.54 Barrel question

[frontier gander]

flinter, its all fixed now, the .015" patch and coning the muzzle did wonders. She shooters a heck of a lot tighter than any tc barrel ive owned. Plus it has a slower twist at 1:60  VS TC's shallow groove 1:48 twist.

I should'a stopped after shot 4 as the bore was getting tight with that goex 2f.

[bob in the woods]

That .527 ball/mold is a handy thing to have.  I use it for my .54 smoothbore.

[Vomitus]

Gander,
 If you are only getting 4 shots and the bore is getting tight,what do you think the problem is? I shoot all day long without wiping and definitely no "bore tightening"! Something's amiss.
 If you are .535 land to land and you have 10 thou grooves,that means you are .555 groove to groove,no? Now, if you are using a .015 patch ( multiplied times 2).Now add .030 to the bore size. That gives you .565,correct? Which means you are getting only five thou compression in the grooves. Not enough for a rifle,me thinks.
 What I would do is go to a .526 RB or a tad smaller(.520) and use a minimum .025 thou ,10 ounce denim patch. With 2f Goex,a good sloppy wet patch, you WILL shoot all day without wiping.( bore must not have ANY pits) Pits will snag your patch and all goes out the window.
 All this two finger loading pressure is Hollywood Daniel Boone/Davy Crockett nonsense. Accurate rifles need compression to self clean and shoot accurately.  No BS!

[Daryl]

LB's are my findings as well - but if you want looser, easier loading combinations, go for it.

[frontier gander]

shes shootin nice and tight so i am happy. I only used olive oil this time around, i most likely will add some beeswax to the mix later on. I have a few more new guns to sight in first and then i can work on this one. Gives TC some time to get a hammer screw out to me. A 2 month wait they said! 

A sloppy wet patch doesnt sound good for hunting 9 days in the mountains, but i agree, it certainly makes a huge difference on the range.

[Daryl]

We use oil for hunting - mink oil or neetsfoot oil - the sloppy-wet patch is for trail walks and other 'shooting games'.

The sloppy-wet WWWF+Oil patch actually loads exactly the same as an oiled patch with Mink oil or Neetsfoot oil in all of my guns. 

The water based "lube" is cheaper (for high volume shooters) and doesn't make your hands oily and stink of the oil when shooting upwards of 50 to 80 shots a day.  There is no need to 'wipe' the bore with any of the lubes we use, including spit.

I suspect lubes that stay in the bore and stick in the corners of the rifling as a solid, ie: bore butter, would require some sort of cleaning or wiping with a solvent to restore accuracy, if one tried to shoot 50 to 80 shots in a day.  An old time cast bullet shooter over on the Cast Bullet Assoc. forum told me his TC's bore would foul with bore butter in as few as 15 to 20 shots and accuracy was reduced. I suspect the combination of shallow button rifled barrels and the heavy lip balm grease didn't get along. I guess deeper grooves would shoot longer would it and it will fill in some pits as well. He had to use solvents to disolve it.  I got him off the bore butter and converted to Mink oil and cutting his own patches and he was happy after that. Maybe the reason for his problem was due to his patches- maybe not- but his problems were solved and he reveled in being able to shoot all day without accuracy loss- and - no wiping.

[frontier gander]

Shot her again today but used 100gr 2F Goex, home cast .530 balls and .018 pillow tick patches. Man what a roar!  Grouped decent, but i mainly wanted to check the patches. Patches I recovered were in perfect shape and zero ripping/frizzing on the edges.  Group was okay for 60 yards but I think I do not like these sights at all, mainly the front sight.

[Daryl]

Frizzing, or getting frazzled on the edge is normal and an indicator of muzzle pressure- is all. Even the .69, my lowest pressure gun, causes fraying of the edges of the patch. It's where the patch seals the bore, that there can not be any damage to the material.  If you can re-lube the spent patch and shoot it time after time without losing accuracy or hurting it, it's a good patch in my opinion.