Realistic expectations for accuracy.

[Snakebite]

M1,
Where are you located? Perhaps an ALR member is close and can do some coaching.
Mark

I live in central Texas near Ft Hood.

I'm in the same area, I sent you a PM

[Darkhorse]

My $0.02
Regardless of what a weapons capable of or the load chain, IMO it all starts with a shooter knowing of and using good bench technique.  Observing shooters on the bench at my range over the years many fail at having the ability to reasonably extract the guns capability.  Anybody who has any doubts about that process, maybe it's time to reaffirm what you think you know regarding bench technique?

I think a shot sequence in an intelligent path. Put together the 1, 2, 3, 4's...before letting the shot go. I use one every day in archery practice and believe me it makes a difference.  Once the human errors are minimized then you can effect mechanical changes for the better. 

Couple of my favorite basics:

Setup as low to the bench as reasonable.
Get off the gun! Get behind it not on it.
Bag the toe of the stock and squeeze the bag to get height needed.
When you know your sights are perfectly on target close your eyes for a moment then come back to your sights to see if they retained perfect placement. If so your set up is good.
Final check to ensure the gun isn't canted.  Front sight straight up and down
Get in FRONT of the trigger and pull STRAIGHT back. 

Reading this thread, I feel my post is preaching to the choir, I decern a lot of experienced good shooters.  Just wanted to try to add my thoughts on a topic that is near and dear to me.  Respectfully, tim

Allow me to add a thing or two. After I'm bagged in and have my position settled so the sight remains on target, then I shoot once with an unloaded gun to see where the sights end up. If in the same spot I'm good to go, if not, I need more work on my setup.

As I've aged I can no longer shoot well with the open iron sights. I no longer shoot competition and the only thing that matters is how I shoot on live game. By far, the best thing I've done is add a small peep to the tang and made a front sight to match.





delete picasa web account

[m1garand_man]

My old load I have been having problems with


Getting better


Best so far. I pulled the one on the left.

[smylee grouch]

Hi grand-man, if it were me I would go to 50 yds. and shoot 10 shot groups. If you find your self with two seemingly different groups you might be doing something on the bench inconsistantly, like canting,looking at the sights different, high sun or sun behind the clouds, griping the gun different from shot to shot or several other variables.

[Mad Monk]

I will say the Swiss measures much more consistently than the Olde Eynesford. With OE if I threw my charges from my measure on the scale they varied by as much as 2gr plus or minus! The Swiss would vary by .1 at most.

I will say it takes a little longer to clean Swiss out of my barrel but that wasn't a significant issue for me.

I tried 9 different combos of ball, patch and charge. I found that 60gr of 1.5f Swiss, .495 ball and .020 patch shoot best. A 70gr charge isn't bad but at 80gr things start opening up. Also no matter what was going on anything tried with 2f OE performed worse than the same test with Swiss. So I guess the OE will end up sitting around now as a fall back.

My best grout came with 60gr 1.5f Swiss .495 ball and .020 patch. At 25y it was a 1" group with the best 4 out of 5 in that group. I pulled one to the left.

If you were to look at the Swiss powder under a microscope compared to the OE you would see why the Swiss gives more consistent throws out of a volume measure.  The Swiss powder is highly polished.  This means the grains are really rounded and the grain surfaces are almost glass like.  You get better "nesting" of the grains in the measure.  For some reason the modern bp manufacturers simply do not understand what grain polish means in the gun.  When the grain surfaces are rough and have very angular edges they simply do not "nest" as tightly as they should so you get a greater variation in weight from one throw to another.
I used to look at this another way.  I had a 100 cc graduated cylinder cut off right at the 100 cc mark.  I would pour the sample powder through a funnel mounted about an inch above the cylinder top.  Fill to overflowing.  Then level the top with the edge of a spatula.  Then gently tap the side of the graduated cylinder with the spatula and watch how much the grains settled/nested.  The amount of cc's drop was a percentage of settling.  This is simply a standard industry test to look at settling in granular materials.  The Swiss always came in at 0% settling to about 2%.  Other brands lacking a good polish would sometimes show up to 10% settling.
This is why some shooters swear by weighed charges rather than volume measure.  But this has a flip side, so to speak.  Those powders showing a high percentage of settling will occupy different volumes of space in the bore when you pour the charge down the barrel.  They will give fairly good velocity variations.
The weight versus volume problems with various granulated powders is why in the late 1800's a number of powder manufacturers experimented with ways to make perfectly spherical black powder powder grains of a very uniform size.  My buddy in Australia looked into that.  I told him the best way would be to train dung beetles because to do it with machinery is nearly impossible.

Bill K.
   

[Mad Monk]

I did some digging through my multiple external hard drives.  Found my BP CD.  I had written a booklet on the Swiss powder plant.  A lot of photos of the plant machinery and the resulting powders.
It is in PDF format and is 11,555 KB in size.  Can be sent as an e-mail attachment.  If you want a copy I would need an e-mail address.

It has microscope photos of the powder grains before and after polishing.  The machinery is neat.  Water wheel powered.

Bill K.

[Mad Monk]

M1_grand-man,

Please check your private messages on t his board.  Some things that might interest you sine you are clearly military in background.

Bill K.

[Darkhorse]

I assume these groups are much improved over what you started with? Because I'm seeing some excellent shooting if these are 100 yard groups. These are groups I'd expect to see with optics.
Even at 50 yards a couple of these are still impressive. Human eyesight being what it is a shot or two out of the group is not unusual at all. Especially with a flintlock.
What do you attribute to your improvements.
Before I finally accept a load as one I will use I shoot a 5 shot group from the bench at 50 yards. In a day or two I shoot another 5 shot group into the same target. Sometimes I'll shoot 15 into that target. I want to see all 15 in basically the same group. I don't want to see flyers on different days or see the group grow much larger. By doing this I assure myself that I can expect the rifle to shoot where I want, anytime I want.

