greetings from Alpine, east of el cajon. shoot on my property (600 yd range). New to this cap and ball sport waiting on my first one to arrive. Been a center fire guy for 60+yrs. Looking forward to this new sport. Only shoot steel and paper now.
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California
- Thread starter MikeHM
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Greetings from NorCal, specifically Butte County. No hunting, but I do shoot cap and ball revolvers and a percussion rifle (once I get it working again.) It would be nice to find somewhere that actually carries real black powder out this way but no luck so far. No clubs around here that I'm aware of, I'm usually the one guy making smoke out at Oroville Public Range "Clay Pit" out on Rabe road. That venue gets a little 'intense' so I'd love to find somewhere else. Cheers!
greeting from Kern co. have a nice range here and a bp club in ridgecrest
Howdy from Lake Tahoe. Brushy Creek Rangers is holding their annual Rendezvous May 5-7.
Hello
I have 1975 TC .50 Hawken and I'm wanting to use here in CA. I purchased the TomBob Outdoors’ ITX muzzleloading round balls, but have not fired yet. I tried contacting TomBob a while back, however, they could not provide any load or ballistic info.
Question: Has anyone on here tried these and have any info regarding load and patch? Does anyone know of any other product I can use legally in this gun?
Thanks
Chris
I have 1975 TC .50 Hawken and I'm wanting to use here in CA. I purchased the TomBob Outdoors’ ITX muzzleloading round balls, but have not fired yet. I tried contacting TomBob a while back, however, they could not provide any load or ballistic info.
Question: Has anyone on here tried these and have any info regarding load and patch? Does anyone know of any other product I can use legally in this gun?
Thanks
Chris
ITX is very accurate. Shoots the same as lead out to 100 yards in my .50 woodsman. Same powder charge as whatever you use for lead but it will likely need a thinner patch since it's really hard. Don't count on any expansion. Think of it has performing like hard cast lead. If you happen to recover a ball, you'll likely be able to just clean it off & fire it again and again. The ones I've pulled out of the dirt are barely scratched & weigh exactly the same as before I shot them. Mind your backstop, though -- ricochet potential is high since it won't deform. Yes, you're good to go with that as a lead-free alternative since ITX is an approved shot for shotguns too.
An alternative is to cast your own from bismuth alloy. I've done a write up on my results there on a couple of posts. The bismuth alloy from rotometals is also approved by CDFW. I cast mine with a .480 mould and run a thicker patch than I do with .490 lead. I've since cast up some hard lead at .480 and it all seems to work just fine with the same patch as bismuth at that size. I've not taken ITX hunting but I took a small coastal buck last year with the bismuth ball. It was close at about 15 yards. And it was a frontal shot. He dropped on the spot & I recovered the ball in the femur while butchering. It had some small gouges in the ball so I just put it back in the melting pot. ITX would have likely performed about the same but just been less damaged, if at all. For javelina last spring, I took the hard cast lead. It blew through like the little pig wasn't even there, taking out the heart dead center on its way to the dirt behind it. That pig dropped in about 10 seconds once his brain quit working but otherwise didn't seem to notice that he was hit. I'd expect ITX and bismuth to do about the same -- all penetration and no expansion. My loads are 70g 2F (or the same of Pyrodex) or 80g homebrew and I get about 1600 fps +/-. I've pushed them faster with up to 95 grains Pyrodex but was losing accuracy. My rear sight is adjusted as low as it gets anyway and those loads were just impacting higher and higher.
The ITX is more consistent by weight and more accurate for me than my home cast. But it's not enough to notice for hunting purposes. Only a benchrest test can show me any difference at all.
One other alternative is Thor bullets. Barnes makes them. I've taken a smaller coastal buck with that one & wasn't that impressed. It's very accurate and expands at close ranges as long as the velocity is high. But at distance (say 50 yards and further), it just performs like a hardcast again -- just .50 holes through and through. I loaded mine with 90g Pyrodex for about 1550 fps. I had to take a follow up shot from about 10' away and that one expanded nicely. Shoots the same as a popular lead belted conical that's popular with unmentionables.
Over the last few years, there have also been some other lead free conicals hitting the market but I don't have any experience with those yet. Maybe if I get a ML elk tag one of these years, I'll test them out. I'd guess that a stoutly loaded 300+ gr copper would do nicely for larger game.
A little while back, I posted up some ITX .487 balls for sale. I had stocked up on some packs of them before getting into casting my own so I don't need them anymore. If you want more ITX at a little discount from retail, shoot me a PM and we can work something out.
Thank you for the very thorough reply. You're the first person Ive run into that has used this product extensively. I also like the idea of casting bismuth too. Is your barrel 1:48 twist? Or does that matter?
Yep. Both of my .50 rifles have 1:48 twists.
If you cast some bismuth alloy, just be aware that it will expand 0.002" after cooling. So they're a pain to get out of the mould and that .480 ball ends up measuring about 0.482 once cooled off. Temps are lower too -- 550 or so is just perfect for the bismuth alloy while alloyed lead wants 650-700. Personally, I prefer casting the bismuth because I can do it on an electric hot plate and it's much more forgiving.
