Not grouping

[Robby]

I made this gun to hunt with last year and had to take a pass on it because I could not get it to group in time for the season. Over the last year I have tried to work with it off and on, including a muzzle treatment, as described by Daryl, twice, all manner of patch ply, ball diameter, and powder load, All mortices have been enlarged twice, barrel hoops are slotted with plenty of room, last month I even tried heating the whole barrel in hopes that it might need some stress relief. I like to solve problems, but have to admit, I don't know what else to do. Maybe get in touch with barrel manufacturer, who will remain anonymous, for now. Maybe I am missing something and somebody can help me out. Still plenty of time before the season starts here.
Yesterday after a frustrating session I finally hit the bulls eye, twice, not in a row but golly!!!! I left off there, with hopes. Well, today I went out and this is the target, and fairly reflective of what I have been going through for the last year with its consistent inconsistency.


This is off the bench, with good, rock, solid hold, excellent shooting light, at fifty yards. .50 caliber, 85gr's 3F, .495 cast pure lead ball, .023, compressed in calipers, pillow ticking.
So after many years, this rifle was built for me and I have put a lot of time into it. Fortunately it did not got to someone else and become their nightmare.




post pictures












Not an exact copy, it is a fairly petite and shooter friendly rifle.
Robby

[MuskratMike]

Unless you are hunting for Cape Buffalo drop the powder charge. If your using 3F (which I use and love) I only use 70 grains of 3F in my .54 for elk and bear, and that will go through an elk. Might not be the solution but I would drop it down to 50 grains then work up 5 grains at a time. If you have already done that when the gun was shiny new go back and try it again. Let us know if that helped. By the way what are you using for lube? If it is a hunting gun I would be using either TOTW mink oil/grease or 100% pure Neatsfoot oil.
Best wishes and goo luck.

[Marcruger]

No offense intended, but has anyone else shot it for groups?  Are you shooting other flinters on the same day and getting better groups?    I try to compare to a known quantity on the same day, as I know that I can sure have a bad day at the range.   

If it is indeed the barrel, perhaps re-barrel the rifle?  Modern barrel makers can replicate the outside dimensions well enough to replace an existing barrel.   

Another option could be having Mr Hoyt look at the barrel and see if he can find an anomaly.  If he does, he may be able to bore and re-rifle it. 

Your load looks like it should work in a good barrel, as in it is not too loose.  A suggestion would be read your patches and see what they are telling you.  Perhaps in that light-appearing rifle, try backing off to 70 grains of 2f and see what happens?  I have seen in laddering up loads in testing, you hit a sweet spot for groups, then stiffer loads seem to open things up progressively.  85 grains of 3f in my experience equates to maybe 95 grains of 2f.  That just may be a might stout for accuracy.  Just a thought.  It almost seems like with heavy loads in skinny barrels you can get some sort of whipping vibration that throws shots. 

That is a gorgeous rifle, and you did a fantastic job, so I can feel your pain and not wanting to let it go. 

God Bless,   Marc

[hanshi]

It is an absolutely beautiful rifle, Robby, and worth keeping, IMHO, just for that reason.  I can only guess at solutions in your case.  But here goes: maybe swabbing the bore with 0000 steel wool, Scotch Brite pads or something similar; playing with powder charge, 1F to 3F size; Or pulling the barrel and checking the stock for problems.  Good luck.

[Robby]

Muskrat, I've been up and down the ladder a couple times, it's an equal opportunity scatter gun. I never try to magnumize any gun, this is about as good as it gets, actually still comfortable to shoot.
Marcruder, No offense taken. The day before I had a .58 caliber Bucks County rifle, closest thing I had to this configuration, To see if I  have lost what little shooting ability I may have had. One big ragged hole at fifty yards using the same printed target face. This gun(?), about what you see on the target presented, just more of it. If I send it to Bobby, it will be to ream it out and put a .45 liner in it. I got to try this site first, there are a lot of very experienced makers and shooters here, the barrel maker next, and depending on what happens with him, it might become a .45.
Hanshi, Thank you. I did try all those things, once with the Scotch-Brite, once with 0000 steel wool. I did try 2F with the same results up and down the ladder. Like I said, I went through the stock three times looking for anything that might bind or pull and enlarged the mortices, shaved anything that even hinted at binding.
Robby

[davec2]

Robby, this might be a silly question.....how many rounds do you have through the barrel total ?  I have had barrels that would not shoot center until I had many, many rounds through them....and then, inexplicably, the darn thing started to group....?  Here is an old thread when I asked the question if anyone else had heard of "breaking in" a barrel...

https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=58327.msg583384#msg583384

[AsMs]

Robby,

Are all your targets printing the same?  Your up and down looks good but your left and right is way off and not progressive left to right either. One shot far right then way left then right again. I suspect possibly your front sight is too thick or your rear sight notch is too narrow. You should be able to see and equal amount of daylight to each side of your front sight in the rear sight picture. If the front sight is too wide for your rear notch and you are favoring one side or the other then that would explain your wide groups.

