Rate of Twist

[Craig Wilcox]

Having acquired an un-touched Thompson/Center "Hawken" in .50 cal, I find the rifling to be too shallow for me to measure.  Does anyone know the rate of twist?  I hear of people shooting saboted projectiles from them, and wondering if the ROT is fast enough to allow this.

Appreciate any and all responses.

[Levy]

Craig, I have two of the old TC Hawken rifles in .50.  Bought mine back in 1973.  It has always been very accurate with a patched round ball (.015 patch, .490 ball, 80 grs of 2ff).  I have taken several deer and pigs with it along with a few squirrels (before I got a smaller caliber squirrel rifle).  I've tried the maxi bullets with 100 grs. of 2ff and they seemed to be pretty accurate, though I've never really seen the need to use them.  I believe the rate of twist is one turn in 48".  James Levy

[EC121]

I believe the T/Cs were 1-48.  Rifling is about .004".  They work fine with roundballs or bullets.  Years ago there was  fellow at a turkey shoot in  Columbus,Ga. who won about 11 turkeys with one. Breaking a clay pigeon on a moving arm at 70 or 80yds. got a frozen turkey.  They had a slowly motor driven arm with a clay bird on each end that rotated up over a railroad tie for about 4 sec.  You had to break it before it went down or wait until the other end came up.  It was fun.  He won a bunch that day with his T/C.

[Craig Wilcox]

Thanks, Levy and Electronic AWACS guy - I'll go with 1:48, and try to shoot whatever will fit down the barrel.

It's a pretty good barrel that responded well to cold bluing.  The stock is plain walnut., but tight-grained, easy to carve the lock surround much closer than the 3/8" supplied.  The patch box- - -   Well, better have a strong fingernail to pry it open.

[Bob Roller]

 A bullet one and one half calibers long and patched would be a good hunting bullet and would be stable in flight with a 1 in 48 twist.
Bob Roller

[Fyrstyk]

I believe that all of the production barrels from T/C were 1:48" twist.  The custom shop made barrels with a slow round ball twist of 1:66.

[Tim Ault]

I believe the only barrels they made that weren’t 48 twist were the Pa Hunter models with the Oct/round barrels  they were 60 something twist for round ball

[Daryl]

I agree, Bob. The Maxiball was a very accurate slug in the standard 48" twist in the button rifled TC barrels.
Back in the early 70's, 3 young mounties went on a bear hunt up in the Nass Valley, North of Terrace, B.C. We
were all armed with TC .50's & all of us were using the Maxiballs with around 80-90gr. 2G GOEX or Go, whatever
it was.
One of the lad's rifles would not hold a Maxiball inside the barrel if the muzzle was tipped downwards - noticed this
as we were walking along. 1/2 the bullet was sticking out the muzzle.  Good thing we were all smokers then, as Tom
was able to paper patch the bullet in a cigarette paper to keep in on the powder.
Our hunt was a wash-out, but was fun & we learned something. Later, we measured the groove diameter of these 3
rifles. Mine was .004" deep, Taylor's was .003" deep and Tom's was .0015" deep, with an equivalent oversize bore.  Thus
we can assume there was a variety of groove diameters in these rifles.
My rifle actually shot very well with patched round balls and "brushed" denim that I found ran .022" compressed in calipers.
I used a .495" ball and the early experimentation I did resulted in the crowning design I use today, which allows such snug
combinations. My accuracy actually improved the more powder I used, right up to 110gr. 2F, however for normal shooting, I
used only 85gr. 2F.  2F (of the day) indeed, gave me much better accuracy and cleaner shooting than did 3F, with both round
balls and the slugs.
Years later, we found these slugs were very poor performers (killers) on moose, but that's another story.

[Levy]

I think some of TC's .32 barrels in the Cherokee and the Seneca had a faster twist of something like one turn in 34, but I'm not sure about the .36's.  James Levy

[Daryl]

I don't know either, James. My wife had a .36 Seneca that she bought while we were dating. Most of our dates were at a gun club. LOL, or shooting with Taylor, up in Squamish where he
was posted.  It shot the 128gr. Maxiball very well and well enough to routinely hit the 325yard rock at the Squamish range. The rock was about 14" to 15" in diameter. LOL - we could shoot back then. We probably couldn't even see it today.
I don't know what the ROT was on those rifles. She sure won a lot of prizes at rendezvous with it, though. Heck of a good shoot and shot patched .350" round balls most of the time.
I still have that RB mould and use it for my .36 rifle. Her rifle now has a .45 GM bl.
Daughter Carol shooting it now, with a .45 GM bl. I also replaced the lock, with a real one having leaf springs. Bedford hammer, red-oak under rib and case forend cap - oh yeah- ugly aluminum rod this day.

[Dphariss]

Having acquired an un-touched Thompson/Center "Hawken" in .50 cal, I find the rifling to be too shallow for me to measure.  Does anyone know the rate of twist?  I hear of people shooting saboted projectiles from them, and wondering if the ROT is fast enough to allow this.

Appreciate any and all responses.

