Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Older Renegade .54 accuracy.

I need a little help. I'm stuggling with an older T/C Renegade .54 (I guess they all are any more). I have not shot it too much in the last few years, but have really struggled with it's accuracy. 30 years ago it shot great, I can't figure out what might have changed-yeah I know-my eyes, but other than that.

I know their twist rate is intermediate, but I used to get acceptable accuracy with either patched round balls or bullets, including Power Belts. The last few trips to the range were to try and wring out round ball accuracy for a hunt. .530 Hornady swaged round balls with heavy blue stripe pillow ticking patches greased accordingly and 90 grains of 777 most recently, but had troubles with 2F BP as well. I haven't been able to keep 3 rounds on a 14" target at 100 yards. 50 yards produces 8-9" groups.

Can you "shoot out" a muzzleloader barrel. Am I now limited to 50 yards and in???

Any thoughts from this knowledgable group would be appreciated.

LHS

Pitted bore?

check the sights. Might be loose.

Thanks. Not sure about pitted bore, but shouldn't be, has been well taken care of. How do I check without a bore scope?

Have gone over the sights, not loose. The underhanger did have some wiggle-I staked it to eliminate movement.

LHS

The groves are not really deep. Plastic can build up in those groves, so shotgun plastic wad remover is a good fix for that. Then I would run down some flitz patches to get the rifling really clean. Naturally it could be lots of things, but a though bore clean is worth a try.

I’d try different patch/ball combos. Maybe .535 and a thinner patch, or thicker ones with the .530s. I’d also try less powder. What did your fired patches look like?

Bronze wool and Ballistol will clean out that barrel.

As to your eyes, I replace the barrel sight on TCs with a Williams base and an aperture blade. Works great. This is a Greyhawk, but I have the same setup on a .50 Renegade.

I like that sight Pappy!!

Check the tang screw as well. Seen one back out just a tick on a custom made Hawken. It was about to drive its owner nuts and he figured it out. Funny part was, it was the relatively well known maker’s gun. Of course, it was 30 years old and had been shot a bazillion times.

To paraphrase ‘Stick, “nothing ever shoots tight-er”.

Had a older renegade 50cal at one time the only thing it would shoot was Buffalo bullets 385 gr the recoil was fantastic 😵‍💫

My .54 Renegade was a little bit of a puzzle to get it to shoot. Ihad it apart once and found out the stock had cracked thru the lock area, couldn't see it untill removing the lock from the stock. I did not have good groups and I was wondering why.

The solution at the time was to glass bed the recoil lug area. I did it myself and it worked really well.

After bedding I fired 3 shots at 85 yards and could cover them with a thumb as I recall.

My load was always a home cast tc maxiball and about 100 gr equivilent of pyrodex RS.

Years later after not cleaning as vigorously as I should have it didn't shoot as well.

I dropped a mini flashlight in the bore and could see the damage from rust and not cleaning.

Totally my fault.

Thanks guys. A couple more things to look at. Haven't had the lock out since I "browned" it about 30 years ago and the original sights leave little to be desired.

Will try the mini-mag lite, but as I said I've been real diligent on cleaning. Just shining a light down the bore rifling looks sharp and shiny.

LHS

You can learn a LOT from your patch. What condition is the patch in after firing it? If your bore is pitted and rough and is the problem, it will tear the patch up. Check for that before taking a deep dive into fixing something blindly. Bores can "look" horrible, but shoot just fine, so look at a fired patch or three before getting too excited.

Patch material might have changed since it shot well decades ago. You may need to not take it for granted and try other patch materials, other patch thicknesses, other patch lubes, maybe even other ball diameters.

It's a 1:48 twist if it's an original T/C barrel. It's a compromise to shoot balls and conicals "ok". It will never really shoot either exceptionally. My early days with BP were all Renegades and Hawkens. Nothing ever really wowed me until I got into 1:66 or slower twists for roundballs, and 1:24 twists for inlines and saboted pistol bullets.

Sights: it ain't gonna shoot worth a [bleep] if you can't drive the sights.

