When loading a patched ball, position the sprue up and centered. Id use about 3 drams of ffg and seat the patched roun ball on the powder. A good patch is made of good quality, dense natural material. Step back and ram that load down the barrel and imagine what. Cotton or linen patches are used when firing with round balls and are unnecessary when. Developing an accurate load for a black powder muzzleloading rifle. Way more information than you ever wanted on how to fell a tree. Generally, the patch should be twice the thickness of the windage. The search for energy a good example of the early sportman was baker, a huge englishman who hunted both africa and india and wrote copiously about his adventures. It is easy to determinate the minimum thickness of the material. A round ball doesnt touch the rifling itself, the patch does. Most fast twist guns have shallower grooves than are usually seen with slow twist rifles primarily meant to shoot round balls. Here are the steps i follow in loading every shot, every season, every circumstance with all my muzzleloaders. Doing so deforms the ball and out of round balls may not fly true.
The easiest method to choose the right patch for your round ball rifle. Tough pioneer fellows such as daniel boone were served well with the patched lead round ball. I have since switched most of my ml deer hunting to a. I cant tell a lick of difference from the 5050 gun. Please note that what patch thickness you use will also play a part in what ball size to use. Whats the rule for ball size and patch size for a given. Now im not sure if the patch gets spun off the ball or if patch and ball just skims the rifling but either way a round ball wont shoot for squat out of a fast twist barrel unless you cut the powder down to an absolute minimum which makes it impractical for most purposes. Finding the most accurate load for a muzzleloading rifle requires an understanding of all. Windage here is the difference between bore diameter and ball diameter. Work up in small 35 grain increments to no more than the maximum listed in the manual for your firearm until you find the most accurate load. Patched round ball gun and game the friendliest gun. No pointsense in magnumizing a ml firing a patched round ball.
Start with 54 grains of black powder in a 54 caliber rifle. Patches are available in 10, 15, 20, and 25 thou thicknesses in most good muzzleloading stores. Traditionalmldata1 north american muzzleloader hunting. Wheelweight alloy balls are hard to load under this rule of thumb, so try to use pure lead balls. Of the larger bore round ball rifles suitable for taking big game, more. Thin patches arent durable, so youre probably better off with a. This photo shows the cards and wads used to load a muzzle loading shotgun. Round balls in fast twist rifles white muzzle loading.
Accuracy for me is to hit a golf ball at 100 yards off a benchrest all day long. You can buy good quality patches in your local blackpowder. Use a tight patch, however, as you dont want the recoil of the first shot to move the ball off the powder for the second one. Also, traditional muzzleloader only shooting orgnizations generally require the use of patched round ball only during official muzzleloading target competition.
Data reflect changes in velocities and energies depending n barrel. Work up a good accurate load somewhere between 5070 gr. This removes pockets of air in the load and serves other purposes. Blackpowder muzzleloading muzzleloading round ball ballistics. The lubed patch should be thick enough to hold the ball snugly on top of the powder charge and keep it centered in the bore.
One shooter found that, for him, the optimum powder charge for a round ball is approximately equal to ball diameter x 2 x rate of twist. We load one of our precision long rifles with a patched round ball. Out of a quality bore, a properly loaded patched round ball can prove deadly accurate at the ranges it was truly intended for and that is 25 to 50 yards. Pour the measured powder charge down the barrel and load a patched round ball directly on top of the powder charge omitting all the cards and wads. The common round ball will lose more than half its initial velocity in the first 100 yards and nearly a third again in the second hundred. However, shooting round balls from a choked barrel is not recommended. Of the larger bore round ball rifles suitable for taking big game, more have probably been sold in this caliber than any other. Loading the plr or muzzleloader with a patched round ball. Traditional muzzle loader loading a muzzle loading.