You can still get Green Mountain drop in barrels I think. Its by far the best course of action if you intend to keep it.
Dan

[Don Steele]

The overwhelming number of Thompson Center original 50 cal Hawken style rifles were offered in 1:48 twist, with a small number of "round ball barrel" rifles in 1:66. The examples of those that I've seen are so marked as such on the barrel.
The only plastic sabot I ever tried in my T/C barrels was the old "Poly-Patch" product briefly offered by Butler Creek. Being a shooter who likes "trying things", I bought some of those when I saw them, gave them a try and had poor results. I still have a bag of each design they offered, on my shelf. I have No idea how modern sabotted bullets will work in original T/C barrels. The inline rifles they are designed for have faster twist rates than your T/C. I have done some testing of my 1:48 barrel T/C Hawken style rifle using a variety of lead conical bullets without plastic sabot using relatively heavy powder charges in the 80-110 gn range with the goal of finding the best combination for hog hunting. NOTE: I was not interested in comparing roundballs to conicals for this project. When I want to shoot roundballs from my T/C rifles, I use the Green Mountain barrels Dphariss mentioned with excellent results.
To evaluate conicals in 1:48 original T/C barrels I purchased and tested:
Hornady Great Plains conical. 385 gn HP/HB ( hollow point/hollow base)
T/C Maxi-Ball 370 gns
Buffalo Bullet Co. 385 HP/HB
T/C Maxi-Hunter 350 gn ( dimple-point...not really hollow)
T/C Maxi-Hunter 275 gn.
Minimum 5 shot groups, using various powder charges. All shots fired from a rest at 50 yds. with iron sights and my "old eyes". 
Results:
All of the conicals shot well enough to hunt with at the moderate ranges I typically encounter game in S.E. Georgia, 50 yds and less.
That said, the clear winner for precision (group size) was the Hornady Great Plains, 385 gn HP/HB bullet. Ragged one-hole groups at 50 with 90 gns of powder. With that result in the book, I bought several boxes of them, and went hunting.
The Hornady bullet performed flawlessly on Georgia hogs.

[Dobyns]

I had a mid '90s TC .50 with (assumed) 48" twist.  It never shot well with PRB regardless of ball diameter or patch thickness.  I tried some sabots and found they shot like a laser with up to 270gr Speer Gold Dots.

I found another, seemingly unfired .54 barrel for that same rifle and it shot PRBs well from the getgo.

[Bob Roller]

Going to the absurd,would a gain twist be for those who can't make up their minds? Seeing as how this discussion involves TC and their barrels,Does anyone remember that John Baird started the Buckskin Report Magazine as a protest against their breech plugs and low end guns of any kind.This was in the early 1970's
The problem was with breech plugs that had been installed by people who knew absolutely NOthing about stress fractures that occur when the cast to finished shape plugs were installed and if the flats on the plug did not align with those on the barrel then a very long bar was used to force the alignment.There were problems with trying to remove them and at least one blew out with tragic injuries.
I had one in the shop and could not break the plug loose and neither could Big Bill Henderson.6' and 8" and 365 pounds with a wrench extended by a piece of pipe about 3' long.I have no idea how many of these guns are still around with this yet unknown problem but I'll bet
that there are some srill out "there".
Bob Roller

[Daryl]

Scary times indeed. Don Robinson of Robinson's Firerams in PG, sectioned a TC plug once, out of curiosity to see what amount of actual metal was between the cross-wise drilled flash channel and the top of the lock plated.  He just happened to find a casting flaw, a cavity in the casting between the drilled screw hole and the cut-away under the nipple-seat portion of the patent breech. There was no more than a couple thou. of metal between the flash channel and where the lock plate site. The lock plate was where the "blast" would manifest itself.
Not a healthy design. If the lock plate had been filed out to fit a normal patent breech, that small flaw would have been nothing to be concerned about.

[Mike from OK]

Years ago I had a T/C Hawken caplock in .50 caliber... Been a minute but I'm reasonably certain it was a 1:48 twist. Don't really remember how well it shot.

I also had a Cabela's Hawken cap gun in .50 caliber. 48 twist. .490 ball, .018 PT patch, 70 grs. of 777. Bit snug to load but it was very accurate. And it thumped.

Mike

[Craig Wilcox]

Daryl, that picture of your daughter is fabulous!  The snow and the dark cedars really add a lot of character to the photo of a young lady enjoying our sport.

[Bob Roller]

Daryl, that picture of your daughter is fabulous!  The snow and the dark cedars really add a lot of character to the photo of a young lady enjoying our sport.

Craig is right.She is a doll and makes me wish we had a girl but after the 2nd boy we went out of the baby business.
On 8 July 2018 there was a lovely young woman that came into my life and has been there ever since,I have given her a lot of help in her
career as a "Social Studies" teacher in NC.She IS interested in our activities and wanted to make the CLA Show in 2018 but the move to NC
messed her plans up.She and her sister were coming to Lexington for a shopping spree and the show was to be the first stop.
We have adopted her as an adult grand daughter and we have 2 biological adult grand daughters ages 24 and 29 and now a 31 year old one.
I will ask her if I can put her picture here but she has had problems with stalkers and may nix that.
Bob Roller

[Daryl]

That wool Makinaw coat she is wearing is my "old" camo hunting coat. Very warm, thick and doubled & is only barely too big for her.
By the time this picture was taken, I had out-grown the coat. LOL She kinda "took it over".