Thread: A tale of 2 guns that became 3

So this is a bit of a yarn about getting a new old gun going and a shout out to a few people who have helped along the way

@Martin357 let it go to
@Scout who was thinking of my long term disability ( being left handed ) and sent it on down the line

It's an unusual beast
Left hand
.522 rifled muzzleloader barrel with a change barrel 12 guage muzzleloader barrel
Marked clearly for calibers and made 1976
Straight grip and English half stock
Made from a cartridge shotgun left hand back action lock
Some old and some new parts
Probably a new rifled barrel, but in a very unusual bore diameter
A 12 gauge barrel thats from a Japanese pump action shotgun. because there is half a roll stamp and the marks where the pump action parts were ground off underneath.
A pretty good build really



It has a Parker Hale / Savage model 99 folding staff rear sight. Which I stripped and tidied up.
I changed out the rifle barrel front sight element to a Lyman 17A front globe




So I tried things out with the biggest 50 cal mold I had and some very think patch material in the 52 rifled barrel
Well I wouldn't call it accurate at 30m



So I decided I needed to get a properly sized mold from ballmold.com in the UK

While I was making up my mind about a few things I got all the wads in hand from beavergrease to try out the 12 Gauge shotgun barrel
That was pretty straight forward and a whole lot of fun
But I'm a rifle guy
And the 12 gauge got me thinking about if it was a 12 bore .72 smooth bore musket.
Now that would be a whole lot of fun

So seems I had to get a .510 mold for the 52 why not get a .710 for the 12 bore and make my Two guns into Three guns
Off goes the order to James at ballmolds.com

While I'm waiting I modified the ram rods for other fixtures to thread into the ferrule ends
Tidied up a few other items



So only 4 days for James to get both the molds made and in the post and 7 days for British / NZ post to get them to my door in Akaroa NZ ( takes longer than that from Auckland often ) and I have my lovely round ball molds



One hour later and nice balls are being turned out



Tidy up the sprue end



And off to shooting
Well the .52 was sorted in no time and shooting 75mm groups off the bench at 60m
Good enough to park that
Change the barrel over to the 12 bore and really have some fun

At this point I should point out that set up as a .52 rifle it weighs about 7 3/4 pounds
And that set up as a 12 bore musket it weighs exactly 6 pounds even
So thats a 200 grain 52 cal projectile in a moderately weighted rifle
And a huge 512 grain .72 projectile in a childs toy weight musket

Lets just say its been interesting and I have kept my range sessions to 10 or 12 shots in a session
Had some very wild results early on with those big balls
Then realised that the barrel tennon that the stock key passes through was a little loose for the 12 bore barrel. And that because the rear sight is on the hook breech tang and not on the barrel, that the sights were not always aligned the same shot to shot

So tighten the tennon and put a front sight base on using the hole that the shotgun bead was tapped into.
Dropped the .72 point of impact to match the sight setting for the .52



Things improved dramatically and the beast was tamed
More and more powder was added to the charges and it just kept shooting well



Now the round count is increasing every day and I am almost ready to go shoot something big !

This load is proving very consistent and easy to shoot
3 rounds together from a standing rest at 30Y and one lower round from 60Y that established my drop
I think that this will shoot through anything I'm likely to hunt in the near future
Unless I go chasing some scrub bulls



Had some visitors today and 3 people ( two had never fired it before and weren't into big bores ) fired a shot each off hand at 30m and all got it in the 100mm bull

So my 3 gun shoot anything left hand muzzleloader battery is reasonably sorted and ready for anything