sighting in a .58 rifle musket for 200 yards

recently purchased a 1864 rifle musket in .58 and the rifle comes with a blank 2 leaf rear sight. How do i go about sighting the rifle in at 150 or even 200 yards from scratch?

Steveoko922 said:

recently purchased a 1864 rifle musket in .58 and the rifle comes with a blank 2 leaf rear sight. How do i go about sighting the rifle in at 150 or even 200 yards from scratch?

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Personally would start with the lowest rear leaf sight and see where the gun shot at 100 yards and find an accurate load at that distance. You could then calculate how much adjustment you have available with the tallest leaf and confirm it at the range. Just go slow and get things figured out at a shorter distance, say 100 yards first.

For reference, even though a different type gun, you might find the video below interesting that posted by @duelist1954, aka Mike Beliveau, some time ago on the forum about setting up a gun to take down ‘Red Coats’ out to 200 yards or so. Note the targets he uses and his aim points.

Steveoko922 said:

recently purchased a 1864 rifle musket in .58 and the rifle comes with a blank 2 leaf rear sight. How do i go about sighting the rifle in at 150 or even 200 yards from scratch?

Click to expand...

Have you found out what diameter you need?

Steveoko922 said:

recently purchased a 1864 rifle musket in .58 and the rifle comes with a blank 2 leaf rear sight. How do i go about sighting the rifle in at 150 or even 200 yards from scratch?

Click to expand...

Start at 50 and work up.

What is the math to figuring out the correct rear sight height

The very first thing I would do is figure out what minie to use. Exact sizing is absolutely imperative, if your bullet is undersize, you will never get any kind of consistency out of it. You need to measure the exact size of your bore, and then use a pure lead minie sized to no more than .001 under that bore size. There are also many different styles of minie to choose from. I would just put a small paint mark or something similar on the top of the lower rear sight leaf and work up a load before even thinking of cutting the sight.

Lots of really good advice here. Get the rifle to group at 50yd first, then start extending out.