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Traditions PA Pellet Ultra-Light 50 Cal. 1/28 twist loads

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Not new to muzzleloading but am to Flintlocks. Got a new Flintlock for PA and WV. Shot it about 15 times, cleaning after 2nd or 3rd shot. Using iron sights. Not getting a good group. Shooting 90 gr of Goex 2F powder and a Harvester crush rib sabot with a 45 cal/ 250 gr Hornady XTP. Anybody have any experience with this flintlock and what loads are you getting good results with ? Shooting at 50 and 100 yards.
 
Forum rules don’t allow discussions on sabots or plastic bullets etc but since that gun was actually designed to use pellets as the main charge and real black powder in the pan you may want to give that a try, the breech plug in that rifle has a very long narrow channel and you’d have to work pretty hard to be consistent in the amount of loose powder you get in that channel every time, I’d try some pellets and see if it helps imho.
 
Forum rules don’t allow discussions on sabots or plastic bullets etc but since that gun was actually designed to use pellets as the main charge and real black powder in the pan you may want to give that a try, the breech plug in that rifle has a very long narrow channel and you’d have to work pretty hard to be consistent in the amount of loose powder you get in that channel every time, I’d try some pellets and see if it helps imho.

Sorry about breaking the forum rules on sabots. Use a hollow point bullet. Thanks for the advice. Think maybe I'll try pellets but never had to use them before in in line muzzy. Always used loose powder.
 
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IMO, using loose powder is the best way to go.
It costs less per shot and it gives the shooter the ability to customize the powder load to something the gun likes.

Pellets work poorly or not at all in a flintlock.
 
Thanks for the info. That's what I was thinking. Maybe going to try to up the powder to 100 gr. Kind of hard to get a decent group at 100 yds with iron sights with my eyesight. Lol.
 
IMO, using loose powder is the best way to go.
It costs less per shot and it gives the shooter the ability to customize the powder load to something the gun likes.
Pellets work poorly or not at all in a flintlock.

The PA pellet was designed to use pellets with real black as the prime only, on an inline I’d say loose powder may be a good substitute for pellets but on this rifle the breech plug is extremely long and the flash channel is very long and on the small side, it’s not like a conventional patent breech, you’d never get the same amount of loose powder in the channel and it’s so small it’d probably act like a fuse if it was packed full, check out the photos of the breech below, I guess I should add that I actually picked one of those rifles up at a gun show several years ago cheap because the guy couldn’t get it to work and it actually still had a load of loose powder in it, I cleaned it up and sold it to a local guy and he shot pellets in it, that was back when these first came out so some changes may have been made since then but I really don’t know.
 

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Thanks for the info. I sadly must admit I haven't had mine apart yet to see if it is like the photos you sent or not. Guess I should do that soon and maybe purchase some pellets to try.
 
Some guys I hunt with here in PA use PA conicals from Hornady. No lube and they are 240 grains. So they are easy to load hunting, and have more mass than a roundball.
Personally i would try 70 grains of powder, that is a short barrel.
 
I shoot a pa pellet and use 80gr. 3f with .18 patch and .490 round ball. I tried the fake loose stuff but you have to prime with real black powder down the tube to get a quick ignition so it’s easier to just go with real stuff from the start. I did shoot the modern bullets set in plastic sleeve and they shot well but I wanted to go a little more traditional. real powder will work the best. I even shot my first flintlock deer last year with this setup.
 
Congratulations on your first Flintlock deer!!! I might have to try playing around with the black powder charge amount. I do use real black powder in barrel and charge pan. Thanks for the info !!!
 
Have you tried swabbing between shots? 90gr 2fg sounds a little slow for the 1:28 twist and the sabot projectile. I'd try 100 and 110gr, swab between shots and see how it goes. Pellets in that rifle fire with a lot of lag, so keep using the loose black powder. Another thing to try is conical bullets.
 
Thank you for the info ! Am going to try 100 and 110 gr of black powder. Also will try the conicals out. It is my mission to figure this gun out !!!
 
And this gun design is supposed to make a Flintlock easier to use??? :doh: Sounds like they need to redesign it to be like something of a couple hundred years ago so it just works without being too finicky! ;):D

While I've never used one of those guns, I have used the Hornady Great Plains bullets with great success in both faster and slower twist barrels with shallow rifling. TerryK made a good suggestion. They are lower cost (shop around as I saw pricing vary tremendously) and they work great. Having a hollow base, it expands well so the base obturates to the bore rifling to seal it.
 
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