25 cal barrel for black powder

brybenn

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I had a crazy thought while oiling my 50 Cal muzzleloaders this morning. I'd like to hunt small game with a muzzleloader. However a 50 Cal isn't ideal for edible small game. I've found some 32-36 cal kits in the states but for a little more I think I could have one custom made.
If i were to go with a 25 cal is there a barrel maker that could do a slower twist?
 
There is a reason why .25 black powder barrels aren't popular ... that small a caliber has a lot of fouling problems with black powder...
 
brybem. I tried exactly what you are thinking of doing about 40 years ago. The rifle went together pretty easily with the tang from another BP rifle of the same model as mine but in 45 cal.

The barrel was a 1-14 twist Remington 721 take off, with a 257Rob chamber. It was a heavy barrel so there was enough meat there to cut away most of the chamber and cut new threads for the tang/plug.

OK, here's where the problems started. First, I had to get a special round ball mold and a maxi ball style mold made up. Not a big deal because we had a marvelous machinist with lots of tool and die experience in the shop of the factory where I worked. He liked doing this sort of thing so a bottle of Pinch (his weakness) was considered payment enough. He turned out a couple of cherries and made up some molds out of old brass salvaged from molds for casting glass containers. Anyway, they worked well.

The next issue was powder. You will need to use very fine granules such as those made for handguns. In reality, even those aren't fine enough. You just can't get enough powder behind the bullet to get decent/consistent velocities. I had to cut the length of the barrel back to 18 inches to get it to work even reasonably well.

Now, I wanted to patch the round ball with cotton patches. This meant a ball that was around .200 diameter. The Maxi was of course slightly larger than bore diameter. The Maxi worked best but was a bear for lead fouling. Just couldn't get enough lube into the grooves to do a decent job. The ball was a problem because it weighed around 20 grains and at 25 yards wouldn't penetrated a 2x4.

There was a very good reason why the BP industry settled on .32 as their small diameter bullet of choice. .36 is even better and will likely do everything you want to do, including being almost ideal for squirrels and rabbits or grouse.

I won't try to dissuade you from experimenting. Have fun and learn.
 
My general inclination would be to buy as light a .45 cal barrel as I could find, and work out a light load for small game for it.

Most places want a minimum of .45 cal for hunting deer with, so you could also do that if you were so inclined.

I once thought it would be interesting to go the really small bore route, but the more I learned, the less it looked like it would be fun instead of frustrating.

Cheers
Trev
 
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