44 fanatics

[Kurt]

Sam.

Don't sweat the light barrel. I just went down and measured mu 30" crescent butplate Hartford I ordered with the standard weight octagon barrel. It measures 1.020" at the action and just .900" at the muzzle and it is a fine shooter. I had the tang sights on it one day just to see what it is capable of at 200 yards and I covered five shots with three fingers. With the barrel sights I put 3 out of 6 shots in the white plate fired at the buffalo up on the hill at Raton and managed to hit the 1585 yard iron buff using the barrel sights.
That short light barrel points hand holds well off hand.
I think the Lawrence sight might reach a mile from what I had left over on the staff with out having to use the top notch.
With your ROT you have a wide field of bullets you can use in that rifle. I will be waiting to see how the GM barrel shoots for you.
When you feel you want to try some of the prolate and elliptical bullets I shoot in the 1/17 ROT let me know and I will make a package. These two shoot very good in my 1/17 twist. The two outside bullets are the .44's. The left is the 500 gr Elliptical and the right is the 485 prolate.

[Nuclearcricket]

Thank you Kurt, but first things first. I need warm weather and to get rid of all this white stuff piled up around here. I did play around a little with the one fired case I have. I had made up a bushing die to save me from the expense of buying a set of dies. Doing some math I figured I had the bushing to the point it would size the neck to allow .002 bullet tension. After sizing the neck I could just get the base band into the case. Seems I came pretty close with my guess. With the bullet I have, acurage mold 44-480SL, I can set the first 2 bands out of the case and still chamber it, if I set the bullet out any farther the hammer becomes a bit of a problem. I am hoping that it will shoot well with this setting or with a little luck it will shoot well with just a band and grease grove set out.
My concerns with barrel weight were: 1 I didn't want it to be over weight for shiloutte, and 2 I no longer have the upper body strength to hold 12 pounds plus for off hand shooting.
I am anxious to get thing to the range and on paper. The load that I had put together that the smith shot was loaded with 1F elephant and that seemed to have very little recoil, but damn that stuff is dirty. Just one shot took a couple of patches to clean the barrel. But, he loaded it and pulled the trigger and it went Boom, guess start. On the pluss side, the firing pin hits closer to the center of the primer than any of my other rifles. I guess Pedrosoli did something right when they made the parts for this action.
Sam

[J.B.]

Looks good Sam . Will be interested to see how your 1/17" performs also. Very nice piece of gear.

Gavin.