Bullet or PRB

[msellers]

All,

I am needing a spot of guidance and insight on an old barrel I am building a gun around at some point. It is about 30 cal with a 1 in 24 twist and with the sleeved to this caliber about a 29" bore length. I am curious what this should be shooting. I am not up on my small small bore muzzleloaders. I think a Ohio or late plains rifle made from this old barrel and old components I have will make for a cool gun. Will try and post pictures later.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

 

[Pete G]

With the faster twist I would say use a bullet, but a short one.

 

[msellers]

With the faster twist I would say use a bullet, but a short one.

Any suggestions? Haven't located much on anything even remotely recent for this.
Mike

 

[tenngun]

With that fast of twist I would think bullet. However English built fast twist round ball rifles back in the day, so...
Try low charge in prb and see where it goes. Rifles like kitty cats will let you know right away what they like and what they don’t.

 

[msellers]

This is a extremely heavy barrel for such a small calliber as it is a 1 1/16" diameter larger caliber mid 1800s barrel that was sleeved at some point. I wish I knew it's history. A light load PRB might be the very ticket.

 

[BrownBear]

It's all going to boil down to rifling depth. With deeper rifling bullets likely won't shoot for poot, but PRB's will be fine. If shallow rifling, bullets will be best at the expense of max vel on PRB's. Push the PRB's too fast with shallow rifling and they start to slip or skid past the rifling apparently. Whatever the explanation, you can work PRB loads up to a certain point with shallow rifling, then accuracy suddenly goes to heck.

I have a 30 cal flinter (.290" balls) with deeper rifling, and the upper end of charges is higher than I've ever tried. I've worked with PRB's in several larger cal rifles (50 and 54 cal) having shallow rifling, and got stellar accuracy down between 30 and 50 or 60 grains of 3f, but at 80 grains couldn't hit the backstop at 100 yards, and had trouble keeping on the paper at 50 yards.

 

[msellers]

Here are the photos I promised. It also has very shallow rifling with 5 lands.