Sinful Sidelock Saturday
 

I spent a pleasant day Saturday with the Renegade.

I have three barrels for this gun. The original TC .50 caliber, plus a .45 caliber Green Mountain Long Range Hunter (1:30 twist), and a .54 caliber GM round ball barrel (1:70 twist).

I've already confessed to the sin of putting scopes on the two GM barrels so I don't want any guff about that. :s13:

I mounted the .45 GM LRH barrel and grabbed a box of 200 grain .40 XTP's, some Harvester sabots, a pound of GOEX FFFg, and headed for the shooting bench.



I ended up shooting seven 5-shot targets with various loads, and one target with my .22 Hornet (for reasons I'll explain later).

I swabbed the bore between every shot with both sides of three alcohol patches and two sides of one dry patch. It was a lot of swabbing, but every shot was on a clean dry bore.

I started off at 50 yards with 70 grains of powder. Here's the target.



DANG I'm good. Well, I thought so at the time anyway.

Bumped the charge up to 80 grains and shot another target.




Still not bad. That flyer might have been mine (maybe I'm not as good as I thought).

OK, try ten more grains of powder. Here's the 90 grain target.




Well, it looks like it's starting to open up with the higher charge.

Let's try this - go back to 80 grains and use a Crush Rib sabot instead of the smooth high pressure sabot. Here's the target.



Nope! That didn't improve anything.

That first 70 grain group was real nice. Lets try 70 grains again, but at 75 yards.



Hoo Weeeee! Guys, when I took that fifth shot I kept telling myself "don't blow this, don't blow this". So, of course, I blew it. :s14:

Well you just know I had to try that same load at 100 yards. Here's the target.




WHAT!!! How can that load shoot a near one hole group at 75 yards open up like that at 100? Maybe it was my fault. Let's try again.



Well it gets worser and worser.

At this point I was wondering if shooter's fatigue had set in and was screwing with my 100 yard shooting. So I broke out the trusted .22 Hornet with a "known to be accurate" load and shot five at 100.



Well, it seems that the 100 yard groups with the Renegade were not likely MY fault. :D Time to clean the guns and pour some Scotch. :party0005:
A most pleasant day indeed!

Looks like a fun day at the range. Glad it's cooled off enough for you to get out. I know that feeling though when you have a great group going. You're almost afraid to look after the gun goes off :s14:

Nothing is more fun the to go out and blow powder off. I have one of them .45 barrels I just realized. Thanks for reminding me. Mine is stainless. I will have to throw a set of mounts and a 1x32mm scope on it and see what it can do with some of them loads you tried..

Nice shooting there ...

Semi - I had the same experience with my 45 cal LRH using the same bullet/sabot combo. But I was using Pyrodex P. Open sights too.... Anyway, I got good groups with 70 gr. at 50 yds. But when I went out to 80 yds, the group was still good but the POI was too high and I had the rear sight down as low as I could get it. When I boosted up the charge to 80 grs, it POI lowered and the group was tighter.
Can't explain why one load shot better at 50 yds and the other at 100 but I've seen wierder things happen.

That scotch is why you cant shoot straight at 100yds.:devil::kiss::kiss::kiss:

Could be Grouse. It so happens I knocked over my glass with the last of my Scotch while I was cleaning the gun. :s7: Now THAT'S alcohol abuse.

Fortunately, a buddy at the camp had a resupply on hand. Didn't want to have to drink the isopropyl I use for swabbing.

YOU KNOCKED OVER YOUR GLASS OF SCOTCH!!!!!!! Why that's more sinful thant putting a scope on a Renegade...:)

It wasn't a total loss Bronko. I dipped a few cleaning patches in the puddle and finished cleaning the gun.

I think I've created a monster though. Now that sucker does nothing but misfire until I give it a Scotch patch or two. I don't like to do that though. It performs OK with one patch, but gets very erratic with two or three and starts to slur its boom. :p