Bad Balls

[Loyalist Dave]

So at the range Monday..., WOW problems.

My rifle, using the same powder as in the past months, the same fabric, the same load..., huge groups at 50 and 100 yards. :shocked2: :redface: Groups were nice a few months ago...,

So it's a .54 caliber Colerain barrel, 38" swamped in my Cabin Creek Mountain rifle. Fired from a sandbagged rest, using 70 grains of GOEX 3Fg and a .530 round ball wrapped in cotton pillow ticking of .015..., spit patched and cut at the muzzle. The crown of the muzzle looks just fine, and inspection of the patches shows rifling markings and no cutting....,

So at 50 yards I shot a couple of fliers from what would've been a nice group of just under 2"...the fliers were about 4" out, and not near each other. At 100 yards I had a nice 4" group going then tossed another flier..., like 6" out. :shocked2: :shake:

Fliers at both distances were to the left and to the right, horizontal, not vertical which would've led me to believe either the powder is bad or more likely I was pouring inconsistent amounts.

So the ball was .530 Hornady...,and it's swaged, not poured into a mold when it's made. So..., all I can think right now is that some of them are not properly round..., and I'm getting the fliers from them.

:idunno:

Any other thoughts?

LD

 

[stubshaft]

Inconsistent pressure when seating the ball?

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Interesting, but I followed my normal procedure. OH and I swabbed between shots. I should think if the pressure or the swabbing was changing the burn characteristics..., I'd string vertical, not toss an occasional left or right flier...
:idunno:

LD

 

[stubshaft]

I presume you checked your tang screw for tightness as well as the sights. I have weighed some of the Hornady swaged balls and found them to be inconsistent. This was years ago and now I use only hand cast balls so their QC may have gotten better or I may have just had a bad batch.

 

[FishDFly]

"So the ball was .530 Hornady...,and it's swaged, not poured into a mold when it's made. So..., all I can think right now is that some of them are not properly round..., and I'm getting the fliers from them."

Swaged balls are not consistent in weight, need to weight them and as mentioned, consistent seating pressure is necessary. Most folks miss that aspect of consistency in shooting.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

:thumbsup:

LD

 

[Artificer]

What was the differences in outside temperatures, light conditions, wind and humidity from a few months ago to now?

Also, if your rifle has barrel pins, are the holes in the lugs elongated to account for natural swelling of the wood?

Gus

 

[Katahdin]

All the same,, except/including the shooter???? More /less coffee? rushed? preoccupied? change of clothes.changing LOP? Over thinking the shot? Lots of factors in question!.I find, I chase the solution once it starts.

 

[FishDFly]

All the same,, except/including the shooter???? More /less coffee? rushed? preoccupied? change of clothes.changing LOP? Over thinking the shot? Lots of factors in question!.I find, I chase the solution once it starts.

I get to shoot with a High Master pistol shooter and his scores started to slide downward.

His answer to reverse the downslide was to go back to the basics of shooting.

Folks here want to over analyze everything, go back to the basics of shooting and start from there.

 

[ZUG]

If you are looking for the best accuracy you can get then you need to weigh the balls either hand cast or store bought swagged balls - pure and simple. Everything else also has to be uniform and constant to produce repeatability.
If you are just "plinking" then who cares - minute of tin can is just fine.

 

[Grenadier1758]

My first thought was casting voids. But these are swaged balls. I still think there may be weight differences. You have a few fliers and not a sudden scattered pattern. So the weight difference might be a cause of your problem. A check for out-of-roundness might also be worthwhile.

It is possible that the sights are moving, but that would result in a scattering of the group into a pattern. While pondering other notions, it would be a good preemptive move to make sure the underlug pin holes are slotted to allow for expansion of the barrel.

Was this a cloudy day with occasional periods of bright sunlight that caused a glare on the front sight? Bursts of wind that blew even that heavy 54 caliber ball around some?

Extremely unlikely, what is the possibility of a flinch?

 

[Juice Jaws]

Is this just one trip to the range? If it is then don't worry too much. We all have bad shooting days for no reason. If its 3 or 4 trips, then you need to go back to basis, and see what you are doing different.

 

[azmntman]

Weigh them balls! Size does matter! :redface: Toss any that are not like REAL close to same weight.