[smylee grouch]

That sounds like a great idea Darkhorse, only one three or five shot group  is not enough IMHO.

[Daryl]

I find nowadays, if I aim too long, I throw the shot. I must shoot quickly off the bags, or offhand, for that matter. Taylor noted while
we were testing the Hawken, that when I didn't waist any time shooting, (shooting quickly), the balls were going into the same hole, cutting each other.  If I held longer,
I threw that shot out of the group - a 'so called' flyer.   The shot actually went exactly where I had the sights pointed. just that it was an imagined centre hold, but was
not. Our eyes will do this to us.  I first found out about that back in the 3-postion days.  Concentrating too hard and long on the sights would make you think
you were holding 'on' but that perfect hold image was actually imprinted in your mind's eye while the gun was not actually held correctly and had moved off centre. You
just could not see it or realize it happened.

This is simply something to try yourselves.  Use what works for you - always.  On top of it all, make sure both of your feet are planted flat on the ground or range floor. THIS
 is just as important as every other step in good bench technique.

[Joe S.]

You can and will,like everything else over think it.You may not realize it but the muscle in your head is always working,trying to do it better,even when your eyes cant.Im with you on this Daryl,you get it squared up,let it fly.About the only time I won't is when I get distracted,be it a sudden wind change,perhaps movement down range(Ours is in the woods and it wouldn't be the first time deer or other critters would walk into the line of fire)

[hanshi]

Those targets look pretty good to me.  When I shoot a 5 shot group I'll always (almost) blow it with a flyer.  Occasionally, I'll shoot 20-30 round groups and discount the outliers.  The poi is pretty well established with this many shots.  Three shot groups are usually good to great, but 5 shot groups have me pulling my hair out.

And as Daryl mentioned, quick shooting on targets works just as well on game.  I've taken lots of "snap shots" which were anything but.  As soon as I lift the gun to my shoulder I'm already "in the zone" and don't miss.  This is what I do with running/walking deer.  I never attempted it beyond 75 yards, however.  Today at the range was both gratifying and frustrating.  Light colored targets, white, for example, are much easier to shoot than standard black bullseye targets.  I have trouble seeing the sights on a black bullseye.

[m1garand_man]

Hi grand-man, if it were me I would go to 50 yds. and shoot 10 shot groups. If you find your self with two seemingly different groups you might be doing something on the bench inconsistantly, like canting,looking at the sights different, high sun or sun behind the clouds, griping the gun different from shot to shot or several other variables.

That's all part of the plan, I don't have a place to shoot at 50 since the range I shoot at requires targets stands to be back by the berm. The next time I go I'll be back at 100y armed with my new loads to test in 10 shot groups. If things look good enough I may do a 20 shot group for the heck of it. I've found that after 20 shots in any gun you usually find out that things don't open up much more at any higher round count. In other words all the fliers you might get will be evident.

[m1garand_man]

I assume these groups are much improved over what you started with? Because I'm seeing some excellent shooting if these are 100 yard groups. These are groups I'd expect to see with optics.
Even at 50 yards a couple of these are still impressive. Human eyesight being what it is a shot or two out of the group is not unusual at all. Especially with a flintlock.
What do you attribute to your improvements.
Before I finally accept a load as one I will use I shoot a 5 shot group from the bench at 50 yards. In a day or two I shoot another 5 shot group into the same target. Sometimes I'll shoot 15 into that target. I want to see all 15 in basically the same group. I don't want to see flyers on different days or see the group grow much larger. By doing this I assure myself that I can expect the rifle to shoot where I want, anytime I want.

They are much improved. By as much as 50% with the Swiss powder than with the Olde Eynesford that I used before. The only thing about it is that these groups were fired at 25y. I decided to do this because I had about a half dozen recommendations from as many people to try it.

I will some times overlay targets that I have shot on different days and experience the same effect as you do with shooting at the same target on different days. The benefit to this is you can add or remove layers (days) at a whim. The down side is you have to look at it over a bright light.

[m1garand_man]

I'm pretty excited to shoot again at 100y. I'm to the point where I'm considering whether or not to attend the three gun match I had planned on going to so I can shoot this rifle Saturday!

[J.E. Moore]

Mr. M1,  have you dry fired at your 100 yrd Target to see how the lock may jolt your aim? I noticed on my lighter 45 rifle that when I dry fired and concentrated on the front sight I could detect movement cause by the frizzen and cock. I don't notice it near as bad with my 50 call but it has a Dale Johnson model lock and weights half again as much as the 45 cal rifle with Italian lock.

[Darkhorse]

Good point. I've been wondering about that also because I had a problem lock that was pretty bad. If it does this it means your lock is not in balance. Take a trigger pull gauge and see what the poundage is to open your frizzen. Unloaded of course.

[m1garand_man]

I had not thought about this before. Thank you for the ideas.

I whent and shot again this weekend. At 100y with a .459 .495 ball (dyslexia...) .020 patch and 70gr 1.5f Swiss I got a 4.5" 10 shot group excluding pulled shots. With 80gr I got just at 5" with my best 9 shots out of 10.

[Daryl]

Do you mean .495" ball?

[Dan]

Dunno what works for the average Joe, but this works for me.  50 yards, offhand.  High shot on the left target was the fouler.  Days I get to shoot at something longer than 50 yards here in the swamps are as rare as hen's teeth.  20-35 yards is the norm.

.45 caliber PRB shooter...