First Black Powder

[socal147]

01-06-15 01:57 AM - Post#1458079


Just received my Pederosi 1861 Springfield. Removed the barrel and cleaned off all of the grease.
Ran a bunch of patches with Hoppes and then dry patched until they came out white.
I have never shot black powder before. I plan on casting Minnie's and possibly .58 balls. My right eye is pretty much useless so I will need to shoot from the left. Can't wait .
Have triple seven, musket caps, nipples, nipple wrench, jag, and worm enroute.
Learned a lot by reading but I realize nothing replaces experience.

[fuegoboy]

Congratulations and welcome to the world of sparks, booms and smokes. Experience is a good teacher but you do want to be safe, especially with black powder loads.

Just remember to follow this order:

POWDER
PATCH
BALL

If you're near Santa Barbara come out on the last Sunday of each month to the Winchester Canyon Gun Club on Camino Cielo Road for our monthly black powder shoots. We have shooters using flintlocks, cap and ball, revolvers, BP cartridge, black powder trap and trapdoors.

Have fun. Now you need a pistol to go with the musket.

Cheers,

[DennisCA]

Congrats !
Warning: when you bring it to the range, you're going to draw a crowd

[Enfield47]

Nice, that is one of the rifles I have been admiring. Looking forward to hear how she shoots.

[Eljay]

Very nice! Couple of tips on minie balls - they can be really fussy about the exact size. My 1863 reproduction is very accurate with .578. With .575 they're all over the place. They're also pretty load sensitive - the margin between inflating the skirt and damaging it is pretty slim. This means you can't tune the load the way you can with a round ball.

I'd actually start with a patched round ball (.570), adjust the load, adjust the patch thickness, see what works, get it accurate, see what the rifle's capable of and only then see how close the minies are. They're not going to be as accurate - the reason they were used was for speed of loading, especially once the barrel gets filthy.