S,

I have the same gun, probably the same vintage, mine is a 3 digit serial number 9XX, what is yours? We also paid about the same, I was in a gun store a while backwhen a guy came in trying to sell it to them. The store owner was going to give him something like 100 bucks saying things like everyone wants inlines and etc. I took him out in the parking lot and gave him close to what you paid (can't remember the exact price but it might have been 225.00). Mine was unfired near as I could tell, even the sling looked unused and had never been loosened.

Conicals and Minies will pound you with recoil and were not all the accurate for me, especially the conicals. A .570 roundball with a thick patch loads like a dream and is just abouttouch-hole accurate for me @ 50 yards with 90grains of 2F BP. That sounds like a heavy load but recoil is pretty light. The .575 balls shot the same just loaded harder even with a thinner patch, but I don't have to range clean the gun while shooting either size, the bore stays clean. Mine shot very high, over a foot at 50 yards. I ground off the front sight since I couldn't do much with the rear. Cut a slot in the base, silver soldered an old quarter in the slot and filed it down to regulate it on paper.

http://s135.photobucket.com/albums/q137/a1873/?action=view&current=Allison013.jpg

You are gonna love this thing, it's not that heavy because the bore is large and the bbl is thin. The trigger needed some work and the sight as mentioned but that's it. I took it hunting last year for the first time, had a 100lb doe get up in front of me as I was sneaking through, it stopped about 60 yards out and peeked around a tree to see what I was. That ball hit her right at the base of the neck (where I aimed) and she went nowhere but down and what an exit it made...

I need to find a cheap bayonet, just incase a heard charges me...LOL

Doug