A good friend of mine is downsizing his house (which, fortunately, does not mean what it sounds like) and gave me a couple of his black powder guns (along with about 50 pounds worth of various caliber lead bullets). It's nice to have friends like that, right?
Anyway, the guns are both Ultra-Hi kits that his father built, probably back in the '70s. One is a Kentucky rifle-looking affair with a two piece stock (a brass trim piece covers the joint) and a faux patch box. The other is a replica of a similar vintage pistol. Both are .45 caliber, rifled and caplocks.
His dad did a beautiful job of building these guns - clearly he was a real stickler for detail and it shows. Now, I know that there's something of a negative history revolving around Ultra-Hi products, but these look about as good as they possibly could. They've never been fired.
So here's my question...what sort of loads of my trusty Sheutzen 3F black powder should I use? The only muzzle loading rifle that I have any experience with is great great grandpa's .58 caliber Springfield musket, but I feel confident that a 50 grain load is probably the wrong place to start with this one.
Anyway, the guns are both Ultra-Hi kits that his father built, probably back in the '70s. One is a Kentucky rifle-looking affair with a two piece stock (a brass trim piece covers the joint) and a faux patch box. The other is a replica of a similar vintage pistol. Both are .45 caliber, rifled and caplocks.
His dad did a beautiful job of building these guns - clearly he was a real stickler for detail and it shows. Now, I know that there's something of a negative history revolving around Ultra-Hi products, but these look about as good as they possibly could. They've never been fired.
So here's my question...what sort of loads of my trusty Sheutzen 3F black powder should I use? The only muzzle loading rifle that I have any experience with is great great grandpa's .58 caliber Springfield musket, but I feel confident that a 50 grain load is probably the wrong place to start with this one.