Ultra-Hi Guns

H

Hardcase

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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.
 
Ultra-Hi black powder kits were made by B.C. Miroku of Japan who manufactured all of Browning's lever action Winchester repro rifles (1892, 1895, Mod. 71, 1885, etc.), as well the Browning BL-22, A-5 shotguns, et. al. Additionally, they currently manufacture the new Winchester 1873 repros currently on the market. In years past, before Browning, they made many different shotguns for Charles Daly.

I don't know what issues have been reported on Ultra-Hi kits, but the manufacturer is a first-line company with very high quality standards.

Some black powder shooters recommend a charge that is about half the bullet calibre. So a good starting load would be about 20-22.5 grains.
 
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Thanks, gyvel. I just saw, searching around the Internet, a lot of badmouthing of the Ultra-Hi guns. A little pondering makes me think that it could less about the quality of the parts and more about the quality of the finished kit - some folks do good work and some don't, right?
 
Thanks, gyvel. I just saw, searching around the Internet, a lot of badmouthing of the Ultra-Hi guns. A little pondering makes me think that it could less about the quality of the parts and more about the quality of the finished kit - some folks do good work and some don't, right?
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All too true; Some people just don't know the fine points of putting a kit together.
 
i would agree with what gyvel stated .
quality wise the Ultra Hi is about the level of a CVA .
it was also common to find soft springs , cheep made locks , soft frizzen .....

Miroku also had their own line . these are not marked Ultra Hi but they are marked ; Made in Japan .
frankly those are very nice rifles though no more correct then the CVA's were . they also made a brown Bess that’s very highly sought after even today and past being rather bulky is other wise very nice and fits the historic representation with the best of them
 
Miroku would make whatever the customer wanted. Ultra Hi didn't want much in the way of quality.
 
Miroku would make whatever the customer wanted. Ultra Hi didn't want much in the way of quality.
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Can't vouch for the quality of their black powder stuff, but every other Miroku product I've examined, including a very nice .38 Special revolver of their own design, were very well made.
 
Can't vouch for the quality of their black powder stuff, but every other Miroku product I've examined, including a very nice .38 Special revolver of their own design, were very well made.
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Miroku does make fine stuff but like I said they make whatever the customer wants. If the customer wants cheap springs and internals then that's what they get.
 
Miroku does make fine stuff but like I said they make whatever the customer wants. If the customer wants cheap springs and internals then that's what they get.
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I've never owned an Ultra-Hi, so I can't say one way or the other if the quality is up to B.C. Miroku's usual standards, but I gather from your posts that your opinion of them is, shall we say, "not so good?"
 
Miroku does make fine stuff but like I said they make whatever the customer wants. If the customer wants cheap springs and internals then that's what they get.
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That makes sense - if you're a contract manufacturer, you build to the customer's specs.

I'm going shooting this weekend for the first time in a long spell. We'll see how they work.
 
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