Help Needed with original Ballard rifle

[Jim Wimbish, 10395]

Thanks to Bob Gorsky, I was able to get this gun shooting. None of the normal 45 Colt bullets were quite large enough for the original rifling and nearly all of the 45/70 bullets were too heavy. There was one Lyman mould that cast a 300 grain .457 bullet which seems to work well with my original barrel, which interestingly enough has a left hand twist. I am using 24 grains of Goex 3f and a small amount of filler. No crimp. I hope to have it sighted in and ready to shoot at the Nationals.

[Jim Wimbish, 10395]

Original post was deleted because I was pretty sure, I had the answer from another skirmisher. See original post for details.

[marv762]

I buy my bullets from beter bullets .com in PA they make a 45/70 bullet that is 300 grains and .458 dia. i remove the blue lube and use spg and size them down 452 for my henry. i could not get anything else to work and stumbled across them in a store. just in case anyone else was thinking about trying it. they do make a nice bullet. Marv

[efritz]

Jim,

I'm using .457 round ball with 24 gr. 2F Swiss and corn meal filler. A little tricky seating the ball. Just enough crimp to keep the ball seated when retracting the ram in the seating die. Very low recoil too. Works at 100y too. Providing it isn't windy. But it's never windy at the Fort, right?????