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Working up a 38 cal (rifle) load

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Col. Batguano

75 Cal.
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I'm still working up a load for my 38 cal Lehigh (48" FCI barrel). I started at 40 gr, FFFg, and have been going up by 5 gr at a time. So far I'm up to 50 gr FFFg and the .015" patches are still being shredded. .375" 83 gr. ball. RB rifling 1:48" ROT. FCI barrels are milled about .001"-.002" tighter at the crown than they are at the breech, so they're a bit tight to get started, even with a short starter. I tried using .018" patches ONE time, and I had to use a hammer all the way down the bore to get it in. 10 shot groups @ 25 yards (benched and sand bagged) are running 2 1/2"-3 1/4", which I think is too big,

What have you guys found to be your optimal RB loads in this, or calibers close to it (36 or 40)? I'm thinking that with a lighter ball it takes a greater powder charge to upset the ball (less mass) to get it to obdurate in to the rifling.

Thoughts?
 
If this is a new barrel, I would suggest lapping it with a lead lap or with a tight patch with JB bore paste. Your starting load for the 38 is reasonable, and should not shred patches unless the bore has some rough spots. The other thing to try is a felt buffer wad over the powder before seating the patch and ball.
 
Very puzzling. 50 gr. real bp with a 1:48" twist should be more than you need. What brand of powder are you using? e.g. Swiss or Olde Ensford might be too hot with those loads. Try dropping to 30 gr. and see what happens. FWIW, I was having a similar problem with a new rifle until I eliminated all normal factors. Discovered the problem was the nut behind the trigger.:confused: Keep shooting, let us know what is happening.
 
"So far I'm up to 50 gr FFFg and the .015" patches are still being shredded"

Have you tried putting down a dry patch on the powder before the ball? If your patches are "shredded" or burnt through you aren't going to get much accuracy. That's a lot of powder in a .38
 
No, I have not tried any kind of a wad like a dried patch on top of the powder yet. Honestly, I thought over-powder wads had to be roughly bore diameter, rather than just a wadded up clump of cloth. Like punched out of felt or cardboard with a circular cutter.

As I said, I started with 40 gr FFFg Goex. I've generally found that caliber-sized loads are usually a good place to start, and 40 gr. is pretty darn close to 38. For lube I've only used Mink Oil and spit patches so far. Not much difference between them to be honest, but the spit patches are easier to load after about 5-6 shots. Going by the formula's, an awful lot of the time people have found that most accurate loads wind up being right around 150% of bore diameter. In a 50 there's a fair amount of kick with 75 grains. In a 38, I wouldn't expect to see much even with that much powder. I just hope it doesn't take that much to start making ragged holes.

I will not be hunting with this gun. It's mostly for hugging, and occasional shooting.

I have about a 1/2 pound of Swiss left at home (from back in the day) but I didn't see the need to break out the good stuff this early in the process, and, honestly, in the past I haven't noticed a big difference between Swiss and Goex. But maybe I need to. The smaller the loads (in suppository rifles) the more finicky they become about loads and powder types.
 
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it may not be the load or the powder or the patch. ive solved many a problem like yours by having the barrel cryo treated with the pipes on it so they are stress relived and the harmonics are in tune with each other. do that at just a little over 100 dollars at the cryo co. of your choise and your problems will end. it workeds every time for me. will be easier to load also and more easy to clean.
 
No, you can put a dry patch directly down the bore onto the powder. It will prevent burn through on your main patch.

Caliber size load thing- the smaller the bore the hotter that first load will be. I'd be willing to bet that 50 grain charge is pushing 1900 FPS+ - that's pretty hot, doubt it would yield the best groups. My .40 gets 2,000FPS with 50 grains of 3F Old Eynsford in a 36" barrel. I shoot 30grains in mine.

In a 30 -40 grain load your not going to see a big velocity difference between Swiss and red can Goex.

i don't know anything about FCI barrels, but I'm sure they are good.

Quite frankly, when shooting at 25 yards any load should be pretty much just one ragged hole- you really have to get further out to be able to tune group sizes. You should be getting a LOT better than 2.5" with any load. By that I mean is if you are getting 2.5" groups with 35 grains, it's not suddenly going to start punching single holes with 45grains- nothing shrinks group sizes that much.
Burned through patches are just about the biggest culprit in bad groups, and I would bet it is causing your troubles- try a dry patch first. You don't "wad" them up like newspaper. Just take a precut patch and push it down the bore as if it had a ball in it.

