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Do I want Radius groove?

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My radius grooved Colerain barrel on my 1803 Harper's Ferry are not that deep, so it works fine if my eyes work. The important concern is to fill the grooves. It should not matter if the grooves are radiused or square as long as the patch fills the groove to minimize blow by and thus keeps the patch intact. Deep radius grooves are not good for conical or minie' balls.
 
I have a .54 Goodoin and .50 Green Mountain, .54 Lyman, 50 Austin Halleck and a .36 custom unknown barrel - all square bottom. Then a .54, .50 and .40 Colerain radiused. I don't notice any difference in cleaning between them. One thing to mention is the . 54 Colerain has a faster 1:56 twist.
 
In the days of yore if you was sharpening your groove cutter just how square do you think those grooves started out?

Or would end up with cutting grooves and resharpening after a few barrels?

Do you think it would have started out or ended up a nice perfect radius?
 
Here we go 🎯 I have several square cut rifled muzzle loaders all needed time and took a lot of load development (green mtn barrel took 2yrs to find the load & some steal wool to smooth out rifling). BUT my round cut riffling from Getz seams to shoot everything well :) right from the first shot to the last. P
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hotos are the same load ball .490 patch .020 denim mutton tallow lube and swiss 3f 70 grns only difference is the getz does have a peep sight (yet) cleaning is the same seem to get more shots from getz round riffling before needing to wipe. The getz was the easiest to get good to great results with. The rule I was told with round rifle USE thick patches. top getz barreled Lancaster bottom green mtn
 
Got the barrel in and done. Can’t say enough good stuff about this Rice barrel.

The finish inside and out is really extremely well done. Great barrel and great folks to do business with...it cost a little more but the quality is absolutely worth it.

Couple of pics. Left it in the white for now. Gonna knock the shine down a bit with some Naval jelly.

When it stops raining this week, the shooting starts. Will post pics of targets and loads.

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Round bottom rifling will be a little pickier in finding a good load than SB, and probably need a bigger charge to find acceptable accuracy, but they're all somewhat individualistic as to their preferences.
 
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