I'll add too, that your loading method can make a big difference with roundballs. It really doesn't matter "how" you do it, as long as you do it exactly the same way each time. I like a medium compression on my charges. More than just touching, but not pounded tight. I push the patched ball down onto the charge, then apply just enough pressure to "seat" the ball to a mark I've put on the ramrod even with the muzzle. This ensures the ball is actually seated on the charge, and ensures each load has the same amount of compression each time. I never hammer the load home and bounce the ramrod like Hollywood does it. That can upset the roundness of a soft lead ball and affect its flight characteristics which in truth are poor even when it's perfect.

Get a good BP cleaner and plastic solvent. Scrub, and scrub, and scrub. Then rinse with hot water and treat the bore with 1000+. And shoot real black powder. Start with 70 grains and go up 5 grains at a time. I have found that those 1-48" twist guns only do so much. If you get a 4" group at 100 yards, that is about it.
Mine like 90 grains of FFFg and a patched round ball.

1. Get fresh 777 . A couple of years and it gets inconsistent.
2. Most 1:48 barrels do well with a saboted 240-250 gr XTP over 75-100 gr loose 777.
3. Get a peep sight. A Lyman 57SML works well.
All this is assuming the bore is ok.

Surprised that there are not more reports of TC Renegade stocks cracking through the lock area. The inletting leaves the wood very thin in places. I found that mine had cracked in several places. Epoxy reinforced with glass cloth was used for the fix.

Have heard this about 777. That's the reason I decided not to use it and stick with black.

Sights are another thing. Right now I am still using the factory sights on my Hawken although it is a GM round ball barrel. I did try some fiber optics a few years ago and group's looked more like patterns, too much Starburst from the front sight and made it very difficult to get a good picture.

Might try to find a tang mounted peep if you can

Is your front steel or does it have the tiny brass bed on the back? If brass you might take some 0000 wool and brighten the brass.

A good cleaning to get rid of anything left from years past would be a good, simple and free start. I still prefer hot soapy water for black but no telling what else could be in your barrel if you shot something with a plastic base on it.

That's the famous TC crack, I buy and restore a lot of old Thompson Center sidelocks and about every 6th one I get has the crack or it is starting to crack. Most were damaged in the pre inline days when everyone was experimenting with sabots and pryodex. To large a powder charge. Best fix is to drill down and pin ( lot of people will tell you to use bamboo skewers) use a good wood glue.

A green fiber optic is a lot better than a red one for old eyes. You can replace a red one pretty easily, just get the right diameter of fiber.

If over the years you have used the ram rod with out a brass muzzle protector you may have done damage to the rifling, at the muzzle. A friend had the same problem . His rifle shot great for years & then accuracy fell off. Got the muzzle re crowned, accuracy came right back. Any wood or synthetic ramrod picks up grit. When this rubs against the rifling at the muzzle it wears away the muzzle unevenly, then loss of accuracy.

Any pics to know what I'm looking for.


What's a good BP cleaner and plastic solvent? Ballistol has been suggested. Shooter's Choice says it removes shotgun wad fouling-it works pretty good on choke tubes with a bronze brush. I was always told to shy away from petroleum solvents with BP-have always used hot water and Dawn dish soap, rinsed with almost boiling. While still warm a patch with wonderlube 1000+.


Steel-I'd call it the intermediate one with round bead, rear sight has curved slopes to it. The older front sight had a better (IMO) square blade, the rear was square too.


I will search out the patches the next time I have it at the range. Also, your suggestion on loading is good advice-for most things.

Thanks for all the help, I'll start working on narrowing it down.

LHS

What's a good BP cleaner and plastic solvent? Ballistol has been suggested. Shooter's Choice says it removes shotgun wad fouling-it works pretty good on choke tubes with a bronze brush. I was always told to shy away from petroleum solvents with BP-have always used hot water and Dawn dish soap, rinsed with almost boiling. While still warm a patch with wonderlube 1000+.


If you are going to use plastic sabots I would use the Shooters choice and a bronze brush to remove that plastic. Water and dish soap is good to remove the powder fowling and it does not need to be boiling. Hot from the tap is hot enough. I have had rifles that quit shooting groups until I removed all of the wonderlube from the bore. They went back to shooting accurately again. I will not put that stuff anywhere near a muzzleloader.

Petroleum based oils and lubes will mix with powder fowling and leave a tar like mess in your breach. I do use them for rust protection after I have cleaned out all fowling and I wipe it out then pop a few caps to clear it from the nipple before the first loading. Never had an issue with it that way.

Scrub out all that wonderlube and I bet your rifle will start grouping again.