Roundball accuracy

[Nuthatch]

Try running subsonic loads. Things get all funky when projectiles go transonic. Your trajectory will suffer, of course. But I'd venture a guess that it could tighten your groups.

 

[Nuthatch]

All I know is riflings were invented to improve accuracy?

I had read somewhere that rifling was invented to deal with fouling. Improving accuracy was a happy accident.

 

[Sam squanch]

Might seem like a dumb idea, I removed my barrel pins temporarily, and held the barrel on the stock with just snug zip ties. Helped me diagnose an accuracy problem.

 

[akroguy]

Each PRB pushed down swabs down the fouling from the previous shot....somewhat.

 

[hanshi]

Three shots is not adequate for working up a load. Groups should be 5 or10 shots to be effective.

You make a very good point and one I generally agree with. I test rifle loads by firing a minimum of 5 shots and often more. But the smoothbore is a different animal in my thinking. Mine has a rear sight, has taken deer and exhibits very good accuracy.

With a smoothbore I shoot 3-shot groups at 50 yards for accuracy testing. Why do I do this? I have no definitive answer as to why. My .62 is/was a hunting tool and as such I saw no point in treating it as if it were a rifle. But those three shots held under 3" consistently. This was with patched ball. Groups as small as 1.75" popped up from time to time. However this .62 has no "whippy" barrel, the tube is straight and solid.

I once fired a 50 yard group of, as I recall, 12 shots with patched ball. Normally a .600" ball is used but as it would happen I had a supply of .606" ball. There were two wild fliers but the other 10 shots went into 2.5", not possible on demand obviously. Even back then that was much better than I could shoot. Bare ball loads generally were in the 4" ave. when shot with the larger ball. Forgive my heresy on this one point as I agree with 5+ shots being standard for me with rifles.

 

[oldwood]

Secret to grease lubes , and tallow lubes , is scrape any excess off the patch , with finger , before loading.

 

[HSmithTX]

Lot's of guys test themselves far more than their rifle shooting 5-10+ shot groups. Not that it isn't valuable information, it absolutely is, but if you aren't one hole capable with the system you are using you are likely learning a lot more about the system than the rifle and what it wants. For me, I want to know how far the bullets/ball landed from where the sights were when the gun fired, even from a bench.

 

[Zutt-man]

@Ballshooter has shown some outstanding groups with his smoothie

 

[bigted]

Has anybody had a 1 inch ocagon barrel bored to 62 cal smoothly? Just wondering if the ridgity helped. Also has anybody had the same 1 inch barrel bored to 58 smoothly and the same question,?

 

[tenngun]

I had read somewhere that rifling was invented to deal with fouling. Improving accuracy was a happy accident.

I’ve read this also, bit of serendipity.
I wonder about its validity however. Fletching arrows and possibly atl-atl darts before that was well known at least to dawn of civilization and by pre civilized people around the world
Waiting for Musk to invent a Time Machine cause I got questions

 

[Relic shooter]

i built nw trade guns for the green river forge in the 70's we used 30" sharon barrel 62cal. most popular load 60grains 2f .600 round ball and 10thou. patch. the guns we built were shipped all over the world and won shoots every where. sharon barrles are very stiff and stout. i believe that short stiff barrels is the way to go if you want accuracy. this just my opinion and you know what they say about opinions.

When I had my ML shop in Idaho Falls back in the 60s-70s I also used Sharon barrels & his Hawken components along with Les Bauska's barrels as well.
Sharon supplied
I'm also a fan of short barreled rifles for hunting & competition.
Relic shooter

 

[Relic shooter]

Has anybody had a 1 inch ocagon barrel bored to 62 cal smoothly? Just wondering if the ridgity helped. Also has anybody had the same 1 inch barrel bored to 58 smoothly and the same question,?

Forum member Chorizo has considerable recent experience on this subject, might check with him.
We're acquainted I'll ask him to page-in on this link.
Relic shooter

 

[Nuthatch]

I’ve read this also, bit of serendipity.
I wonder about its validity however. Fletching arrows and possibly atl-atl darts before that was well known at least to dawn of civilization and by pre civilized people around the world
Waiting for Musk to invent a Time Machine cause I got questions

Good point. Never thought of that.

Still seems plausible if just because they may not have been looking for better accuracy when they found it. After all, it took a while before rifling was even adopted by militaries even after they knew that they were more accurate. But fouling is always a problem.

I'm sure somebody on this forum has some historical on the matter. All the same, your point is certainly well-taken.

