GTA
All Springer/NP/PCP Air Gun Discussion General => Back Room => Topic started by: RedFeather on February 13, 2011, 08:30:04 PM
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I've been debating a T/C Hawken muzzle loader I saw at a gun show this weekend. It's a .50 and I'm recoil sensitive, so I asked over on MuzzleLoadingForum.com what might be good plinking/short target loads? Recommended fifty grains powder with a .490, 177 grain round ball. Should kick out at about 1350 fps. Now, that's a target load, not a hunting load which, with ball, runs about seventy grains. Not even talking about conicals. But, if you talk to the Big Bore crowd, it's enough to take down a rogue elephant. How come those old style charcoal burners like this T/C are just so much weaker than them thar air riffles? Is it the powder and smoke? Must be something. I is all cornfuzedicated now.
Oh, and I did go to the Black side.....black powder, that is. Yep, brought my little Valentine home with me. She's curled up under the couch until I can get her by my other Valentine. If unsuccessful, the recoil from THAT is gonna hurt! :-)
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Hey RedFeather, congrats on your new purchase and good luck on sneaking it in. ;D . I'd say they are dead on with the powder measurements for light loads. I use 100grains for deer hunting with a 50cal,and am still 50 grains behind what many now use. Your going to find that they barely kick with 50gr. plus its a nice small game or target load. Quieter too. I'm thinking more like 800-900fps with 50gr. and the 177gr. ball. About the highend equivalent of a worked 909. Blackpowder is much more powerful than any AG for sure. Think about them poor bufflers. J
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100 out of a Hawken? God bless your poor shoulder. Don't go for the 150. (Three pellets?) Absolutely unnecessarily in a .50. Consider that this is more powder than many big game black powder express rifles such as the 450 BPE. Unless you want to try to make it rain (pain, that is) with that extra powder, stick to 100 or less. Deer certainly won't know the difference. Make smoke. Stay safe.
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lol no i would never do 150 without an inline to take advantage of it. They are the only guns rated for that much anyways. when we use 100grain loads of pyrodex, i am generally using a saboted 240gr. slug. For target shooting 70-90 is the norm but i know several guys that use 50-60gr. as small game loads. These are subsonic judging by the sound. Very little kick and possibly even more accurate, J
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Red, if you are just getting into charcoal burners, the first thing you HAVE to do is get a copy of Lyman Blackpowder Reloading Manual. It is THE bible for BP. It goes into great depth on almost every aspect of shooting ML's. Stuff like; Bbl twist, powders, projectiles, patching, loading data etc....
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Lyman .54 Great Plains Rifle. 110g FFF, 238g .535 RB, .015" pillow tick patch.= 1950 fps.
If I was using FF, would have to use about 160g. Less powder=Less fouling. The Lyman BP manual shows extensive testing on the advantages of using FFF over FF in .54 cal and under.
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Ah, you young fellers. In-lines......less weight than a traditional styled gun. BTW, most T/C's will take 150 grains, no problem. A 150 load in the in-line is just so much overkill. Try some loose powder. People buy in-lines and try to duplicate their centerfires when old school lead balls and slugs at seemingly modest velocities will kill anything on the North American continent and do it in spades. Pellets are really a bane for many new shooters. Some guy recommends 100 or 150 grains (burn more pellets = more profits) and the nimrod goes forth to sight in the gun, traumatizing hisself on the bench, gun hardly zeroed and not shooting to its full potential. Start with a medium loose powder load for the bore/bullet and work up in 5 grain increments. Doesn't just work for old style guns. The 450 BPE used 120 grains under a 300 - 350 bullet and was considered a good big cat gun. Not tabby cats but lions and tigers and bears, oh my! And those doubles packed some weight, too, to handle the recoil. I doubt a deer really requires 150 grains to put it down. Maybe the third deer in line, but not the first two. :-) (Don't mind me. I'm old.)
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Used to shoot a .54 growing up at 110g ff spit soaked white and blue pillow patch.
I loved to hear the hiss and then the gong target twang when hit.
Thanks for the memories lol
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Red, gotta figure in the twist of the bbl. Mine is 1/60. RB only .Most T/C's are 1/48. Run a RB with 150g behind it and it will shred the patch and sending the ball who knows where.
The 1/48 is a compromise twist. Shoots both ball and bullet. Not real good for either.
If you want to shoot ball, get 1/60-1/66 twist. Bullets, 1/28-1/32.
