Still working on learning to place a photo.
Left 45/120 brass
Right loaded 45/70 round.

Interesting rifle. How much does it weigh?

Load details?

Pat

Bathroom scale says 8 lbs. even.

I got this from estate sale, has nice looking wood and very clean. Paper found said he used 97 grains of 2F, with 400 grain bullet. The auctioneer said the guy was going to or did shoot targets with it. Don't know.
I got 3 rounds with it. BP

I still kick myself for not buying a bunch of rolling blocks when they were dirt cheap. You have a beautiful rifle there.

Thanks
It does look nice. Let's hope it shoots nice as well.
Price was in the range of 1/3 of the cost a new Sharps (one in the upper level).

Any info on "T.L.S. Redding CA" ?

Looks like they did nice work.

Good luck with it,

Geno

Lovely rifle

At 8 lbs it should be interesting on both ends, though the recoil pad oughta tame it some.

Not at all, I tried to look them up and found nothing.
When the shot heard around the range is taken, we will know at that time if the work is proper or not.
Saving the second shot for Kaywoodie.

You are correct on the recoil pad, anything.
Going to be fun to try.

Will wait for a while as I have one person I want to look at it first, see what he says. I believe he owns one or two and knows a whole lot more than me. Me being in the first grade, him being in a Doctorial program.

With a 400 grain cast lead bullet, I think 80 grain black powder is a sensible max. Not that pressure is a problem, but; beyond that level all you get is more smoke and recoil. Going higher on the charge, would make sense for you to get a mold or buy some pre cast 500 grain bullets. If you are not looking forward to a max hi-end 45 load and recoil, it is very very easy to load down. The gun will shoot better for longer with a nice heavy felt lubricated wad behind the bullet. You can even double up on the wads. Also you find if you dont compress, the bp is fairly bulky. You dont want air space.

I had found a pretty good forum for bp. I'll see if i can find a link. There got to be a lot forums. A search might include black powder silhouette.

The 45-120 is a modern fictitious round created with 45 basic brass. You be hard press to find any round of that dimension pre 1910. There may have been a few experimental guns built on the 1885 win back in the day. I just say this to let you know that case fully loaded and compressed was too much. IMHO the 45-90 is really the sweet spot and the 2 7/8 case about the practical max case size. It is what it is, and you should have a lot of fun. If not, it wont be the guns fault. No reason to load up like a mad man on the first day out. Nothing wrong with 8 pounds. That works for 458 win mag, you will be fine.

There is a very nice little booklet out there on loading bp cartridges. You can find that on shiloh web site. For sale a lot of places. The key is sensible loads, lubricated wads, proper alloy bullets with more lube.

Nice -looking rifle, but as one poster has already noted, not the best cartridge. IMNSHO, you should not use anything but BP in that original action. The cartridge capacity is somewhere between 100-120 gr., depending on how deeply the bullet is seated. To load "only" 80 gr. BP, you will need a wad stack to avoid airspace. That can create its own challenge in creating an accurate load. Even a full-power load is far more difficult to achieve in such a long cartridge than a .45-70 or .45-90.

In addition, the rifle is far too light for comfortable shooting. I have a Shiloh .45-70 that weighs 10 lb.; loaded with a smokeless load, recoil with a 520 gr. bullet at 1350 fps is more than I want on a continuous basis, although it's a great killer. Your 8 lb. rifle will have vicious recoil with any except the lightest loads.

If you use it for hunting, you should be able to develop a load with a 400 gr. bullet, lots of filler or a wad stack, that will be suitably accurate. Since you're not shooting it a lot, the recoil shouldn't matter; I never feel the recoil when I'm shooting at game.

Clarence

THE most accurate load I ever built for my .45-120 was configured around Curtis and Harvey CANNON GRADE powder, with little or no compression.
A BULKY F grade would be my second choice.The old original Elephant powder out of Pernambuco, Brazil was THE powder for the longer 45s.

Dunno where this 80 gr max nonsense is coming from,...
and would suggest that the BPCR forum RIGHT HERE is no slouch when it comes to a few years in the game and a bit of savvy.



Sorry,....that's just horse chit.

GTC