I'm not sure what "hugging" a rifle is, but I'd like to try it!

In my fun/everyday shooters I like to have 2 ball/ patch combo's, one not too tight but still needs a short starter, and one I can start with my thumb. Loading without a starting rod is easier and accurate enough for shooting cans etc.
 
Thanks for the suggestions! Those are all worthy of trying. What the heck, right?

As far as what "hugging" a rifle is, that (to me) means just keeping it close where I can see it and shoulder it every so often when I'm in my study rather than locking it up in a dark cabinet in the basement. A 2 year odyssey to build it, I can't just relegate it to that, -----until I build the next one that is!
 
Very sad when you have to explain rifle hugging to a gun guy. !!! I can hardly even watch a movie anymore without a rifle in my lap. :) The addition of one or two felt wads will often eliminate patch burn. My Jeager is like that, I use two wonder wads under the ball, although I'm going to experiment soon with wax biscuits instead of the Wonder wads, or perhaps a biscuit over the powder, and then a wonder wad on top of that. I think a wad or two will work better than wadded up patching material. (or not?) I would think.

Wonder wads do work good, the drawback being they will contaminate the powder over time, not a concern if you are not going to hunt with it.

Your groups at 25 certainly are too big, should be shooting sub-one inch. I think you should achieve an accurate load with a light charge, (as G says) then work from there. Also a smaller ball, thicker patch would be a good try. The thinner the patch, the more difficult it will be to eliminate the burn.
 
I think the crown is a possible cause of cut patches. I’d use the Daryl method - use your thumb and 180 grit paper, rotating the barrel 90 degrees every so often, then go to finer and finish up at 400 grit. This puts a gentle polished curved edge to it that works better than a countersink. If you can get a kid or woman with a smaller thumb to do the job so much the better. I don’t do any load variations till the shredded patches problem is solved. Email me and I can send you some bore polishing compound if you’re inclined to try that. Works best on a cast lap.
 
That is good advise, the crown can be a possible cause, but, my Jeager has a coned muzzle, and will still produce a patch that appears to be cut, unless there is a wad or two under the ball. The two wads will take it from burnt and cut patches, to use-em-again patches. I do fire a heavy charge in that rifle, which of course has something to do with it.

I know some/many rifles will produce nice normal, uncut/un-burnt patches with no wad and a light charge. With a wax biscuit, my Plains Pistol was producing fired patches, (a week or so ago) which are thin, that could be used again, and I did in fact shoot two patches twice that I picked up down-range. Again, I always seem to have better luck with patches going with small ball/thick patch, instead of large ball/thin patch. If a .018" patch is way too thick, I'm thinking one size smaller ball. And wad. And lighter load.
 
I'm still working up a load for my 38 cal Lehigh (48" FCI barrel). I started at 40 gr, FFFg, and have been going up by 5 gr at a time. So far I'm up to 50 gr FFFg and the .015" patches are still being shredded. .375" 83 gr. ball. RB rifling 1:48" ROT. FCI barrels are milled about .001"-.002" tighter at the crown than they are at the breech, so they're a bit tight to get started, even with a short starter. I tried using .018" patches ONE time, and I had to use a hammer all the way down the bore to get it in. 10 shot groups @ 25 yards (benched and sand bagged) are running 2 1/2"-3 1/4", which I think is too big,

What have you guys found to be your optimal RB loads in this, or calibers close to it (36 or 40)? I'm thinking that with a lighter ball it takes a greater powder charge to upset the ball (less mass) to get it to obdurate in to the rifling.

Thoughts?

Are you sure your patches are 100% cotton?
 
I'm still working up a load for my 38 cal Lehigh (48" FCI barrel). I started at 40 gr, FFFg, and have been going up by 5 gr at a time. So far I'm up to 50 gr FFFg and the .015" patches are still being shredded. .375" 83 gr. ball. RB rifling 1:48" ROT. FCI barrels are milled about .001"-.002" tighter at the crown than they are at the breech, so they're a bit tight to get started, even with a short starter. I tried using .018" patches ONE time, and I had to use a hammer all the way down the bore to get it in. 10 shot groups @ 25 yards (benched and sand bagged) are running 2 1/2"-3 1/4", which I think is too big,

What have you guys found to be your optimal RB loads in this, or calibers close to it (36 or 40)? I'm thinking that with a lighter ball it takes a greater powder charge to upset the ball (less mass) to get it to obdurate in to the rifling.

