Shiloh 44-77 Hartford

[Eric Johanen]

Yesterday was a great day to be on the range. My 30 inch heavy barreled Shiloh with Stephan's Hartford front and a Lawrence rear. 200 yard SR and a 600 yard MR-52 target posted at 200 yards. The black is 11.75 inches about the size of a medium/small sized gong. 10 ring is 3 5/8th's. Load I was using is fire formed Jamison brass, CCI Br-2 primer, 77 grains of KIK 2 fg, Thin .450 card, a DGL grease wad at 1/8" followed by another thin card. Bullet is from a Brook's mold @.430 475 grain Sharps style bullet cast at 16/1 wrapped with Southworth 55y paper. This rifle has Orville's pp chamber. Bullets were seated shallow Flipped up the leaf and set the slider at 200 yards and put 3 shots over the MR-52 paper. Slider bottomed out and impact at 12:30 in the 6 ring. Slider up and used the 100 yard notch. With a fine sight it hit just below the black, 6 shots between 6 and 6:30 3 to 4 inches low. Using a bit of the blade above the rear sight I started hitting in the black. 2 at 5 outside 7's, touching, 2 8's 9 and 3:30, 5 9's centered around the 10 ring for a 5 inch group. Last shot was perfect for elevation but I pulled it out to the 6 ring at 3. I must open up the notch a bit as it's pretty tight for my old eyes! Wiped with 1 wet and 1 dry. Fouling was heavier than usual probably do the light compression. I'll try the load again with heavier compression and see if it burns cleaner. I am starting to get this rifle and loads figured out. Great fun!

[Kurt]

Careful Eric!! that rifle and caliber will spoil you for shooting others

I pulled mine out while at the Q with the same sights and bullet your using but I used 77 grains of 2F OE. I had Carolyn behind the scope and after the 2 shot in the dirt in front of the 600 I rang the iron for several shots fired never missing it.
I said let's walk to the 805 Buff and see if I can hit it. The Range RO was sitting behind me when we got there so I asked him any guess how much I should elevate the slide and he said it's your guess Well I raised it and shot The lights blinked and Carol said 5 O-clock just outside of the white. I took three more shots and all danced around the white dot.
There is nothing better when making a good shot then having someone watching shooting a great caliber using barrel sights.

[mherth]

Careful Eric!! that rifle and caliber will spoil you for shooting others

I pulled mine out while at the Q with the same sights and bullet your using but I used 77 grains of 2F OE. I had Carolyn behind the scope and after the 2 shot in the dirt in front of the 600 I rang the iron for several shots fired never missing it.
I said let's walk to the 805 Buff and see if I can hit it. The Range RO was sitting behind me when we got there so I asked him any guess how much I should elevate the slide and he said it's your guess Well I raised it and shot The lights blinked and Carol said 5 O-clock just outside of the white. I took three more shots and all danced around the white dot.
There is nothing better when making a good shot then having someone watching shooting a great caliber using barrel sights.

Kurt, I sure enjoyed taking a couple of shots with your 44-77 at Big Hill a year or so ago. Wish we had some matches with just barrel sights. Don’t know why, but I usually seem to shoot better with someone else’s gun...
I need to start bringing my 50-70 Roller along to these buffalo shoots.
Mike

[Nuclearcricket]

Ok, let me ask kind of a stupid question, inquiring minds would like to know. What makes Orville's pp chamber so good? And does anyone have a drawing of the neck and throat area? I am still flirting with and kind of planning on having a chamber cut in 44-60 bottle neck for paper patch bullets and would damn sure like to get t he best shape on the reamer to start with. I do know that the case neck on the 60 is going to be thicker than on the 77, thats just a given seeing as BACO forms them from 348 brass. The one case I have the neck is about .0125 thick and that will make a difference as to how the reamer is ground.
TIA
Sam

[Eric Johanen]

With Orville's 44-77 pp chamber the fired cases measure .459 at the mouth and I can seat a patched .439 bullet with no neck sizing. This is a slip fit. Using a Meacham .458 bushing die I have a bit of tension and the bullet will not fall out when turned upside down. Very little or no working of the case. I can just clean and load. With the bullet patched to .436 I use a .455 bushing and it works for shooting with a fouled bore. Accuracy is very good with Orville's chamber and I glad I chose it. For hunting and steel banging it is a very good choice. My set up is not a long range target rifle but I can get hits on steel at 400 yards with he barrel sights and will try to get it on at 500. Currently 400 seems to the the limit for my eyes.

[Kurt]

Sam,

Orville started changing his Shiloh standard chamber using a throating reamer for cutting out the 45 degree transition into a 7 degree transition.
I don't know if Orville had anything to do with the reamer Kirk has that has the Orville 7 degree lead with a tighter neck or not. It was designed for using a PP bullet so you don't have to size the case neck down as much.
It looks like the second cast on my .44-90 BN but mine is a 4 degree with a tighter neck that won't except a GG bullet diameter. The top cast is the standard chamber Shiloh I rebarreled using my reamer.
   

[Kurt]

   

Here is my new project I'm getting ready to have this reamer made along with a matching sizing die reamer.
You can change this to fit your .44-60 being the neck of this drawing.

[Eric Johanen]

Looking at the target, had I used the correct sight picture from the beginning all shots except the last one I pulled off at 3 would have impacted well into the target. 6.75 horizontal spread. Now that is not too impressive with target sights but with my eyes and the open barrel sights it looks pretty good. I have opened up the sight notch a bit and I'll use this rifle at Merrill next Saturday and see if I can finally get some hits on the 500 yard gongs. This is turning out to be a pretty good rifle and cartridge.

[Nuclearcricket]

Thanks for the info and the pics. I did some scrounging around on the net and ran across a Dan Theador print for a 45-70 PP chamber. I see that you are running the throat taper out to the diameter of the neck area, Dans print was the same way. My thoughts were to do it a little different but it would be much easier to have the taper go right up to the neck diameter. How much difference does the throat taper angle make? Dans print was 25 deg., yours is 5 and I was thinking of something less.
I am expecting a call some time this week from PT&G to talk reamer design and it would be my guess he has an entirely different angle in mind.
My guess also is that the neck wall thickness is another variable that will have to be considered. The case I have is about .0125 thick. If a different case was used to form the brass from it might change that and that could make a difference in things I would think. Waiting to hear back from BACO on that question. One thing I do feel certain about is if the 348 case is used, as thick as that is it should never wear out.
Sam

[Kurt]

I think Dan used the 25 degree that the Sharps Borchardt had because of the transition from black powder to the less smoke or cordite used in the 30-40 Kraig to build up more pressure. Also i think that is what the Browning BPCR has.
The flattest lead I use is a 4 degree/1.5 compound and I have that in my .44-75 Ballard and it shoots well but it's a long throat.