 

[Relic shooter]

Ted,
I ran into this problem a few years ago with my in-line. I could hit No more than three shots on paper at 100 yards. Spoke to a buddy of mine who is an avid bp guy and he advised that I swab my barrel after every other shot. I tried that and can now consistently hit 6” groupings at 100 yards. My barrel is riffled so there are differences but the concept is still the same; remove the powder fouling so that the bullet has a clean surface to travel down. Good Luck!
Jeff

When I started shooting rifled muzzleloaders about 6 decades ago I was having some accuracy issues as almost 100% of the factory barrels had very shallow rifling. To get any kind of tight groups the ball needed to be almost bore size along with a tight weave cotton lubed patch & a mallet to get it seated.
When I started collecting & shooting original muzzleloaders with much deeper rifling & faster twists that I found in Jaegers obtaining excellent accuracy became a snap & loading was easier. Accuracy was also better when I started building guns with custom barrels that had deeper rifling & cut twists I preferred.
This statement may draw some debate but the original Hawken rifles I've examined had 1 in 48" rate of twist & as I recall the rifling was around .012 deep.
If you have a rifle or pistol you really like but has accuracy issues, maybe worth sending it to someone like Hoyt or ? to get it re-cut or re-lined.
Relic shooter

 

[chorizo]

Huge fan of short ridged barrels in my modern guns with suppressors and my ML guns. I have no experience with RB shooting and even less with target shooting ML. My preference for short barrels is to have a light weight maneuverable hunting gun, not a target gun

As far as REPEATABLE accuracy, the right combination of bullet, twist, powder AND using the same loading procedures, same cleaning procedures, same placement of the gun on the rests, same head/face/cheek weld and giving the gun adequate time between shots to cool are all important.

However, after reading through all of this, I tend to agree with Comfortably Numb. What you have is a lube issue that is causing fouling to throw your shots off. I believe Relic Shooter is on the right track as the deeper grooves were designed to deal with fouling and skipping lands. As fouling builds, the shallow grooves fill up and will cause the bullet to not engage adequately. I suspect even more so on a ball. Hence your issue after a couple of shots. Fouling also affects the amount of effort to seat the ball and tends to compress your powder load incrementally more each time you load as resistance builds. More compression of your powder typically causes a large jump in one direction or another of pressure and POI. During recent velocity tests I saw an almost 85 fps jump in MV because I hard seated a conical on a powder load after the it hung up on fouling and a rough spot in the bore.

Try cleaning the bore well between each shot to replicate the first shot each time and see what that does for you. That will tell you fairly quickly if it is fouling or not.

3 or 5 shots? If you are shooting "first round" strings, what I call a cold, clean bore shot (like what you do hunting..the first shot is the most important shot)...and to replicate that you are thoroughly cleaning between shots, letting the gun rest and cool, then firing your next shot using the same loading procedures as the first, 3 round strings are adequate. If you are trying to replicate target shooting strings with just a swab or none between, 5 shot minimum.

 

[chorizo]

Let me also add the following. I read and I believe it is in Ned Roberts' book but for the life of me I can't find it in there to quote so don't take this as if he said it, but:

For a bullet, be it ball or conical, it needs at least 1/2 turn of the twist rate IN THE BARREL to impart the stability and RPM needed to make a bullet accurate.....1:66 = 33 in; 1:48 = 24 in; 1:38 = 19 in; 1:32 = 16 in assuming you are having close to 100% burn rate of the powder before the bullet leaves the muzzle That was measured from where the bullet sits in the barrel to the muzzle.

Kind of seems to fit traditional barrel lengths and twist rates, no?

 

[tenngun]

Good point. Never thought of that.

Still seems plausible if just because they may not have been looking for better accuracy when they found it. After all, it took a while before rifling was even adopted by militaries even after they knew that they were more accurate. But fouling is always a problem.

I'm sure somebody on this forum has some historical on the matter. All the same, your point is certainly well-taken.

Accuracy in military wasn’t the problem. Late sixteenth and much of the seventeenth century there was a premium on accuracy. Heavy guns with rest and rear sights, often tubular for best sight picture were the mainstay, supported by pikeman.
They went the other way to have high rate of fire.
Even after the revolution, when most European armies adopted some sort of rifle corps, we see Napoleon dropping the rifle corp in favor of all musket armed troops.
Until the conical design rifle troops, even with accuracy was disadvantaged fighting musket troops. They could only hold their own or win the battle under very specific conditions.
Kings Mountian was carried by topography, the over mountain men would have been slaughtered had the met Ferguson on open battle fields.
New Orleans thirty some years later was, for all the songs of them Kentucky rifles, most of the troops were shooting smoothies as their rifles were at the bottom of the Mississippi

 

[bigted]

Thanks fella's. Guess I have some work to do before exploring the light barrel versus rigid barrel theory.

First off I will build a lube of 2/3rds tallow 1 part bee wax.

Following this test with loading followed by swabbibg and drying the bore with every shot.

Followed with removing my barrel pins to basically free float the barrel to discover if one of the pins exert pressure on the barrel

Followed by thorough cleaning and cooling between shot to return to a "first cold bore shot" every time.

Thank you for the suggestions and advise. Soon as I get some dryer weather I will get to the range with it and comence experiment with these suggestions.

 

[Ballshooter]

Try some corn meal. Powder thin shot card 45 grains of corn meal, thin shot card ,bare ball thin shot card.
I have been doing powder, corn meal right on top of the powder, thin shot card ,ball and a 1/2 well soaked felt wad on top or just a thin shot card to keep the ball from moving.

 

[bigted]

I see the possibility of improvement in accuracy with the cornmeal, keeping the fire off the ball , either bare or patched.

What puzzles me however is the 1/2 soaked felt wad over the ball. Kinda see it with shot (Skycheif load) but wondering what happens with that feltwad over a ball?

Not saying I don't believe you, just seeking to understand.

Ted