#inlinemuzzleloader

Note: I am now  also addressing the Inline Muzzle-Loader also because I have had a number of people approach me and ask if the Kinetic Performance BOMB can be used in guns that use Black Powder or Substitute Black Powders like Pyrodex, Triple 7, and Blackhorn 209. The answer is YES for those who have wondered. We have had customers use them with sabots and sabotless with BH209 with great results. The discussion that follows is applicable to an Inline Muzzle-Loader except that SMOKELESS POWDER CAN NEVER BE USED.

A Smokeless Muzzle-Loader (SML) or Inline Muzzle-Loader (IML) is not a whole lot different than a center-fire (CF) rifle in regard to its need for quality ammunition. In regard to the next couple of posts in this series there is no difference between an SML and IML as it pertains to loading. The main difference between the two is the need to clean between shots with subs and the fact that an SML eliminates that need.  Both the SML/IML and the CF have its unique advantage over the other: the ML removes some of the ammunition variables by virtue of the absence of a chamber and the CF gun removes some of the ammunition variables by removing the shooter/loader. Assuming you have a well built gun ammunition is the key to optimizing accuracy and precision.

From a mechanical standpoint the advantage goes to the SML/IML every time. As mentioned above, there is no chamber which means there is no brass case.That is to say, you don’t have to figure out case body sizing, neck tension, jump, eliminate run-out, etc.

With a CF you don’t have to worry about load compression (only in regard to repeatability not pressure generated). In general, most loads are not going to have enough load density to compress powder in a metallic cartridge and don’t need to because neck tension and engagement at the leade build the pressure. In an SML/IML compression is required. If you were to load a compressed load the advantage goes to the CF because all your ammo is loaded on a press with mechanical limits so your loading density would be more consistent than if you were to load by hand pressure as you do with an SML/IML.

Why do I bring up this comparison? If you had an SML/IML and a press that could load your gun we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Instead, you have a human loading it. Guys struggle to figure out how to load a SML/IML properly, become frustrated with their gun, and never get the level of performance they want without ever getting closer to achieving it. That was my experience in the beginning.Your SML/IML has all the advantage over a CF and if you feed it properly you will be blown away by the level of accuracy and precision you can obtain.

With the SML/IML you really only have to nail down two things: bullet fit and charge weight. I listed bullet fit first because it is the most important. It is the most important because it is directly related to the human factor of loading the SML/IML. I keep saying accuracy and precision are the keys.

Let’s define those terms. Accuracy is your ability to get extremely close or exactly match a selected standard. It is equivalent to shooting out the “X” in a bulls-eye target, throwing a powder charge to within a tenth of a grain, or in our case being able to size a bullet to say .4498″ so that it fits withing .0002″ of the lands diameter (just an example, not a magic number). Precision is being able to repeat it over and over.

The accuracy question: Is your bullet properly fit to your barrel? If it is too large to load easily it is not going to work because you are the limiting factor in the load equation since your muscles and/or weight do the loading. If it is too loose it will not adequately build pressure.

The precision question: Does the bullet fit you have selected allow you to precisely load your gun? If your loading pressure goes much over 25 pounds-force you cannot control your load compression. You and I do not have force calibrated hands. If we did there would not be a need for torque wrenches, scales, or anything else that measures/limits force. I recently saw where some guy is selling a bullet seating tool for muzzle-loaders that works like a force limiter. I’m pretty sure Ultimate Firearms has had a similar tool called the Pack-Jack for some time.

There are schools of thought that tighter is better. This might be true if you  had calibrated hydraulic arms and could use the equivalent of your body weight to press home a bullet and get exactly 100% powder compression every time. The fact is that you cannot do that over and over again. It doesn’t matter whether it is your first shot every range session or your tenth and the more you shoot the less consistent you will become due to fatigue and discomfort (think about how good the end of the ramrod feels when you seat a bullet that is too tight). With bullets that are too tight you will sometimes get powder crush, some that are just barely compressed, and sometimes (worst case scenario) bullets you can’t finish pushing down the bore.

There is also such a thing as too loose. If your bullet fit is excessively loose you will not achieve ignition and you will get squib type loads. A shotgun primer will usually completely expel your bullet from the bore. A rifle primer will not. In either case always check to make sure you don’t have a bore obstruction if you have this happen to you. If bullet fit is borderline too loose you will get ignition but poor accuracy and precision on target. Sometimes a wad will allow you to straddle that line and sometimes it will not.

What you are looking for is short of difficult but somewhere a touch past really easy. I cannot tell you what the magic number is but I can tell you that the pressure needed to run the bullet down my bores for optimal accuracy and precision is somewhere around 12.5 and 23.5 pounds-force (since you will mostly likely figure this out on your bathroom scale which measures pounds-force) for optimal performance. You don’t often hear values assigned to this loading force. It is more common to hear people say things like, “one firm hand” or “two easy hands”. Those descriptions land in the 12.5 to 23.5 pounds-force range in my rifles and probably do in yours as well.

When you measure your seating force you will get a few numbers. There will likely be a peak, mid, and low number. At a minimum you will get a peak and low number. My bullets are sized so that I average about 23.5 at peak, 17.5 as mid, and 12.5 at low.  It all depends on the consistency of your bullet sizing and the quality of your barrel bore finish. My Brux peaks toward the muzzle, mid for about half the barrel, then low where it seats. My McGowen is low pressure at muzzle, peaks at a tighter spot about 1/3 of the way from the muzzle, then mid until the bullet seats. The important value is what force you must apply in the region where your bullet will contact your powder column. It cannot be difficult or you will not get consistent loading pressure on your powder column which is critical. It cannot be too easy or you won’t build adequate pressure. Seating needs to take some effort but allow you to feel your bullet make a positive stop against your powder so that you get powder compression but not powder crush.