AsMs

[Fyrstyk]

I'll add my .02 to this discussion.  I had a similar problem with a rifle, and did many of the things you have tried.  Then one day I accidentally put a cleaning patch down on top of the powder charge.  I didn't have a worm with me so I said "What the heck, I just load the patched ball and shoot it out".  Well that shot went right where I was aiming, so I tried it again and low and behold I had two shots touching.  Did it two more times and wound up with a a 1" group at 50 yards.   For some reason this gun likes to have a dry patch over the powder before a patched ball is seated.  Give it a try, what have you got to lose?

[Robby]

Dave, I can't really say how many rounds I have shot all together, like I said, I have been fighting with this for over a year whenever I get the time, maybe 150(?). I have used many of these barrels and have never had a problem. I don't know how I missed your ref. posting, I come here every day, part of my morning ritual, Hah!
AsMs, The sights are pretty standard configuration for what I do. Yes, on this target the elevation does look somewhat consistent, that is not always the case. When I first started my sight in over a year ago, my first round would always be near the bull, second round way to the right and it would shotgun after that. Shocked the heck out of me today when the first shot was way to the right from the get go.
Well Fyrstyk, at this point, why not!
Robby

[Hungry Horse]

 Who made the barrel, and what is the twist rate. I have a SMR with a Montana straight 15/16” .50 Cal. 1 in 72” twist  Barrel that drove me nuts. I kept patching tighter, and tighter, and the thicker the patch the more torn up they got. I finally left the charge at about 95 grains of 3F, and backed down to a fifteen thousandths patch, and it straightened right out. I know the Canadian will scream thats impossible, but just this once he’s wrong. It shoots fine, and no I have no idea why. It will also shoot nearly as well with a similar charge of 2F, but not with a thick tight patch. By the way all patches were lubed with venison tallow.

  Hungry Horse

[smallpatch]

How do your patches look? If we’re gonna analyze, we need all the evidence.

[StevenV]

If shots string up and down, more powder . If shots string east and west less powder. Change to 2F. What do your patches look like? Do you wipe between shots?           Steve

[rich pierce]

When a rifle is shooting poorly I check every patch after every shot. Some ranges that is not possible. But I usually find flyers have to do with blown patches.

I had to pull a ball today (dry balled it) and found my patches are weak at the lands from loading. This is a heavy bench rifle. One thing to try is loading and pulling a ball if you have some blown patches. Time for a Daryl crown polishing.

[little joe]

My way  Drop charge to 60 or 65 grs powder,remove rr, and rest your rifle 4 inchs behind muzzle and shoot for group. Use a 50 yd ML target to get a  feeling of how you are doing compared to the big boys.

[Daryl]

So, you've got a good crown, the barrel has been smoothed, you've gone up and down the powder charge range with both 3F and 2F.
I suspect you are a good shooter with experience.
 Barrel bedding at the breech is tight, ie: breech end bedded against the wood properly or glass bedded?
I've never slotted forend pin holes & I don't think Taylor does or has either. I could be wrong about that,
but my barrel tenon pin holes appear round in my Beck rifle.  The slot in the forend of my English gun, also by Taylor,  does not have much
slop in the barrel's tenon slot.
Patch condition is the only thing I can think of, as well, apart from barrel bedding, but I have not found that particularly important if having good wood/metal fit.
I failed to see where you mentioned lube, Sonny. I am at a loss, perhaps just a bad barrel. 
How does it clean up? 
It is tighter at the breech (bore and/or grooves) than at the muzzle. If so, that is backwards.

