45 Cal Seneca Barrel I'm Making Will Be Complete By Spring

[Joc7651]

I have a sweet little .36 cal Seneca and ordered everything to make a .45 cal drop in round ball barrel for it. 36" Green Mountain barrel 13/16" across the flats, with 1:60 rifling. Breech plug, front & rear sights, T/C under lug, under rib, and steel thimbles. It should all be here in the next couple weeks.

I think I may have to shorten the barrel to maintain balance. I'll see after everything is fitted with the exception of the under rib and thimbles. The under rib and thimbles will be silver soldered on. I did it with my .54 cal and they're solid as a rock.

I may keep it longer seeing as .45 cal Seneca's are prone to cracked stocks due to the .45 recoil. Depending on how it feels. Maybe the extra weight may help, but I don't plan on shooting heavy loads out of it either. My winter project.

I blame it on my wife for getting me a new Century 24 Gun safe for Christmas. It will go perfectly beside my 18 Gun Sentry.

[Joc7651]

I hunt a river bottom where my shots MAY at most be 60 yards. I think 60-70 grains of FFFg with a round ball will be more than enough to ruin any deers day, and not be hard on the rifle.

[Huntschool]

Joc7651:

If you load heavy enough (a heck of a lot more then 60-70 gr) to crack that stock your one $#*! of a man, or the back end of that barrel and tang were not inlet properly.....  There is no heavy recoil in a .45.  The only problem I see is depth of dovetail to accept that TC underlug.

Quit worrying and build your gun......

Just sayin.......

[Joc7651]

Nothing ever goes as easily as it does in your head, but I already have the dovetail guides to file the dovetails. Calipers, files, and a notepad are invaluable to me for my barrels. If I have to I'll adjust the depth of the lug and dovetail to keep factory dimensions. I may file the base down and silver solder it. It depends on what I have to work with.

As far as the loads go. I have no desire for it to handle anti tank loads. Never saw a deers rib cage that was armor plated. 60-70 grains of FFFg from a 36" barrel should be pushing 1800-2000 fps. I think that will be more than enough.

Either way, that's the fun part. Never remove metal if you're unsure. I'd rather measure something 100 times and file once.

[Sawfiler]

I think you are over estimating your velocity possible with that load by about 400-500 FPS. I have chrono-ed my 42" .45 barrel with 70 grains of 3F at just a little over 1500.

[Mike Brooks]

Nothing ever goes as easily as it does in your head, but I already have the dovetail guides to file the dovetails. Calipers, files, and a notepad are invaluable to me for my barrels. If I have to I'll adjust the depth of the lug and dovetail to keep factory dimensions. I may file the base down and silver solder it. It depends on what I have to work with.

As far as the loads go. I have no desire for it to handle anti tank loads. Never saw a deers rib cage that was armor plated. 60-70 grains of FFFg from a 36" barrel should be pushing 1800-2000 fps. I think that will be more than enough.

Either way, that's the fun part. Never remove metal if you're unsure. I'd rather measure something 100 times and file once.

You'll be wanting to find your most accurate load, not just pulling a number of grains out of thin air. It takes some work at the shooting range to find out what your most accurate load its. I have a friend that has killed deer with 45fff in a .45 I had a .45 that shot 50fff most accurately so that's what I hunted with. No problem killing deer with that load. Deer are really soft, it's all about shot placement, not about speed.

[Joc7651]

I know Mike. I was just using it a a rough point of reference. It took an entire summer to find the best load for my Joe Williams barreled .54. Couple months for a Howard Kelly barreled .54, I was lucky with my .50, and I'm still working on the best squirrel load for the .36(almost there on that one).  I haven't even started assembling the barrel yet. I'll use what the barrel prefers.

[Joc7651]

I think you are over estimating your velocity possible with that load by about 400-500 FPS. I have chrono-ed my 42" .45 barrel with 70 grains of 3F at just a little over 1500.

That seems kinda slow for 70 grains from a .45 with a tightly patched ball. 

[Scota4570]

Sounds fun.  I did one a while ago.  Breech plugs were unobtainium.  I ended up making one from scratch.  I see Track sill has none.  Where did you find it?

[Sawfiler]

Couple differences I see right off. This was in a flintlock instead of percussion, and I was using a .451 ball that is about 10 grains heavier.  I think it chronographed somewhere in the mid 1500's over several shots. Is that load data from the manufacturer? I wonder if there could be some exaggeration the same way bow manufacturers seem to inflate their speeds out of the box. 

[Daryl]

I think you are over estimating your velocity possible with that load by about 400-500 FPS. I have chrono-ed my 42" .45 barrel with 70 grains of 3F at just a little over 1500.

That seems kinda slow for 70 grains from a .45 with a tightly patched ball. 

I chronographed my flintlock .45, 42" GM barrel with both 3F and 2F powders. When using LHV lube, 75gr. 3F GOEX produced 2,200fps with a .445" ball and .022" patch.
85gr. 2f duplicated that load's velocity, same ball and patch.

I got the same velocities in my .40, using 65gr. 3F and 75gr. 2F all GOEX powder.

Joc- I did exactly that with my wife's Seneca .36, replacing the barrel with a 36" .45 GM barrel. The girl's have been using 55gr. 3F GOEX for shooting the trail and it works just fine, with
water based lube.

I found a Hawken lock from Track just about perfectly fit the TC's lock mortise, but of course, I had to file the lock plate a bit to make it fit and inlet the parts - a small job.
I also preferred a Bedford county hammer to the Hawken hammer, which was too big and didn't fit the geometry of the gun as well as the Bedford hammer.



This is my daughter shooting that rifle. Pls excuse the steel rod. It was a weight adding feature for shooting the trail.
Years ago, I changed the entry pipe to a cast babbit chunk. The forend could have used another key, to balance it out.

[Joc7651]

I am going to bed the tang when I build the barrel. I'm going to start low and work my loads up, but I don't plan on going past about 70 grains of 3f. I'll chrono it after 100-200 balls get put down the bore and everything gets smoothed out.  Curiosity will probably get the best of me and chrono it to begin with but I'll have a better idea of where it will end up velocity wise after a few hundred shots.