If you can make the rifle yourself, consiter this. Get a 45 caliber 45-70 barrel blank. Cut off enough to make size die for your Lyman bullet sizer. Lap the remaining barrel to add a choke and smooth things up as necessary. I used the Numrich cheapo barrel. Now, make your muzzleloader as usual. Size a 45-70 style plain based cast lead bullet in the size die you made. It will be a perfect mechanical fit in the gun barrel. Kinda like the old Witworths. You could shoot any combo of powder and bullet the rifling would stabalize. It loads slick as can be. I have done this and it shoots really well.

Following up my earlier post about the Mortimer. I�m now thinking about putting an English stalking rifle together in the coming years, I�ve found some nice component parts sets. Most of my experience has been with smoothies (75 and 62), so rifles are a new thing for me. My intial thought was a 54 with a slow twist for round ball, but I was thinking since it is a rifle, about going for a faster twist for conicals. That then leads to a question what caliber for a rifle for conicals? I like bigger bores so I was thinking either 54 or 58, but many have told me all sorts of good things about .45. Any thoughts? This is mostly a deer rifle for extended seasons and shotgun only counties in VA/MD though I�d like it to be able to travel around and meet minium caliber restrictions in western states.



Thanks!

Having shoot a lot of big mean animals with solids in big bore doubles and bolt guns, I cannot see how a 50 could kill as well as 54 cal. the cross section of a bullet has a lot to do with good kills...

I have not shot a lot of game with muzzle loaders, a few deer and that was some time back, so please explain this to me....I understand BC and SD but that cross section of non expanding bullets is critical to killing power, especially with these very slow velocities...I think that if I were to use one on a Cape Buffalo I would tend to opt for a 54 or even a 58 or 62 caliber.

I am not contridicting anyone, just requesting some input...like I said I have not shot a lot of game with the BP guns.

I think part of your answer is that you are referencing to experience with big bore solid bullets which are really non-expanding and you are probably right bigger is better. I have not had any experience with cape buffalo or the like and have not shot any solids. The conicals that the BP rifles shoot are really an expanding bullet since they are almost always made out of soft lead or soft copper (Barnes) so they really do expand on impact. The 54 round ball vs. the 50 round ball wins due to the initial frontal area and the fact that neither flys very well. the 50 cal conicals and sabot bullets have better flight characteristics for the same weight as the 54 cal which is one of the reasons for preferance for the 50. The other reason is selection of bullets which is much greater for the 50 cal.

Ray,
This is so simple as 50 vs 54. Weights, lead hardness, nose shape, and quarry all matter hugely. I rather like .54 roundsballs going very fast (199 fps) over the normal conicals that are sold for muzzleloaders. But better than my favorite roundball load, I would hunt anything that walks with my .45 underhammer and a paper patched bullet of my own manufacture traveling just under 1400 fps. That bullet is good out as far as I can hit with it, which is a good bit further than I can hit with the roundball, and a good deal more lethal out there as well.

Brent

I have both, and if I had to choose, I would go with a Fifty. The longer the bullet, the faster the twist. So what bullet do you think you want to shoot out of your 50 cal.?

In a purely conical rifle I'd get a .45 maybe a .50. Of course, I've got a .45 and a .54 but they're TC guns and won't use the heaviest conicals like a 400+ gr. .45 like the Whitworth guns with 1-22 twist. Then again, there's nothing in VA that requires more than a .45.

Too bad that VA doesn't allow doubles, I'd get a Ned Roberts Billinghurst .45 double reproduction for a real blast from the past.

Brent, not sharpshooting mind you, but I went to the Pedersoli web sit looking for the Gibbs. They list it as the S225 Gibbs, .40 cal, 1:23-5/8 twist. Mebbe not the same rifle? Know where I might find some info on the one you're speaking of?

You'd have to have it built or build it yourself. The Pedersoli Kodiak in .50 is the next best thing. Should have said as much.

Ray: If we are talking about game that can bite back, I agree with you. I had a pleasant phone chat with a fellow who had hunted buff and other critters in Africa with a .58 Kodiak double rifle, and while he bagged his buff with a .58 conical, he said he would love to go back armed with the Kodiak in .72 loaded with conicals.
But for a stalking rifle for deer and other mid-sized North American game, I suspect I would take the range and trajectory of something like a Whitworth or Volunteer with a long .45 bullet over, say, a TC Renegade shooting a short, fat .54 conical, except at very close range. A fast-twist .45 bullet shooter like a Volunteer can equal or exceed a .45-100 cartridge gun for MV.