vmt_hntr-

I have never owned a 45-120, but have friends that do. One of these friends has a Farmingdale 1874 Sharps that he said he couldn't reliably hit a 4' square of plywood at 100 yds with blackpowder. He had the dies and brass with the rifle. I said bring it out and we'll get it shooting. We sized his brass and ran it thru the expander and primed it with Federal 215s. I supplied the bullets which were Lyman 457125 cast out of a soft 40:1 alloy and  hand lubed with this lube formula ( % by volume of: Beeswax 36%, Yellow Crisco 24%, Olive Oil 40% ). We put in Goex FFg (enough to fill to base of seated bullet after vibrating charge) in case with little compression and seated the bullet while crimping in the top lube groove. No lube wad was put in. After loading the box of twenty, we tried it with the barrel sights. He shot a couple 3 shot groups of 2" and I got one about 1", then he took the rest of the box home. I never got to shoot it again. Barrel had light to medium fouling after 9 shots. The bullet nose was dirtied by the fouling and was thumb seated into the chamber.

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I have the Pedersoli Sharps 1874 Quigley 45-120 as sold by Cabelas. Been trying to get a good load to shoot in this "buffler rifle" and I've come up with what I think is a good load. I cast some of the Lyman 523 gr(my weight) boolits(sized to .459)and used the Paul Mathews recipe for lube from his books on cast boolit shooting. Used a grease cookie 1/8" thick of beeswax and neatsfoot oil-real slippery-and a veg wad under boolit, with 110grs of Goex black compressed about 3/16". Problem has been, after I would shoot 2 rounds, other boolits shot would keyhole in target(100yds). Anyone else have other ideas to try with this, other than swab bore out after 2 shots or try to use smokeless?(Pedersoli not rated for smokeless)--don't want to use anyway. Your input appreciated....BPCR webbsite was a little help...........

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Use a good quality BP lube like BS#2 and a blow tube. Sounds like your getting hard fouling. Blow a couple puffs then try to dry patch. If it doesnt slide through easily you have hard fouling. With a good lube and a couple puffs on the blow tube when humidity is low the fouling should be as a soft greece on the patch and the patch should slide through very easily.

BIC/BS

...............This is against the 'true faith', but have you tried a small smokless charge against the primer?.

I have a Sharps in 45-90, a couple rifles in 45-70, one 40-65, 43 Spanish, two 11mm Mausers and a couple 577-450 Martinis. I tried the Martini loaded with BP once and that was plenty enough whoop-ass for me .

Most of my BP experience has been with muzzle loaders. I have 2 which are copies of 1860's era long range match rifles, shooting conicals of 500 to 560grs. Basicly muzzle loading  45-90's in ballistics. As far as fouling goes, which I agree with 45-2.1 and Bullshop is the problem, I had a fouling ring build behind the bullet.

You do basicly wipe the barrel upon loading, so fouling in the bore usually is not an issue. Some shooters of these rifles do clean to the breech for each shot, but I don't. Anyway, right there in the barrel where the base of the bullet sits I'd begin to get a hard fouling ring. I was using a grease cookie that was pure beeswax. You would think that in that environment, upon ignition it wouldn't matter that it was pure beeswax! You know, it'd just vaporize or whatever? Even with a lubed felt wad under it.

I decided to try adding a smidge of beeswax to my bullet lube to stiffen it up a little and then run it through the extruder and slice of some new formula grease cookies. Apparently that was the whole deal as the fouling ring issue went away. The powder I use is Swiss 2Fg, and my bullet lube for grease grooved slugs is a 60-40 mix of Wonderlube-beeswax . I lube paper patched slugs with straight Wonderlube.

................Buckshot

Have you looked at

http://groups.msn.com/BPCR

Have you tried a newspaper wad between the bullet and veggie wad? 

As posted earlier, I've already been at the BPCR site(and have posted same questions there) with some additional knowledge.  I've not tried an additional wad(ie, newsprint wafer )between veg wad and boolit.  Will certainly try abything the helps. Thanx for input......Bob       PS......Seems like almost no one shoots this monster........maybe should have gotten 45/70 or 45/90? Not ready to give up yet.........