel you charged and doing a double load. Care should be taken to cross check both barrels and make sure you didn't put both charges in one.

A nice solution might be to rig two loaders side by side so that you can pour BP for both barrels at once. I'll wager there used to be something just like that but it's been forgotten as these things were replaced by breach loaders.

Starting the rounds proved pretty tough esp as the day went on. I ran a spit patch through after every load but they still fowled up pretty bad after 40 rounds each. The big conicals were REALLY hard to seat and I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or not.

 

[paulvallandigham]

There is a technique to using a wet patch for cleaning between shots, and if you don't do this right, all you do is shove residue into the flash channel where it eventually plugs the gun up.

I use a hand over hand technique, when running a rod down the barrel. This keeps me from being too agressive, bending the rod, and breaking it, so one sharp end can go through my hand or wrist. When cleaning with a wet patch, I go down about a 1/4 of the barrel, then pull back on the rod a couple of inches to lock the patch in the grooves of the jag, then go down the second 1/4, pull back a couple of inches, to feel how much crud is loading the patch, then the 3rd 1/4, pull back, and then the last quareter, STOPPING an inch above the breechplug. With this first pass, the patch is full of gooey crud, and I don't want to shove that onto the breechface, or into the flash channels. I pull the rod out, and check the patch. If its too full of black goo, I throw it aside, and use a second clean patch, wetted at bit. On this stroke, I go all the way to the breechface, give the rod a couple of clockwise( right hand) turns to try to clean any residue off the breechface, and then pull it back out. I flip it over, and send the patch back down and pull out again. If the patch seems to wet on this second patch, I run a third, clean dry patch down the barrel to dry out any remaining moisture. Again, hand over hand going down, pull out in a long stroke.

Preping a percussion gun to shoot requires you to use a pipe cleaner, to clean out the flash channel, using alcohol on the pipe cleaner to dissolve grease and dried oils in the channel. Only when that channel is totally free of oil or grease is it ready to shoot. Skip this step, and you will have troubles after a few shots. Oils tend to gum up and leave tars as residues. These tars don't burn off or out. They clog up! You can fire off a dozen caps and they won't budge, or burn. Take the bottle of isopropyl, or rubbing alcohol in your range box to the range, with some pipe cleaners, too. And don't forget to take your nipple wrench with you.

 

[Cosmoline]

I used the pipe cleaners but they seemed to be jamming crud in the little hole where the sparks go. I feel like I'd have to remove the nipples or get something smaller to fit there.

I hadn't tried alcohol but I did notice my usual cleaners weren't doing to well against the black soot. Will residual alcohol cause and problems with ignition of the powder? I'll give it a try, esp since it costs about 1/20th what the smokeless bore solvents run.