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Yote, been into and out of the black since around 1973. This T/C has the 1:48 and will be used mostly for plinking. (Don't hunt.) I doubt it will ever see more than 70 grains, tops. You guys can have fun with your heavy loads. I'll just kill paper. BTW, try backing those big boys down and you will see that they still have power aplenty. Cheaper to shoot, too. Guess next thing will be to rejoin the NMLRA. And go to the North South Skirmish Association nationals at Ft. Shenandoah this May. Something I've put off for too long. Well, suppose I'll be selling these puny air guns now. Stay tuned.
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My 54 likes 60-70g of FFF for plinking. I have found that with 1/48, if your shooting ball, you have to keep charges mellow so the ball doesn't strip the rifling. Bullets on the other hand, have to be run pretty much full throttle for good stability. Thinking about getting the Great Plains "Hunter" 1/32 bbl for mine. I have a lyman mold for the Civil War Minne bullet. That should tip over the deer and bear pretty good.
P.S Red, remember that my Great Plains weighs 9.5 lbs. soaks up a lot of recoil. Full power RB's is like a 12ga 2-3/4" heavy game load.
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hehe
Years ago, while we were still in high school, my brothers and I took our Dad's brand new Thompson/Center Renegade .54 caliber out to adjust the iron sights for deer season.
We loaded it up with the full ounce Maxi Balls backed with 90 grains of Pyrodex until it was hitting the paper (roughly 2" @ 50 yards is not too shabby for Patridge style iron sights only) consistently.
My younger brother worked up the nerve to ask for the maximum charge recommended by T/C, 120 grains behind the Maxi Ball.
Keep in mind here that the Renegade has no recoil pad at all, only a wide solid steel butt plate.
He squeezed the trigger, and when the huge cloud of smoke cleared, we could see he was knocked backward about four feet, and his glasses were hanging below his chin, barely dangling from his right ear.
Trying to sound undaunted, he said "That wasn't all that bad."
The rest of us almost fell on the ground laughing.
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Yep, those iron/brass buttplates do bite. I've never been able to mount a Great Plains rifle comfortably. That toe is so long and sharp. Know they are designed to be shot off the upper arm. (There's a fellow who once posted that today's shooters don't understand the old style stocks as a result of so many men being trained to shoot service rifles during WWI and those you snug into the shoulder.) On the fast twist for the Lyman, is your CW minnie like a .54 version of the standard .58? How thick is the skirt? Might limit your charges.
My favorite pictures of someone experiencing heavy recoil were of a Brit collector who had sold a .577 NE double but said he wanted to shoot it as part of the deal. And shoot it he did. Knocked his glasses off and he was bleeding from one ear. Guess he forgot to brace himself. :-)
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There are several YouTube clips of guys firing four bore rifles, and they show how to do it without getting the absolute bejabbers knocked out of themselves in the process.
They shoot offhand stand with one leg well behind the other, with their feet forming a kind of modified rocker.
That makes the recoil make their entire body able to absorb the recoil by rolling back on their aft foot.
These guys really know what they're doing with rifles throwing a minimum of four ounces of lead.
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Buddy at work had a big Ruger .458 bolt action. He snapped a picture of his brother firing it and caught him rolling back on one foot, the other up in the air and the barrel at about a forty-five degree angle. Said it was just a bit too much to shoot comfortably. (He also had a Barrett light .50, so he was no stranger to the really big bores.)
Four bores are in the Serious Hurt department. Everybody fancies themselves Frederick Selous. (Do they shoot the same loads as he did?) Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia regarding his gun "Baby" -
Early in his hunting career, in the mid 1870s, Selous favoured a four bore black powder muzzleloader for killing elephant, a 13 lbs short barreled musket firing a quarter pound bullet with as much as 20 drams (540 grains) of black powder, one of the largest hunting caliber fabricated, literally a small hand cannon. He could wield it even from horseback. Between 1874 and 1876 he slew exactly seventy-eight elephants with that gun, but eventually there was a double loading incident together with other recoil problems from it, and he finally gave it up as too "upsetting my nerve".
Can you imagine a double load in that thang? I read that once it recoiled so severely the hammer spur embedded into the bridge of his nose. Might have been that. And he called that fun.
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I'm still just a young'in i guess. i love my muzzleloaders that i had and those that i still have. i have killed deer with the " Old School " hawkins with patch and ball and i don't mean the replica kit from cabelas this thing was twice as old as my father. now a days i reach for the .54 knight inline loaded to 150 grain hurling a 320 grain blistic tip sabot this thing will seperate the men from the boys for sure. not an animal in my kingdom has walked away from that even when you just graze them.