To achieve these performance measures you have a number of ways to control bullet fit: a number of sabots, knurling tools, and bullet sizing dies. In my second blog post I posited the idea that the sabot was the weak link. It still is and if you don’t have to use them, then don’t. If you must use them you have to find the right combination that  properly supports your bullet and provides adequate but not excessively tight fit in your bore. I don’t like the idea of knurling because most guys use files but still don’t have calibrated hands although some knurl up then use a bullet sizer to draw down. Files can also fail and leave bits of steel in your bullet which then will ruin your barrel. I do not have any experience with knurling but am acquainted with guys who have ruined barrels doing it. It does seem like a viable method for increasing performance in a sabot.  The preferred method as it pertains to sabotless, and the only one we will discuss further, is to use a bullet about .001″ over your land or groove dimensions then employ either a Smooth-Form or Full-Form sizing die from Swinglock to draw it down to adequately fit your barrel.

One thing I think is important when getting into muzzle-loading rifles is knowing what you are getting into. When I got started I was very uninformed, just a kid that liked watching Jeremiah Johnson and Last of the Mohicans. I wanted a Hawken or a Long Rifle. I didn’t even realize there were any other choices back then. Just a few years ago the choices in rifles was much simpler than now. You were getting into a blackpowder rifle with just two choices: traditional or inline.

Those two choices were about the firing mechanism, type of priming, and the path of the priming initiator to the powder. In traditional guns you chose between flintlock or percussion guns. The inline guns were largely synthetic stocked bolt action or break-open although a few other designs exist.

Traditional :

Inline:

Both the traditional and the inline were limited to using blackpowder or a blackpowder substitute powder like Pyrodex, Triple Seven, Black Gold, etc. Every one of these guns (modern manufacture that is) says so on the barrel but are NEVER TO BE USED WITH SMOKELESS POWDER. These powders are low pressure and low velocity. More than that they are corrosive. That is one of the things that pushed me away from them.

The other thing that pushed me away from them was bullets and the sabot. I truly did not know the sabot was the limiting factor until about 2011 (more about that later). My first muzzleloader was a Tradition’s .50 caliber Hawken percussion clone. I tried sabots with pistol bullets first and failed miserably. I knew nothing about sabot to bullet or sabot to bore fit at the time. I was just stuffing bullets and sabots in the gun and shooting them. Years later when I worked through high school and college in a gunshop I moved to Knight DISC rifles and while I knew nothing more about sabot selection I had much better success with Knight’s bullet and sabot offerings. They shot great (1 MoA or better) sometimes and not so great (3 MoA) other times. Now I suspect that it was mostly due to shooting too fast, generating heat, and sabot failure.

Eventually I moved to shooting full-bore lead conicals from Bull Shop and No Excuses in those guns, a T/C Omega, and a T/C Renegade fitted with a pair of fast twist .458 and .510 Long Range Hunter barrels with globe front and vernier rear sights I put together for western hunts. That transition fixed a lot of my problems: precision, accuracy, and consistency. The trade off was that the ballistic coefficient of the big slugs was no better than the Knight bullets, they were slower, and they generated much more recoil. Even though they shot much better I still hated cleaning them.

Around the spring of 2011 I was working for a guy who was dedicated to hunting big whitetail bucks in Tennessee and Missouri where he had previously been stationed. Those installations did not allow the use of centerfire rifles, just shotguns with slugs or muzzleloaders. What I did not know was that there were muzzleloaders that shot smokeless rifle powder, did not use sabots, or that they were legal for use anywhere much less where I was hunting. When he told me he used a smokeless muzzleloading rifle that shot bullets at 3000fps my reaction was, “ You are doing WHAT?”

The next day he brought in his Bad Bull Muzzleloader and a Savage ML-II for me to look at. The Savage looked like I was used to in a muzzleloader: used a non-4473 type action, used shotgun primers, was .50 caliber which required sabots, and the only difference was it used smokeless powder. The Bad Bull on the other hand was built on a Remington 700 centerfire action, was barreled with a Shilen barrel, used rifle primers, had a muzzlebreak, used a sizing die to fit the bullet to the bore to get rid of the sabot, and also used rifle powder but much slower powders and lots of it. Shooting them on the range at lunch was a game changer for me.

I spent the next several months researching these guns. The choices at the time were to buy either the Savage factory rifle, a NULA M209,  build a gun based on either the Savage ML-II action or a Remington 700ML action as a DIY project, or spend considerably more (like twice as much) to have a gun built on a centerfire action. Being the type of guy who needs to tinker, test, and evaluate I decided one of each was the right answer. Knowing the centerfire was the most expensive and likely the slowest to acquire having built a number of custom metallic guns over the years I decided it should be last so that I could buy parts. Having dealt with NULA before when I “needed” a .257 Wby Mag I knew I would wait a bit before it shipped so placed the order with Mel for the M209 as it was pretty affordable compared to the centerfire based muzzleloader. While I waited on the NULA ,and began to decide exactly how I wanted to so the centerfire gun, I bought a used Remington 700ML rifle on GunBroker and stripped it to build a gun to work with in the interim.