[Robby]

I always check my patches. At this level of powder they are a bit frayed around the edges so there is some blow by but it is consistent, they all look exactly the same and as I would expect them to look, no tearing. Like i said, this was (is) to me my hunting rifle so when I started my initial sight in I was using only the Track's mink oil for lube and the patches looked the same with the exception that I was not getting as much fraying around the edges as I moved up the volume ladder. I started using a 'Moose Milk' recipe after a few sessions when i realized this may take a while. Yes, the crown appears to be very good as I have been using your technique for years on every barrel I use. I can feel no tight or loose spots along the length of the bore when loading. It cleans up fine, no detection of any roughness throughout.
I'm going for another session today and will be trying 2F and a slightly thinner patch, going from the bottom of the ladder once again. If things don't go my way I'll even try the over the powder patch. At this point I'm pretty much game for about anything. Maybe it is my optimistic nature but I keep think there is a simple answer to this.
Robby

[J Henry]

   Reads like you are chasing the wind !! give the rifle to someone else to sight in,tell them nothing  about what you have tried.See what they come up with,reads like the common factor is the shooter ?

[alacran]

Had a .54 rifle with a Douglas Barrel that was giving me fits. It would start putting balls together and then it would start spraying them. I was trying to sight it it at the Western Nationals. I had just finished it the day before the shoot started. I spent all day one day trying to get the sucker to shoot. Now my problem wasn't that it wouldn't group. It was that the groups were moving around radically. Any way I did manage to shoot a 48 2x at 100 yards with it in the Flintlock Buffalo match. But that was by holding on  the top right corner of the target, I found were to hold from the previous 100 yard target that had  a couple outs in the lower left corner of the target.
This was tottaly different than the day before.
I was totally disgusted. When I cleaned the rifle at the house I found my problem, My rear sight was a bit on the loose side. what seemed to happen was that when the barrel would heat up the sight would move around. That was the last time I let some  one install sights on a mill for me. I'm perfectly  capable of botching sight installation with hand tools.
Now I'm not saying that 's your problem but might be worth checking your sights.

[drago]

Have you tried weighing the balls?

[Hungry Horse]

 I used to weigh every ball I ran through my gun. Then an old timer told me I was wasting my time. He scooped up a bunch of my rejects, and took me to the range, and shot me into the dirt. I never weighed another ball, if it doesn’t have a big crater in one side of it it goes in the bag.

  Hungry Horse

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

HH:  I agree.  Also, I rarely orient the ball so the sprue is straight up.  However the ball goes down onto the patch, that's the way it gets loaded.  I cannot tell the difference in my shooting.

One more thing:  I don't notice a big difference in my shooting if I mix up my patches.  I was shooting our trail one sunny day and ran out of patches.  I retraced my steps going back to the start of the trail, and along the way, picked up and shot patches I found laying on the ground...dropped by other shooters.  I never missed a target using found patches, and they were quite a collection.  I concede that trail shooting at steel and novelty targets is not bullseye shooting, but I was pleasantly surprised that accuracy did not seem to diminish.

[WadePatton]

If that horizontal dispersion was all that was going on, but you say it's not always so flat. I trust you've given it a good workout, perhaps now is the time you ring up the bbl maker and see how it goes with them.

No maker wants a barrel that refuses to shoot out there looking pretty like that, but running down their reputation.

And a new idea just popped into my head: Maybe the rifling rate "relaxes" a bit  at the muzzle.  This is reportedly the death of any chance of accuracy. It's the opposite of gain-twist and doesn't have to be much. Would take some serious measuring to sort this out. Could be the bbl maker can measure such slight variations.

[Daryl]

I am at a loss, Robby. 
I do not know if when cut rifling with modern machines, if the barrel maker can influence the rate of twist while the cutter is running the length of the barrel.
I do know a barrel maker, who buttons modern rifle barrels and he told me he could influence (increase) the rate of twist towards the muzzle by 1/2" (thus, 10" at the breech, 9 1/2" at the muzzle. When cutting 10" rates of twist, this small amount would make what other wise was normal, into a screamer of a shooter.
As Wade mentioned, a rate that slows at the muzzle is not conducive to accurate shooting, however, in a slow twist ML, I do not know how much "influence" a slowing ROTwist would have, if any.
There has to be a reason - again, I'm at a loss.

[Dennis Glazener]

I can not help but think you have some sort of bedding/barrel problem.  Maybe to do with cross pins/wedges. Since you are target shooting I would try removing all cross pins/wedges except the front one to see if that helps.
Might get away with all removed if smaller caliber rifle.

It sounds to me like the barrel is "walking" when it heats up. I never had a ML do this but sure have fixed a few target rifles with similiar problems.
Dennis

[recurve]