cayugad

WHEN YOU'RE HOT... YOU'RE HOT!!


Have you ever had one of them days on the range when you just could not seem to do anything wrong? Well today was one of them for me. I wanted to shoot the White Ultra Mag at 100 yards with conicals and different kinds of wads. The Nikon Pro Staff was on 7X.



I started out with 70 grains of Triple Se7en 3f and no wad. I was shooting 460 grain BullShop conicals. I fowled the barrel first before shooting this group to be fair to all the other groups. I never swabbed when shooting the five shot group. I was pretty excited over the group.



I then decided to try the exact same load only this time add 20 grains of cornmeal. I upped the cornmeal amount on the suggestion of some other shooters. This four shot group was so good I refused to shoot a fifth shot. I never shot a group this tight with conicals in my life at this distance,and was not about to screw it up.



I then decided to try the same load only with the fiber wads. Wouldn't you know it, I ran out of 460 grain BullShop Conicals so I substituted 500 grain NEI conicals. The 500 grain shot much better with the wads then the 460 grain. I also unfortunately had shot off another pound of my Triple Se7en 3f.



So not wanting to call it a day I got out the Triple Se7en 2f. I had read where others were shooting 80 grains of the 2f so I decided to try the 500 grain BullShops NEI with 80 grains of T-7 and 20 grains of Cornmeal. WOW!! hard to beat a group like that. It was only a three shot group, but I was shocked at the overall tightness of it and again, I was not shooting anymore...

I double checked the distance with my range finder and got one reading of 98 yards, and one of 100 yards, so take it for what it is worth. I think the Triple Se7en 2f might need some more playing with as well as the cornmeal, but I sure could not be upset about that shooting today.

Then to prove that I was a terrible shot, I began to shoot some shots resting the rifle against a tree. Again, while not as tight as off the bag, I was very pleased with the groups....

I discovered that when you purchase Miracle Grow plant food, they come will a little plastic spoon. The spoon has two ends. One very large end and one very small end. Well the small end measured 20 grains level of the cornmeal, so I now have my measure device as well.... just in case you use the plant food and have some of the spoons around, you might want to check them. And you might want to play with some fine ground yellow cornmeal...

Pglasgow

AWESOME!!!! Great report cayugad. Fine ground? Did you use Masa? or grind it more like in a coffee grinder? Its got me to thinking I need totry 20 grains.

cayugad

It's store bought. I have purchased corn meal in the past but this stuff is much finer then some of the others I have had. I just looked and it is made by Quaker. Just like Quaker Oats only cornmeal for breading...

Blown Smoke

Congrats on the excellent shooting Cayugad. I know that felt good.
I'm curious about shootingthe cornmeal though.
Where it is dry, does it pose a hardcleaning problem like baking to
the bore lining when it heats upor anything?

cayugad

actually the cornmeal helps clean the rifle when you shoot each time. There is no cleaning problem using it at all. It does not stick to anything...

RiverOtter

Apparently I've missed where people had talked about using cornmeal here in the past. What's the scoop? I see the end results and they look fantastic...what does the cornmeal really achieve in the barrel that's causing this improvement? Also, what's the procedure of adding it? Are you pouring the powder down, then adding the cornmeal on top as a sort of "cushion" for the conical, or is it all mixed in? Have you tried with other brands/types of cornmeal that's more or less fine? How about with sabots?

cayugad

The cornmeal works as a pressure regulator of sorts. It helps protect the conical also from the ignition. I dump the powder down the barrel and tap that on my toe to level the charge. Then take the measured cornmeal and dump that down the barrel. Again bump the butt of the rifle to level that on top of the powder. Then seat the conical.

I personally would not use this on sabots as the sabot acts as the wad or cornmeal...

Hunter John

Cayugad – Thanks as always for posting your results. Truly impressive to say the least!!! I’ve been reading this board for awhile now and I can’t recall one poster claiming that using cornmeal hurt performance.

Increased velocity, increased accuracy, and even possibly lowers cleaning “chore.” Sounds good to me.

Just 2 questions:
- Do you use 20 gr cornmeal by volume (using same volume measurer you use with powder) or did you actually verify that the spoon you’re using throws 20 gr in actual weight…using a powder scale.

- Have you used cornmeal with shooting PRBs? If so, what results did you find? I’m really interested in this. Do you see yourself doing a “no cornmeal / with cornmeal” test with PRBs much like the test you ran with your .58 using various patch lubes?

Thanks as always for sharing your experiences with us guys that can’t get out on the range every day…let alone every other week. Once on the range, your experiences help me use my precious range time more wisely, instead of trying something that probably won’t work.

Thanks again.

cayugad

I use 20 grain of cornmeal by volume. I took the small spoon from a Miracle Grow plant food container (they come in a number of sizes so check them) and filled it level with cornmeal. I poured that into an old powder measure and then checked to see what kind of volume I got and it hit 20 grains on the head, which is just what I was looking for.

That sounds like an interesting day on the range... I have been playing with wads in my roundball rifles for years. I did try cornmeal one afternoon many years ago, but were not really too serious about results then. I think I will plan such an experiement. Perhaps with a couple of the roundball rifles I have. I will use a 1-70 twist rifle, and a 1-48 twist rifle just to see how much difference they cornmeal can make...

Hunter John

That's the way I interpretted it when I read it. Thanks for clarrifying.

Look forward to reading your cornmeal test results using them RBs. Who knows, maybe it will even help a bit with accuracy out of that large smoothbore you have. Was that smoothbore a .62 or something?

Anyway, I remember reading the post where you shot a piece of wood with that canon of a smoothbore...the ball looked like a silver dollar

Nice.