Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders shortning a modern muzzleloader barrel

i have a friend that builds custom muzzleloaders for competition .he had a knight bolt action laying around in 45cal and decided to cut the barrel length to 20in just to see how it would do. he says he actually gained about 75fps after cutting the barrel. i think it was a 28in before. thisgot me thinking about maybe shortning a truimph barrel to 20in. he says he see's know differents in acuratcy. a buddy has a omega that he has been talking about cutting also.both of our tc ml's are 50caliber.

over at my place theres a guy that cuts down the cva barrels to 20inch and his accuracy is superb.

Everything else being equal, how would a shorter barrel go faster? I know it is possible but with these powders and the length of barrel we are talking about? Quite interested in hearing more.

he shoots 777 in his ml's in competition only beause they give him all he wants. he tells me that blackpowder or blackpowder substitutes are not slow burn that they are actually a explosive. longer barrel will give you more drag on the bullet and actually slows it down more before leaving the barrel then a shorter barrel . if you go to short you've got to lose accuratcy because of the lack of spin on the bullet. thats the way he explained it to me. he builds competition muzzleloaders and shoots at the national level . he holds a few national records right now.

Interesting....

yes,i found it very interesting also. this guy cronographs everything he shoots weekly. he to was pretty amazed that he actually gained some fps by shortening a barrel. the gun he built was a disc rifle and he made a new breechplug for it and eleminated the need for the disc. it now use just a 209 primer. he cronographed after installing the new nipple with old barrel length,then cut and crowned the barrel .he gain fps only after cutting the barrel. he put a boyds thumbhole stock on it in laminated camo . very short easy to carry.he killed 2 deer with it in november.

Interesting. I would not dispute that there is such of a thing as too long of a barrel. But 28" too long? Unless he is using extremely light loads and the pressure truly is dropping that much that soon...

The spin of the bullet is determined by the rate of twist, not the length of the barrel.

I find this interesting. I have a TC Firehawk. Its not new, its not fancy, but I like it. I have thought about shortening the barrel several times, but have never gotten around to it. This makes me want to again.

I have a 50 cal Encore, I cut off 6 inches of the barrel and re crowned. At 100 yards i can shoot 1 inch or less all day.. Makes for a nice fast handleing brush gun

What is the cut off lenth 22 or24 what .Also did the TC scout have it right 1-20 twist an 24 in barrel, SRWShooters