Home Forums Hunting & Shooting BPCR Paper patching slugs

Ranch, the bullets are cup based, tapered 540 grain slugs. The pigtail twists and tucks into the base. Accuracy?? I had a 508 yard target, a 16" gong to shoot at in Virginia. One ranging shot, battery adjust and put the next 2 into the gong using the BARREL SIGHTS! Shot off the buffalo sticks. Insides are cleaned with 50/50 white vinegar and water. Outsides I generally don't bother with too much. After every 5th firing, I'll take a piece of very fine steel wool and clean them up. I get a very clean separation of the patch.

Randy, I have 3 different wieghts of paper, all high cotton bond paper. Some molds throw a bullet that is .447 and patch up to land. The bullet pictured is big. .457. Patch is the thiinest I have, onionskin. My paper depends on the bulet. I have a batch I cast from Jorge's mold that are quite small comparred to my 2 molds. I use the heaviest paper for those. Genuine PP slugs are smooth sided. Some are tapered, some are straight sided. Some are flat base, some are cup base. My rifle seems to like the tapered cup base bullets but also shoots VERY well with a 525 grain straight sided bullet I cast.Every rifle in this class is a law unto itself so ya just have to find out what it likes. Whe ya do, HOLY CHITSKI do they ever shoot and they hit game like a friggin' safe fell on them. IMHO the 45 caliber Sharps Rifles that are 2.4" to 2.875" are pure killing machines.

Et, those pics look like you've got some corrosion going in those cases. Rough dirty inside case necks crap up accuracy.
If you regulate the front sight so that with the ladder folded down to be dead on at 100, ranging shots not particularly needed. The markings on the ladder will be very close.
Here's the copy of an original Sharps bullet I shoot. It measures .435 as cast, I wrap it with 20lb all cotton paper to 451. Haven't got anything for accuracy I'ld take to a longrange match but it'll hold 6inch at 300. And knocks elk dead.

Here's the link to Brent Danielsons paper patching site.
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~jessie/PPB/PPB.htm

I have his article. I sure as hell don't use egg white to moisten my patches. The rear sight was brand new when I shot it. It was its maiden voyage. Got it from Shiloh Rifle. Works nice.

Lots of different ways to skin a cat.A fair share of the folks shooting pp bullets in matches won't use anything but distilled water to moisten the patches for wrapping.
I prefer to use a 1/8 in lubed felt wad between .030 fiber wads under the bullet,instead of a lube cookie. Some use dry cork wads with fiber and ldpe wads.
Some folks only seat maybe a .10 into the case some seat to a full .4.
Darn few folks wrap to groove diameter with black, that's generally best left for smokeless.

True on that, but I learned that originals (mine does) tend to have an oversize bore. It took a bit of 'spearmentin' to figger out what worked best. The 110's are quite cranky.

I've not so sure the 110's are that cranky to get to shoot well. I'm more of a mind the recoil from the things is more than is easily digested during loadwork up/bench testing sessions. I think the more accustomed to getting the snot knocked out of em everytime they yank the trigger, the better they can control the gun for accuracy.
90's aren't particularly newbie friendly but can be loaded with 45-70 charge weights , just to get a good start on it.

I can see we are going to have to get you all together to have a shoot fest! What a collaboration of great members and minds!

Keith you bring that 86 down here to the house sometime and we'll get er up and running the way it was meant to be. I'll let ya sample some different sharps etc on the 270 yd gong.
The spring match at Alliance Ne is the first part of May, and Kenny Wasserburger's Creedmore match is on his dads place up on Lance Creek. Maybe you can come to one of those and you can really get the affliction.

R13;

Where in Wy are you? Might have to figure a rendesvous next year.......

VA, you (and anyone else) ought to plan a trip to Alliance, NE for the spring shoot, or the Sagebrush in August.

You'd get to meet and shoot with these two disreputable characters, as well as some others.

Alliance is a stone's throw from Wyoming, so a lot of folks from there are in attendance.

Paul

There's a motley crew heading to Wyoming next year for a buffler hunt..........................

Va, I'm around Ft. Laramie.

If you make it to Alliance you'll wanna steer a wide path around those two reprobates in Pauls pic. No good turkeys they both are.......Specially the scumbucket in the fakey cowboy hat....

I am working up by Wasserburger's on a project now. I see Kenny's Dad now and then. I'll take you up on the invite to come down and shoot. We'll have to work out a time after hunting season is over.

WEll I hope you get that mess on 85 cleared up fore I have to head up for whitetail...

We'll need to find some space between about the 20 of Nov, and mid January when global warming hasn't got things buggered up..

IF the weather would allow us a few more days we will have it done. Got a darn lion in the neighborhood I am hunting deer in that needs gone. Got a lion tag in case I see him. Wondered why the deer population was on the shy side.

You hunting the Blackhills for whitetail?

Well if things gets unsquirreled here before the end of season ..... otherwise yup would like to go Bearlodge, Maybe try and make a run up the peak or the Bighorns before, but cows and weather are keeping things tite right now....

Yup,

GTC

Actually I posted this series of pics to give a decent idea of how to proceed for fellas who had little or no exposure or experience with the operations I showed. A baseline if you will. As Ranch 13 points out there are a lot of ways this is done and the complexity seems to get more for comp shooters. All I want to know is you fellas' opinions as to whether this series of pics have helped in understanding the very basics of patching and loading.

ET,

This has been a great discussion, and I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I don't think that "complexity" is necessarily associated with competitive shooting. Actually, your paper patching routine with wet wrapping plus lube is more complicated than most target shooters use. Those that I'm aware of don't lube their patches, but you make a good case for it for hunting loads. Target shooters don't use lube cookies either. So, in some cases loading for competition is less complicated. Not sizing cases at all comes to mind, just slip fitting the bullet in a fired case.

Perhaps what you refer to as complexity comes down to attention to detail, but that can be seen as quality control. Weighing and sorting bullets is probably unnecessary assuming careful casting, There probably isn't enough variance to make it worthwhile. Ditto weighing and sorting cases, which I've never done, although some do. Primer choice doesn't seem to make that much difference, unless you're down to fine tuning a load. Having clean brass, inside the neck in particular, can affect stretching and even case separation, so that's a detail that would apply to hunting ammo as well as target loads. Attention to details like case length can help avoid problems, excess fouling and leading in particular.

It seems to me that the main point of complexity comes in loading powder. We know that compression is very important. I weigh, and use my vibrating setup for long range competitive loads, but for buffalo silhouette loads I mount my powder measure on top of my drop tube and let 'er rip. You can see in my pics that the vibrating setup comes off, and I can mount the measure bracket with a couple of wing nuts. Very fast case charging. Another detail that can probably be bypassed is a paper wad over the primer, although some claim to get better groups with it. Crimping enough to remove the case mouth bell is another option. Some rifles shoot better with the bell and others without. As long as you can chamber a round, it isn't essential.

In my case much of the "complexity" comes from carefully designing and assembling my loading setup to make the actual loading process easier while maintaining precision. Back to my drop tube setup, some of the effort in building it pays off in terms of less effort in loading, so there's a trade-off. Note that the aluminum funnels are bigger than most. This means a quicker dump, because there is less chance of missing and spilling. The vibrator makes it unnecessary to time the pour. Just position the case, dump the charge, and hit the toggle switch. My tube also includes a "no spill" feature at the bottom of the tube, another detail that saves time and avoids mess.

Paul