smith carbine shooting and cleaning

[corporal]

Hi everyone. I just bought an original smith carbine in good shape. I have the Lee 515 mould and plastic tubes from Lodgewood, just wanting to know how you guys load the tubes and also the best way you go about cleaning when you're done shooting. Thanks in advance, Chris

[jonk]

Good bullet to start with.

Just pour the powder in the tube, and thumb seat the lubed bullet.

You can play with charges, granulation, filler vs. no filler over the powder, etc., after that.

Cleaning is easy enough. Remove the barrel hinge screw, nipple, and clean out screw. Break barrel off of gun. Clean bore with a jag, use a toothbrush on the barrel face.

Wipe out the recess in the reciever with rags and q tips, same for the nipple hole in the bolster. Rinse out the flash channel and wipe out with a pipe cleaner through the clean out hole.

Clean nipple and screw. Squirt some WD40 through to displace water. Dry that out best as you can.

Oil it all up with ballistol and reassemble.

Takes me about 10 minutes from start to finish.

[ms3635v]

I shoot a Moose 400 grain Smith/Maynard bullet sized from .520" to .518" in my original Smith. 28 grains of GOEX 3F. I use MCM lube and plastic tubes with a hollow brass rivet in the flash hole to prevent the flash hole from deteriorating and getting larger. I find the 400 grain bullet stabilizes better and is excellent at 100 yards.