Shot in a .50 Traditions

[tn_junk]

I picked up a Traditions .50 Side Lock in trade a while back. Been abused and not cleaned after being shot. Barrel pitted. I honed it to get the pits out and ended up about .506 diameter. Most of the rifling (48 in 1) is gone. Has anybody shot bird shot out of a rifled barrel? It measures about a 32 gauge now, and I am thinking seriously about using it for squirrels until the leaves fall.

Thanks

alan

[captchee]

 keep going tell you get the rifling out . any rifling will spin your shot column and  throw it  thus breaking your pattern

[Semisane]

keep going tell you get the rifling out . any rifling will spin your shot column and  throw it  thus breaking your pattern

Exactly right Captain.

Hey Junker, if you want to give it a try as it is on the cheap, dump about 70 grains of powder down the barrel, ball up three sheets of toilet paper and pack that down on top the powder, add a load of shot stolen from an old shotgun shell, wad up one more sheet of toilet paper and pack that down on top the shot, and touch it off.  Fun, and will kill a rat at 15 feet (maybe it's the muzzle blast that kills the rat).

[Saloon slug]

Yep just keep honing till she is smooth as a baby's but. And then have fun with her should be fun for rabbits also.

[encore3006]

Alan, et. al.

I have a black powder barrel in similar condition. Where or who can hone out the barrel??

[tn_junk]

I am honing mine out using a brake cylinder home mounted on an aluminum rod. Slow going.

alan

[simonkenton]

I have a TC Hawken which I lent to an ex-friend. He didn't return it for two years, and he didn't clean it. The rifling was trashed.
I took the barrel to a machinist who I know. I brought a drill bit, I think it was a .531.
He welded the drill bit onto a long steel rod. He clamped the barrel into this giant green steel machine. He fitted the now 32 inch drill bit into that machine, and he drilled out the rifling. A little hose squirted machine oil into the barrel the whole time. Took about 20 minutes of drilling.
He did this for me for free, don't know what a customer would get charged.
This left some scoring in the barrel, which I never bothered to smooth out.
I was shooting #12 rat shot to try to knock down carpenter bees that want to eat my log cabin. To my dismay, this was not a very good shotgun. Past 20 feet the shot was so spread out I couldn't even hit a bee. Very small bore for a shotgun.
I think you would be hard pressed to make a good squirrel or rabbit gun out of one of these, although I never tried any larger shot.

[AndyHass]

Without a choke you're shooting a cylinder bore, it will be close range indeed.  Of course that just adds to the challenge, right?

[captchee]

  Not necessarily , there are ways to tighten a pattern without a choke  that can be done with  muzzleloaders that cant be done with  cartridge guns .
1)  you can have the barrel jug choked
2) you can utilize a shot cup  in your load . Either the plastic ones or make your own . If you make your own you can cut them so the will open later or not at all
3) by reducing the charge  to shot amount your pattern will tighten  increase the charge to shot amount and the pattern will widen . The size of shot also plays a part in this
4) do some playing with different wad and cushion combos . Some folks even mix their shot with  corn meal and such .

 My old smoothbore English fowler  in 20 gage  would produce a nice 30 in pattern at  30 yards  with  just 70 grains of 2F ,   ahead of 2  over the powder cards , the second one being a spit wad . Then 1 ½ oz of 71/2 shot followed by an over the shot card .
 She was a turkey , jelly heading  gun with that load . Falsears now owns it  and regularly pops clays at the range with that same load .
 

for the record i also have a .410 SXS  as well as a smooth bore musket in the same gage . the both are grouse killing buggers

The key is you have to take the time to find what your bore likes to eat