Primitive Archer

The TC Hawken and Renegade both have a 1 in 48 twist barrel, a middle of the road choice for balls or bullets. TC did make a rifle in the Renegade style called the Pennsylvania Hunter that had a 31", 1 in 66 twist barrel just for shooting round balls which were required in Pennsylvania's late flintlock season. They made this rifle in a carbine model but I don't know what the barrel twist is.

TC made a short carbine style rifle like the Renegade called a Whiter Mountain Carbine that had a 21" barrel with a 1 in 21 rifling twist rate just for conicals with a heavy powder charge.

As you go smaller in caliber the normal twist rate gets faster, my .40 with a Green Mountain barrel has a 1 in 48 twist and the barrel is made for shooting round balls of that caliber.

I just checked the Rice Barrel page and found that the drop in barrels they make for TC guns can have a rifling twist of 1 in 21, and 1 in 24 for bullets, a middle of the road 1 in 48 barrel and a strictly ball barrel that is 1 in 66.

I've been cutting down the worst of my 20" flight arrows to 18 1/2" to try in the latest flight bow (to avoid over drawing it too soon and over stressing it before trying at 20").
The bow is about 50# at that draw length (18 1/2" plus about 3" overdraw), Hoping to get the quarter mile
I found some hardwood, Cumaru I think (from some old garden furniture) and managed to turn it down pretty skinny 4.6mm at the tip 5.3mm at the nock (with cow horn insert), it is still fairly stiff. I haven't made the brass point yet, but I expect that will weigh about 10 grain.
It weighs 126 gn at the moment.
Does this sound just too light to you guys?
I wanted thin for the aerodynamics, but I realise it does need some weight ( the old throwing a golf ball vs ping pong ball )
All comments gratefully received.
Del

In his video Gary Davis says "native americans didn't go hungry when they didn't have any osage". Neither did stoneage Europeans when they didn't have yew.

Very nice bow in all aspects. Including speed.

Hey, all.  Considering investing in a black powder rifle.  I'd like something traditional, capable of taking elk and moose (.54?).

My question is, how steep is the learning curve for an experienced modern rifle/trad bow hunter?  How much gear is necessary?  How hard is this really to get into?  I have no idea.  But I'm a guy who likes to know how deep the water is before I jump off the cliff.   

One of the decisions is how much recoil you intend to subject yourself to. Like Eric said, you can get guns that shoot roundball or guns that shoot conical bullets. In the .50/.54 realm that means a 1:72" twist for roundballs and a 1:44" twist for conicals. Yes, at very close range you can shoot conicals from a slow twist barrel, but they are gonna tumble pretty quick and there goes your accuracy. You can shoot roundball from faster twist barrels, but you don't wanna go with hotter loads because then you risk stripping the rifling and shooting knuckleballs and dip and dive.

Plenty of moose and elk have fallen to a mere patched roundball but your bullet placement is more critical and you want to run a little hotter load then you shoot for deer sized game. The conical bullets carry a great deal more mass, and for a wee bit more powder you get a good bit more energy downrange. You also get an equal amount of recoil, that's just physics. I've made a lot of one shot kills on deer with flintlocks and percussion lock guns, and my everyday shooting load is a mere 70 grains of powder behind a roundball. But if I were to draw a muzzleloader elk tag I would be out at the range with several lbs of powder, a thick stack of paper targets, whomping pile of fresh cast balls, and my old chronometer. I would be shooting 5 shot strings and going up 5 grains at a time, logging my bullet speeds against accuracy. I'd want the greatest possible speed before I start losing accuracy simply because that is going to impart more energy on impact.

I have an old CVA percussion gun with the 1:44 twist and I tried the R.E.A.L. slugs in that gun. The roundball had a manageable kick, but the slugs/conicals simply punched me back hard enough that shooting ceased being any fun at all. I dunno if I'd risk learning to flinch just for the heavier downrange slug. I think I would count on stealth, stalking, and patience to put me in a closer range where I can put that ball with precision where the boiler room lies on that game animal.

As for the rest of the kit, well, son, you are standing on the precipice. A gay friend once told me that my muzzleloading proclivities was all about the accessories. First you get a gun, but then you have to get the right powderhorn and shooting bag (he-man macho purse). But it doesn't end there because you have to accessorize with the various tools that adapt to your ramrod like buttons, ball pullers, tow worms, bore brushes, patch pullers, etc. Of course, you want spare ramrods in best grade hickory because you just know they can break. Which brings up range rods and cleaning rods, because you don't want to risk damaging or wearing out a fine-grained hickory ramrod when you can use a tough as nails nylon or brass one, even if it isn't exactly historically accurate. We won't even get into the issue of clothing fashion because then that brings up the quandary of choosing what period in time, what your socioeconomic status might be, or your craft, profession, or career choices. That's just going to lead you down the path of first-person interpretations and that means crafting a backstory and researching first person accounts from your chosen historical period and that is just a while nother rabbit hole. Hats? OMG! Hat choices will just drive you insane because they say EVERYTHING about your persona, wealth, culture, politics, heritage, and even birth order. That's even before we start to open the conversation about gros grain ribbon piping on brim edges, vs raw edging, whether to add a flourish of ribbon on a cockade or or or....my brain is gonna melt!!!

Long story short (and no one says this before the story has already gone on altogether too long) you can fall down a rabbit hole that makes Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland look like a short one liner joke. At the minimum, it's a gun, lead, powder, patch material, grease, flints or caps, a powder measure, and a couple tools that attach to the ramrod. If you are the least bit handy in the garage, you can make powder measures from brass tubing, lathe turned wood/antler/horn/bone or even a section of river cane. Patch material can be any all-cotton cloth you have around and you'll have to experiment to decide how thick or thin that patch material needs to be.

Did you try taking any more flakes? Curious if it flakes or breaks.

Bjrogg