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Where to start and usual good load in 58?

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brewer12345

40 Cal
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I am planning on taking out the TC New Englander I had rebored to 58 slow twist by Bobby Hoyt. I have never shot this caliber before and will be trying it with FFG and patched round ball. What is a good starting load? Suggestions on typical accuracy loads in this caliber?
 
I have a .58 Investarms and hunt with it using 70 gr. 3f and PRB's. It has taken some nice hogs with that load. I guess a lot of guys would probably rather use 2f, but we all have our preferences.
 
Both of my Bobby Hoyt .58 barrels with 1:60 twist like a .575 ball from a Lee mold with a .015 mink oil lubed patch over 120 grains of 2F. This is my hunting load. One barrel is 32" long percussion, the other is a 28" flint. I'm getting 2" groups at 75 yards, (off the bench) which is as far as I will attempt a shot at game with my eyes using a tang mounted peep sight.
 
Wow, 120 grains! That is a lot of burnt charcoal. Guess I will find out tomorrow, at least partially.
 
The two (one flint, one cap lock) Bobby Hoyt 58 caliber Renegade barrels I currently have, with 1-60 radius bottom rifling, are happy from 80 to 90 grains of Swiss fff with a denim patched round ball. Still accurate with 100 and 110 grains, though me and my shoulder are not very happy much past 90 grains of powder. At 25 to 30 yards, golf balls, ping pong balls and squirrel heads are not safe with 30 grains of Swiss fff.
 
My old .58 is a Jim Chambers 42", Don Getz barrel...
Jim recommended 70 grs, and I never did alter it. It has shot a great pile of deer over the years, and very few balls recovered.
V accurate as well.
With a .54 I used to use 60 grs for target, and two measures (120 gr 2F ) for hunting. I think the lighter ball did better with more powder, but the .58 knocked everything don well with just 70ngrs. (2F in my case)
 
My .58 caliber New Englander barrel was bored by Bobby Hoyt with rounded groove 1/60" twist. When i'm having a good day the gun makes one inch fifty yard groups. The load is:

.570 Hornady round ball
80 or 90 grains of Black MZ powder
Unwashed drill cloth patch lubed with Mink Oil
CCI #11 cap
 
Ah, yes, will bring along a horn of black MZ as well. Use it and like it, will be sorry when my stash is gone.

Looking at the ballistics tables in the Lyman black powder book, my take is that any load of 70 grains or more should have no problem dropping game at a reasonable distance. I suppose if I were using this rifle for elk I would fool around with high charges. For deer, doubt that is necessary.
 
There is someone who stated the belief that you get your best accuracy from 1 1/2 times powder per caliber. So in other words 40 caliber would be 60gr of powder. I've never tried it to see but I don't believe there is any one set rule that applies to all. Might be a place to start though.
 
Start at 60 gr and work up 5 gr at a time. Accuracy will be different with each gun and dependent on other factors also like patch, lube ect.
Old School Rule-of-Thumb...., and since this is old tech, it's a pretty good starting point.

You start with grains of powder equal to your caliber rounded to the nearest five..., so that would be 58 grains round to the nearest five = 60 grains. So Mooman76 is right. ;) Then, I was taught for rifles, you test loads by ten (10) grain increments going upwards. You do this until a person standing 30 feet or so off to the side, can hear your bullet crack. A little less basic since powder isn't quite as precious as it was back in the day...,you test loads until you see the pattern open up, OR until you experience something disagreeable, such as too much recoil, or with a caplock if the hammer gets shot backwards to the half-cock position from back pressure through the nipple. Then to be precise..., you test five grains less and also five grains more.

Now in my state, the minimum deer load by the law was 60 grains of powder, regardless of the caliber, so when I started sighting in my .50 I started with 60 grains, instead of the 50 grains that the old rule specified. 70 grains worked great. When I upgraded to something larger in a .54....I simply tried the same powder charger for 70 grains, and that worked great for that ball too...., so I kept it.

Second Old School Rule of Thumb...., take your caliber, and multiply by 1.5. Round up to nearest five, and your pet load should be within +/- five grains of that. So 58 x 1.5 = 87...rounded = 90...so Your rifle should shoot well with a powder load of between 85-95 grains. That worked for me with the .50 which equaled 75 grains, and the 70 grain load was -5 under that. For the .54 though, multiplying by 1.5 = 81, so I should be shooting between 75-85 grains....oh well, they are "rules of thumb".

LD
 
Old school yes but I still like it. I even go lower some times. I mostly just shoot for fun so I'm not going for bench accuracy. Some people like to start high which is fine if that's what they want but if they don't try the lower ranges then they will never know what their gun can really do.
 
Well, I got it out and shot it.. To my great annoyance, the rifle would not ignite Black MZ for love nor money. I finally put a little 2F under the nipple and it went off. I had a small amount of Olde E 2F with me and shot with that. I got up to 80 grains and that shot like a house on fire with modest recoil. I will have to get out and try again with higher charges, but I would have no worries taking a deer with 80 grains.

However, even with the real black if I didn't stick a pipe cleaner in the muzzle t clean things out every 4 or 5 shots it wanted to hangfire by a half second. Maybe this is a case where things were a little dirty and i should have done the soapy water cleaning before shooting it the first time. If not, what can I do to open things up? I was using a brand new thunder nipple from Track of the Wolf, so it isn't an old nipple problem.
 
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