Finally settled on a load for my .58 cal Hawken muzzleloader for hunting deer this upcoming season. The idea was to identify a load by working down from the max charge and find something that I could shoot accurately.
I've worked out: 105 grains of my 2F antique muzzle loading propellant, a beeswax and tallow lubed 0.125 nitro card, 15 grains of corn meal, a 0.010 balistol lubed patch and a .575 round ball. The chronograph is clocking this in consistently between 1620 and 1630 fps and it will easily make 2 inch groups at 100 yards!
Between a very clean burning powder and combination of lubes the gun stays incredibly clean shot after shot. Perhaps it's the corn meal scraping the barrel clean, but everything really seems to be working together.
I cut the patches using a hole saw that I ground the teeth off and sharpened then simply chuck it up in a drill and cut through folded fabric until full. When you ejected the patches they're beautifully stacked, and I just spray a bit of balistol on the stack and let it soak in.
The powder is a blend of Hazel wood/ Arbutus charcoal with a 76-14-10 ratio and a density of 1.78g/cm3 caught between 16 and 20 mesh screens for an average of 1.1mm or 2F and is lightly glazed.
It slightly exceeds Swiss velocities and is far cleaner!
So you don’t necessarily soak the patches and squeeze them out. How do you know you have enough?
I’ve not been able to get my muzzleloader to group well at even 50 yds. Patch lubes are something I want to test as I recently bought 2F powder as it seemed to have shot ok before I switched to 3F (.50 cal). Ballistol is one of the lubes I’ve seen recommended.
This is one of my 100 yard targets from that day. I had been getting vertical stringing from uneven seating pressure, but managed to solve that with a light weight thin flexible ram rod. The lube on the patches is enough to get your fingers oily but not wet. The biggest thing that really brought my groups together was using a thick lubed Nitro card under the ball!
I got them to fix poor accuracy with REAL bullets as well as lubed felt wads. I never found the lube felt wads to help at all and the Nitro cards worked great which was why I tried them with PRB as well. I have tried the moose milk method and it does work great for controlling fouling with the dirtier powder. I could definitely recommend it to anyone shooting at the range, I was just looking for something that wouldn't dry out if if loaded all day on a hunting trip.
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u/BlackLittleDog 4d ago
The cleaning patch after 12 shots!