Get the Dutch System

FWIW I have a CVA Bobcat .36 that has never NOT shot about a 4" group at 25 yds. :shake: Well this weekend I was able to get 1" groups and several touching. NOT using dry patch so I am hopeful that may tighten em up more. Only thing different (and I tried about everything else) was I used a super tight weave but THIN (thumb start) patch :idunno: ).

 

[nhmoose]

To LD not the above poster.

What were your wind flags doing at each shot? Sounds like wind to me but who knows. Weight of balls don't do that by the way.

 

[Grimord]

You are correct about weighing the balls. I have found as much as a 4 grain deviation from the average when weighing a box of Hornaday .530 round balls. I did a test using the average weight balls, +/- .5 grains, and the light weights. The light weight balls grouped about 3" high and 3" left of the group of the average weight balls.
I have heard it said here on this forum that weighing the balls was a waste of time, but after this revelation I have begun to weigh my own cast balls and the store bought swagged balls for consistency. All light weight balls now get put into the pot for re-casting.

 

[Sasquash]

I have seen swaged balls that simply weren´t balls....the shape was more or less oval.

If you measure your balls, you´ll see that they are far more oval than cast ones.

I shoot german H&N swaged balls. Are affordable, rather round and do their job.

For me, casting small balls (36´s, 45´s) is a real pain.

 

[Vaino]

Don't really know what's causing the "flyers"....but I've used both Speer and Hornady swaged RBs interchangeably in my .45 squirrel LR and never had any problems w/ head hits on squirrels.

When a new box of swaged RBs is opened, a mike measures if they are the size stated on the label and that's all I ever did...no weighing or miking dias. I would say that w/ 98% head hits, the swaged RBS were very uniform in both concentricity and weight....Fred

 

[M. De Land]

How long ago did you do any target work with the rifle?
It just might be you that is the problem if you haven't been shooting in a while.
Don't ask me how I found this out! :rotf:

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I have seen swaged balls that simply weren´t balls....the shape was more or less oval.

If you measure your balls, you´ll see that they are far more oval than cast ones.

This is what I'd heard others report on swaged balls, BUT, since I never had a problem with them, I ignored it.

Also since I never had a problem with accuracy from this rifle with the Hornady ball (in more than 10 years) I didn't worry about checking the balls for weight.

I was shooting from a sand-bagged position on a bench, to ensure I'm only dealing with checking sights and not with my body mechanics too.

It's only been a few months since I last shot this particular rifle. No problems back then. The range is located in a hollow, so no wind, only the occasional breeze. Judging from the way the smoke from the rifle simply hung in front of the bench that day... zero wind at all.

So I think it might be weight, but I was leaning toward the balls being out of "true" due to swaging. Perhaps it's both for a few, and I just got unlucky with several that were "off" last Monday. First, I thought maybe I was for some reason burning through patches, or cutting them. Odd for this barrel, but I'd seen that sort of problem in the past, throwing fliers, with a new rifle that cut the patches. When the patch cutting was corrected in that new rifle, so did the accuracy on that rifle. As I previously wrote, I checked the spent patches and they looked fine...like textbook examples that I've seen in black powder how-to-shoot books.

Now I do weigh ball when I cast to ensure I don't have a void. So I suppose my laziness bit me in the arse, with the swaged balls. :redface:


So I will cast a pound into .530 ball, and see what they do. I'll also approach the situation as if I've just bought this rifle and I'm working up my first load..., measure everything careful, like patch thickness, etc.

Ah well..., Alle Kunst ist umsonst, Wenn ein Engel in das Zündloch Prunst (All skill is for nothing when an angel píşşes in your touchhole) :shocked2:


THANKS so much for the ideas folks. :hatsoff:

LD

 

[excess650]

I've checked swaged balls with a micrometer and noticed that they do vary in diameter, but soft enough to seemingly not matter.

Back around 1980 I bought one of those cheap moulds from Dixie Gunworks. It didn't have a sprue cutter, so the sprues had to be cut with side cutters. Naturally, They didn't cut as nicely as I would have liked, but shot them anyway. I had my 1st year CVA Mountain Rifle and a Dixie Tennessee Mountain rifle (flinlock) and BOTH grouped better with my cast balls than with Hornadys.

I have better moulds these days and pressure cast with a ladle, so no worries about voids. Finding soft lead is more of a problem short of paying the $$ for virgin lead.