Thread: Hawkins plains rifle project

Well that's good to know, as you can see I lean more to the heavy bullet for hunting, want to put them down quick , you have only one shot, but haven`t used it yet for hunting , just on paper. So have you fed them a 45 pr/ball, I`m using 50grs 3f, 130gr pr /ball , I thought it mite be a bit light for hunting?, Thanks, its good to get the facts form someone who has done it. Cheers, Homebrew.357.

Its been a few years since I used Blackpowder so I couldn't tell you what load powder I was using, even light loads will be fine, its a seriously heavy projectile and using round ball it hits extremely hard, I had the odd wounded goat but they were not able to move very fast because of the fist sized hole in their side, I carried a fighting Tomahawk to thump them on the head, a blade through the brain did the business to finish them.

Very impressive Homebrew.. Grouping is good too.

Does anyone have an idea of ballistics for 0-50, 0-100m shooting for these old blackpowder rifles.

Hi, Could be 1.300/1.400 fps, mine is not standed with a 1x33" twist, most are 1-48" and or 1.60' for pr/ball. and my barrel is not that good, but ok for black powder. I made it for hunting with a bullet with a fast twis and was surprised then it shot prb ok, they don`t like a fast twist. Look at www The Muzzleloading forum in US, a heap of imfo, and they are not "old black powder rifles, can buy then brand new repos that are tack drivers. Cheers, Homebrew.357

With muzzle loaders you can only burn a certain amount of powder from ignition until the projectile leaves the barrel. Old timers would shoot over snow and tune back until they had no un burnt grains of power on the White stuff this gave them maximum loads.Powder burns at different rates FFFFG is very fine and used for frizzens or ignition powder FFFG for smaller cals, FFG for larger, FG for cannons. I use FFG for my 45 and bigger cals FFFG for my 38 cal. Pressures increase with finer powders cause they burn faster, producing pressure faster. Grade of powder I think is more dangerous than amount of the correct grade for the calibre, I wouldn't use FFFG in my 500 BPE I stick to FFG, I would need to research it well before changing to the finer powder, obviously FPS increase is the result

Hi, All , the homebrew is fizzing my brain or my left hand does not know what my right is doing ,or hip op is making me cross eyed !. I apologise to all, I said new project coming up, I`v all ready starting to post it. Making a sharps barrel on my lathe, or should be , Making the Quigley Sharps 1874 45-70 rifle on my lathe. yes, this is my new project, Sorry for any confusion, Homebrew.357.

holy smoke batman........ just read both threads with interest..... you are a master craftsman Mate.

Flaming heck, 6 years on and you've just read it, just shows what you can do with some number 8 wire AND a bit of steel tube with a few groves in it,

yes well.....for some reason my interest has been pipped about .45/70s and I thought to go digging back through to see what is about....plurry glad I did.

Now where's the plurry home project???, you can't let barrels lay around doing nothing!!!.

Just wandered into this thread - homebrew.357 thank you for posting the pictures and explanations. Very impressive and lots of fun.