Thread: Black powder repro guns (Italian).

A word of caution if you are buying a repro BP gun.
They may have upped their game now, but years ago I bought a BP Pedersoli Zouave.
Like this one...
https://www.davide-pedersoli.com/en/...-us-model-1863
Cast a bunch of 'Minie balls' for it, and they were fine (been casting for a few years).
Went out to shoot the thing and duly loaded it...everything seemed OK.
Fired at a target 50 yards away to sort out the sights. Boom, cough, cough as you say.
That's funny, no hole anywhere on the target.
Tried another shot. Nope, no hole in the target but this time (through the smoke) I did see some dirt kick up off to the side.
Moved closer to target (a large cardboard banana box sort of thing).
I'm about 20 yards from it and try another shot.
Nope, no hole in the target.
Gave up and went home.
Cleaned the barrel and took time to really look hard at this thing.
I found that the rifling in the barrel only went in about 10 inches or so.
It was a smooth bore the rest of the way.
So you put the Minie ball into the muzzle and it engraved with the rifling. Push the Minie ball on further down on to the powder charge and the rifling marks now engaged nothing.
On firing, the ball shot up the smooth bore and hit the last bit where there was some rifling. But of course it now engaged in a different spot than when you loaded the thing.
I figure it ripped the bum off the Minie ball each time, and then the ball just randomly sailed off to where it wanted to go. Certainly no where near the target.
I then also noted a stain on the barrel just in front of the lock.
It was a tiny crack in the barrel and my cleaning solvent had luckily been able to leak out a tiny amount that showed up the crack.
Yeah, took it back to Tisdalls for a refund.
Bought a Hawkins .58 kit later and way better!
If you have a repro BP gun that doesn't shoot well, it may pay to check if it too just has 'some' rifling.
Haven't checked any later/modern repro guns but hopefully they now make them a tad better.
Or...is this normal for some BP guns to just have a smidgeon of rifling at the muzzle and smooth bore the rest of the way?
Would that work OK with a patched ball?