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You'll be old one day. Those snappy sinews won't feel quite so elastic. And, although your ma-durned muzzle loader might be a death ray, my old loopy Zouave with a standard .58 Minie load will take about anything this side of Nairobi.
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Red, that Minne mold that I have is the 54 cal 425gr hollow base. Should be good for anything that walks on this Continent.
P.S. Just got my Lyman tang sight for it.
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Watch your skirts if you run heavy loads. While blowout's not so bad as might be thought, it can drop your accuracy some. Have fun with that. BTW, I was looking at a Great Plains with a GM long range hunter barrel. The first half inch or so looked like it was counter-bored. Don't know if that's how they come or someone did it afterwards. The seller was none too knowledgeable about it. I have a T/C Black Powder Express that was made up for Gander Mt some years back and it has a 1:38 .50 barrel, 32". Need to shoot that one, too. Fellow I got it from said he used to win the egg shoot with it using 50 grains. Jeez, I've put this stuff off for too long.
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Red, if you want to have some cheap shooting fun, shoot my Dixie Gun Works 32 cal Tennessee Rifle with 42" bbl. From the bench, if you are doing your part it will take pennies at 75 yds. After you set the trigger, 6oz later Boom. Many a critter has fallen to its wrath. You should get a .32, .36 or .40 for "egg" shooting. Economical shooting fun. (easy on the tired old bones too).
P.S. isn't .36 legal for Turkey in VA ??
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Red Feather.. your not a onetime B.S.A. (Boy Scout)Range officer who taught in N.C. in the summers of 86 and 87 are you? William Smith was his name and i was his assistant. He was a lifer in the Navy and had seved in the Army in VN before that. Some of the guns you've mentioned he had as well, he was a blackpowder fanatic, mostly into flintlocks. His zouave was one of the hardest guns to learn to shoot that i've ever held. A huge flash, the lag time, resulting flinch and the slow steady recoil that only a big heavy musket can replicate. He could put out matches with it on our rimfire range. Guess who was lighting them and running? His Brown Bess was about the same but it was a bigger caliber... either .68 or .70 i can't remember. These are the guns that taught me that blackpowder doesn't kick near as bad as smokeless magnums or even heavy shotshell loads. I think it's the smoke, the flash and the noise that gives the impression they are harder kickers than they really are. Just my opinion of course. J
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I guess I am underguned with my puny little .45 cal CVA Mountain Rifle, but it has taken a few deer.
Gary
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Nope, the "RedFeather" moniker is actually from Indian Guides, not Boy Sprouts. Gary, you will never be under-gunned with that .45 Mountain Rifle. In fact, my reason for going to the show where I picked up my T/C was to see if a seller had returned with one of those. Real nice, early kit gun. Does your patch box have two screws at the top or one? If two, you have a made in USA gun with a Douglas barrel. Great shooters. The later guns, as well. I think it was CVA's very best gun. No, the seller never showed. (Also had a circa 1902 H&A .22 rifle I was interested in.)
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Red, what a blast from the past!! YMCA Indian guides! My Dad was Red Fox. I was Little Red Fox. A lot of good times.
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Little Red Fox,
Great minds think alike.
RedFeather
Blackfoot Tribe
Fair Oaks Lodge
Occoquan Nation
Virginia
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Red, not sure what is meant by the two screws at the top. Mine has 4 screws total. One at the point , closest to the breech ,then two about an inch back from the point then one at the butt end of the patch box. I guess it really doesn't make a difference since it will do quarter sized groups at 50 yards. At least it did the last time I shot it with 50 grs.fffg and .440 round ball and patch.
Gary
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You, sir, have a Made In USA Mountain Rifle. Congratulations! The four-screw patchbox is the clincher. Your barrel should also say Made in USA. Word has it that Douglas made the barrels for the original guns and then CVA moved production to Spain. Those have two-screw patch boxes. Your gun probably has octagonal thimbles, too. Keep that baby. When they come up for sale, they don't sit around long.
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Thanks for the info Red, hadn't planned to send it anywhere, but I have had a few offers over the years. It shoots to good to let go. My son or one of the grandsons will end up with it but not for a while, I hope.
Talking about this rifle made me stop a think back to when I got it. Picked it up at the fall National Muzzleloader @@@. shoot at Friendship In. in the mid 1970's. Got a different rear sight, primitive instead of using what came with the kit. After I got it finished the first trip to the range along with powder, ball and caps I took a small hammer, brass drift punch and a file. That rifle has always done what was expected of it as long as the shooter did thier part. Can't ask for more than that.
Gary