Thoughts?

I would try lapping the barrel some like others have suggested.
I prefer shorter barrels in the 30" to 38" range for several reasons; one of which is that the shorter barrels are more forgiving of marginal lubrication since the lubricant doesn't have to do it's job over such a long length of travel.
 
Are the patches shredded or burnt? Shredding could be coming from the crown as others have suggested or from sharp edges on the rifling. Never a bad idea to smooth or polish the crown, so I would start there. Burnt patches may be too thin and a wad over the powder could help. I always go up one size in wads, so for a 38 would try 7/16 diameter.

One way to see what the rifling is doing to the patch is to remove a patched ball you have loaded. Would suggest using a brass or copper rod that is placed in the barrel before loading a patched ball partway down the barrel. Then, using rod as a slide hanmer, remove the patched ball. Cuts or tears in the patch would indicate sharp edges at the crown or in the rifling.

One way to quickly smooth sharp edges is to wrap some green Scotch Bright pad around the end of a cleaning rod and work it up and down the bore. A little polishing compound speeds things up. A more traditional way is to shoot a couple hundred shots to ‘break’ the barrel in.

If it were me, I would start with 10 or 20 grain loads while working the kinks out. And you may be surprised at how well these party popper loads can shoot.
 
Yes, as I've probably mentioned a bazillion times, I have an original long rifle in 39"-40" (a .375" ball is a nice easy fit) with the original powder measure, which was used both for hunting/survival/fighting, (documented) and that powder charge/measure is very small, probably 30 grains at the very most.
 
Yes, as I've probably mentioned a bazillion times, I have an original long rifle in 39"-40" (a .375" ball is a nice easy fit) with the original powder measure, which was used both for hunting/survival/fighting, (documented) and that powder charge/measure is very small, probably 30 grains at the very most.
A fixed 15 grain powder measure gives you quick load options of 15, 30, 45 and 60 grains.
 
I can certainly drop back down easily enough. The back edge of the 1/4" vent liner is barely above the plug step. I would have to do some experiments to find out what the bare minimum of powder is to fully cover the vent liner. Easy enough. Drill a 3/8" hole to the depth in a block of wood, pour in the powder, take it out and measure. A wild guess at this point is probably right around 20 grains.

As for the crown, Charles Burton at FCI has a reputation for creating very very fine and polished barrels, both inside and out. Certainly the outside was much better than any Rice barrel I've ever gotten. This particular one was his 3rd iteration at making it for me. (Long story there, but I never got the first 2, and after a 2 year wait, when this one finally came, it was bent which I didn't find out about until it was time to shoot it.) There is no roughness that I can feel in the bore. On one of the previous ones he complained that when he test shot it, that it was shredding patches then too. (They are not just cut and burned through on this one. They are blown to smithereens, and very few pieces are even findable.)

The patches I'm using are the TotW pre-cut linen dry patches. Pretty sure those are ok. The balls are Hornady .375" swaged lead ones. Not sure if there is a commercially made .370" ball out there to experiment with, but I'm certainly game to try if I can find one. The next commercial size ball down from there is .355", and that's a LOT of patch to fill in. I'm not too keen on buying a mould just to experiment with, but certainly would once the right size is found. When I saw the commercial price at Cabella's for the RB's (which I paid) I was rather shocked. Something like $12.50 for 100. Still, 100 RB's covers a lot of shooting, unlike buying suppository ammo for those faddish guns.

As for my groups, remember I am shooting 10 shot groups. That's a bigger number than most folks use. There are usually 3-5 holes that DO indeed touch, and I disregard the obvious flyers. Shots are all shot from the set trigger position (DASST with 2 options.) And, part of it I'm SURE is me. It's a flint gun with very low and relatively fine sights. I'm 62 and just don't see that well any more either. I'm not that pretty any more either, but the gun doesn't seem to mind if I hug her from time to time.
 
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There is a big difference between cut patches, and burned patches.
Cut by rifling can be cured by cleaning up the crown, and/or rifling. This is usually not a problem with FCI barrels.
Burning is usually a lube problem.
Every roundball barrel of quality manufacturing today will shoot better than I can. I ALWAYS start out with a .005" under size ball and a .020" patch with liquid lube. The pastes just cause problems for me.
From there, it's just coming up with a charge that makes the smallest groups.
At 25 yds, you should be able to get a ragged single hole.
 
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