.54 sabot load advice please

Suka

Suka

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Hi,
I have a spanish made percussion .54, 1 in 48 twist sort of looks like a lyman deerstalker. Have been shooting .535 patched roundballs using a max ffg load of 90gr.
When Russells was closing I picked up some Hornady 44-300 sabots.
Was thinking of using 60-70gr ffg.
This sound reasonable?
thanks.
 
Sabots for .54 were quite popular back when Knight offered this cal in on of thier inlines.
Some shooters made note of the fact that because of the extra or thicker need of plastic it tended to not break from the bullet used. Causing, the sabot and bullet to strike the animal giving poor performance and poor accuracy because of this.
However this is only from what I have read and have no experience with such. It may work wonders for you. Your load sounds like a reasonable start load. Work it up to 110grs or more and find what shoots best.
Cheers,
 
I can tell you from experience with a T/C Hawken that the 1:48 twist will not stabilize the 300 gr saboted pistol bullet, resulting in wild inaccuracy. The bullet is too long for the twist rate.
Use the shorter 240 gr XTP saboted bullet and you should find satisfactory accuracy using 90 grains of FFg.
 
If you want a bullet, why not try the short Lee REAL bullet. I had a friend shoot them for a couple of years and they shot accurately, but he went to balls because they worked so well. I use nothing but .530 balls in my Trade rifle.
 
Not a case of wanting a bullet, Russells had stuff marked down, and, what the heck, thought I'd give'em a try.
Just wasn't sure of what load compared to my patchn' ball load.
From the sounds of it maybe I'll just list them on the ee and stick with what I have.
 
I did for a time shoot 240g pistol bullets in sabots from my .50 Lyman deerstalker and got very good accuracy using 90-100g of Pyrodex RS. I didn't like the clean up after so went back to balls.
 
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