New 1000 yard toy

E

Easyrider

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Location
Southwestern Manitoba
Woohoooo! My new toy arrived from The Gun Room. Brand new Pedersoli Gibbs target rifle. It is a beauty! I have been scheming away all winter (yeah, it's still winter) about owning one of these. As soon as we got home from our winter home in California, I cleaned up a couple of underutilised Fender guitars and an amp, and put them up for sale, and what do you know? They sold for what I was asking, and here we are!
A friend on CGN (thanks, David) sent me a variety of .45 cal bullets, and I used one of them (.451 dia) to slug the bore, which is .449. I sent the slug to Boomer's Bullet Moulds, in Regina, and ordered an adjustable paper patch mould, with both flat base and cupped base doodads for it. The bullet will likely end up .443 or so, before applying the paper patch, but I left the measuring up to Leo. I have ordered 9# onion skin paper, and a bunch of other stuff from Buffalo Arms, and have rounded up some 30/1 alloy for my first casting. While I have been waiting patiently for all of this, I spent some time building a bullet catcher box to help develop a proper load, alloy and try out the two different bullet bases, checking for gas cutting, etc. Looking for a chronograph.
As mentioned above, Dave sent me a selection of bullets, and after I got the packing grease cleaned out of the bore, one of them fit, sort of. It was tight, and I could only load it clean, it wouldn't go into a dirty bore. I fired 3 shots yesterday, and here's initial thoughts.
Fit and finish are good. The barrel fits the stock and breach like a glove.
It is a lot of rifle, almost 12 pounds, but balances perfectly right at the barrel wedge.
Because of the weight, and the heavy 36 inch barrel, recoil was minimal, but then, I only had 75 grains of powder in her. Much, much less recoil than my 45/90 Winchester!
The sights are good, in spite of what you may read about them. I am pretty sure they will outshoot me for the foreseeable future, and I am in no hurry to spend another $500 on a "better" set.
The straight stock makes it hard to get my eye down low enough to shoot it at short range, as has been discussed on this site before.
I can't really get too serious about shooting it until my mould arrives. I plowed a 100 yard path out in the pasture with the loader, but it keeps blowing and filling back in with snow. :mad: By the time the mould gets here, we will be sowing (I hope!), so a proper range report is a number of weeks away, but I couldn't wait to show her off! Man, this is going to be fun!!! :cool:



 
Very nice! I've thought of picking one of those up some time too. If I ever go the muzzle loading route that'll probably be what I get. Or maybe a slug gun.

If you decide that you want to try some thinner paper, Seth Cole sells 50yard rolls of 8lb paper. I do a fair bit of paper patching for cartridge rifles and I've got a bit better results with the Seth Cole paper.

Chris.
 
I use Teflon tape to patch I. My 43 Mauser it works great on
The 439. Dia bullet I was using from a Spanish mold
The bore is .446 very shallow rifling, I also wipe a lite SPG lube
On mullet before I patch it makes a gd bond for tape, SPG is sticky
When it's room temp, pretty well zero leading after about 40
Rounds, I know black powder is gift, I shoot muzzloaders to
Paper patching works great once u get the hang of it

Nice rifle indeed I have , hope you have fun with it
 
How is the trigger on that rifle? Is it a set trigger?

I'm sure that you'll be happy with that sight. I had a Pedersoli USA 405 soule with a Hadley eye cup on my Shiloh for a few years. It worked quite well except that it was hard to get a cleaning rod by it. Not an issue with your muzzle loader :). It did eventually develop a little bit of slop, but it saw a lot of use.

Chris.
 
Gunlaker, I intended to mention the trigger in my initial impressions, but in my excitement, forgot. It is not a set trigger. The competitions that these rifles are geared toward do not allow set triggers to be used. Go figure. Consequently, it is not great, but neither is it really bad. It is, for example, not as good as a Savage Accutrigger, and not as bad as a Browning B78. The pull is a bit heavy, and the travel is longer than ideal, but I think I will get used to it. If it proves to be unmanageable, there is a guy who fixes these triggers up, I can't think of his name right now. Ya know, the funny thing is, that I have an original English Sporting Rifle, made in 1852, and it has a single set trigger, which works better than any trigger I have ever used, even after 151 years. There is no substitute for craftsmanship. That said, the Gibbs is acceptable for a production rifle. Let's remember that one of the first things most guys change up when building a target rifle is the trigger.
 
Ok,, I have a sort of preliminary range report. I set up a target at 30 yards, to get me on the paper, loaded 65 grains of Curtis + Harvey powder, and one of the .459 GG bullet that I got from a friend. First one hit the target sideways, as did the second and third. Hmmm. After some cursing and thought, I decided that the only logical reason for the tumbling was that the 65 grains of powder was insufficient to bump up the bullets, and they were not engaging the rifling.
For the record, these bullets were given to me by a friend with a Gibbs, they measure .449, which is tight in my bore, but I am making them work by wiping the barrel quite thoroughly, and even then, after 8 shots, I had difficulty getting the last one down. Also, they are of an unknown alloy, and hardness. Anyway, back to the report, I increased the powder charge up to 90 grains, and sure enough, nice round holes in the paper. I moved the target out to 100 yards, and the last two shots were about 2'' apart, good enough for one day. This doesn't really tell me much of use in the long term, but it underlines the need for a heavy enough charge to bump up the particular bullet of the particular alloy, sufficiently to engage the rifling. Also, it certainly underlines the need of proper fitting bullets. As the fouling builds up, sooner or later one will get stuck part way down the barrel, not a good thing. Finding the proper cleaning patch/jag combination would help, maybe. I used a patch that fit pretty snugly at the bore, but less so closer to the breech. The Gibbs has a choked bore, and I don't have a way figured out to get a patch started at the muzzle, that is still tight further down. The cleaning rod I use is a home made thing, made from a piece of 1/4" brazing rod with a piece of moose horn on one end, and a home-made brass jag on the other. I need to make a new one. This one is about four inches too long (36" barrel plus 42" rod, I am standing on tip toes to get the patch started), and I need a swivel handle on it to accommodate the fast twist.

I swabbed the bore with my version of "moose milk", 5 parts water, 1 part water soluble cutting oil, and 1 part isopropyl alcohol. After swabbing with both sides of 2 damp patches, then both sides of 1 dry patch, the final swab came out with some black marks, but not a huge amount.

As I didn't have any wads with me, I wiped right down to, but not into the chamber (loading clean), as opposed to pouring in the powder, seating a wad on top, then cleaning down to the wad (loading dirty). It is true what they say about hang fires being a problem if you load clean. I was able to get reasonable ignition most times by trickling a few granules of powder into the nipple before capping it, but that really isn't a satisfactory solution. I am working on a couple of ideas to improve ignition, but in the end, the conventional wisdom of loading dirty is actually wise, because it works. Sadly, my personality is such that I have to prove every damn thing for myself.

More later...
 
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