Barrel re-bored to .54 - range report

As I mentioned in a couple threads previously (including one started by @Magungo1066), I had the barrel of my Tennessee Mtn Rifle rebored from .50 to .54 by Bobby Hoyt a couple weeks ago. For reference, it's a 38" straight barrel, 15/16" across the flats. In terms of feel and balance (which was my main reason for reboring), it does feel a shade lighter and balances a bit better.

Today I had a chance to get out to the range and try it out. I coned the muzzle slightly. I may cone more, but we'll see. I really only ended up trying one load, as it worked quite well (for my expectations - some of y'all probably have rifles that shoot way better). The load I used was 70g of OE 3F, .018" pillow tick patching, moose snot lube, and a .535 ball (which mic'ed out closer to .537). It was pretty tight to start, hence coning the barrel slightly. I don't know what to make of this, but I found that once it I got the ball past the first 6" or so of the barrel, it went down really easy. The picture is of my last group at 100yds. It's actually 4 shots (2 are just overlapping). I think I shot about a dozen rounds. I'm not going to do much more until I've got about 100 shots through it. I may tinker with different powder charges, but I think this will do fine for deer. Nicely, it was dead on at 50 yds, and about 4" low at 100, so I filed about a dozen swipes on my front sight and got it right where I want it.

You're shooting dang well. Groups will tighten a smidgen after a 100 or so rounds.

Did you find any patches? How did they look? That seems like a pretty tight load.

But that 100 yard group is darn good.

I couldn’t shoot that well with open sights even if the rifle shot into one hole. Nice job.

brazosland said:

Did you find any patches? How did they look? That seems like a pretty tight load.

But that 100 yard group is darn good.

Click to expand...

I didn't find patches. I'm afraid I was a little distracted by having a short time-frame to shoot and 3 rifles I wanted to test, so I was kinda focused on making sure I had all my accouterments for the next rifle together between strings, rather than looking for patches.

FWIW, I loaded and pulled a dry ball in my garage before coning, just to see hiw hard it would be to load that patch/ball combo what the rifling would do to the patch. Yes, it is pretty tight to start, but not too bad once started. When I pulled the ball, there was one slight tear in the patch from the muzzle (pre-coning), but only even wear the rest of the way down that corresponded to the rifling. Mr. Hoyt did a great job. It didn't shoot anywhere near this well before.