This summer I picked up an original rifle at an estate sale. Really homely, possibly a restock of a Southern mountain rifle. It had no breechplug, no drum, no lock, and various stock splits. The barrel is burly and swamped, 46.5” long, and was about .33-.34 caliber. The powder chamber was eroded past the rifling, the muzzle was oversized, and the bore was dark. Pounding a slug down the bore was a chore and it came out showing rifling but scarred up. Grooves were very narrow.
I re-cut the rifling till it was strong and smooth but still had some “crawdad holes” near the muzzle. It ended up at .360 bore except at the muzzle which was .380. Guys at my club helped me out. Dave B re-breeched it to 5/8 and made and fitted a new plug with a long tang and made and got a new drum. When I snapped the new tang off by aggressively bending it, Bob welded it up for me. I made a lock to fit the mortise and did some glueing up of the stock and made a new rammer.
Today I took it out to shoot it. I do not have a .36 jag or worm yet so I shot it without cleaning. This was a test of my freshing skills as well as opening up the possibility that I’d need to go another 0.020” more with re-cutting the bore to remove all deep pits completely. I’d also never shot a barrel with wide lands and narrow grooves. I wasn’t convinced that would load or shoot as well as even lands and grooves or narrow lands and wide grooves.
First load at 35 yards shot extremely high and extremely poorly with 30 grains of FFFG, 0.018” denim patch, .350 ball, moose milk. Left:right spread was 3” and vertical was worse. Yikes! Minute of standing woodchuck at 35 yards! It felt like a loose load and also felt like the ball was getting down to where the rifling was mostly gone at the breech. So I decided to up the charge and use a tighter patch.
Things were tightening up.
At 50 yards it was still looking good. Left to right was very good. Vertical stringing is probably my fault. Bad eyes.
I then shot it for just 3 shots at 100 yards with 45 grains of FFFG, 0.021 patch soaked in moose milk, and the .350 ball. Side to side was less than an inch but I had the vertical stringing again.
Overall, for a gun that was a relic with a horrid bore before freshing, first time out, just one ball size to try, I was very happy with how it shot. I need to install a taller front sight! It’s shooting 8-10” high at 100 yards. But I think the relic might become my bench gun.
