[Charlie Z]

Oh, good rifle! You'll have fun with that one. The neat thing is you should not have any bullet length or OAL issues with the cartridges revolver and levergun folks have to watch. Good range and plinking gun, too. The sight will be a perfect match to the gun; your eyes and the gun's energy give out at the same place. I'm thinking of adding the same to win 92.

The only limitation may be the cresent butt plate. Heavy loads will take the fun out of it rather quickly. I suggest making up a mess of .44 spl powered loads in the mag cases for practice. Been using 6.5gr HP38 and 240gr Keiths. 21.5grs of IMR4227 fills the mag case and give a mild 1580fps with the 240 SWCs, if you want semi-hot. Both are "traditional" loads. Found best accuracy with full house mag loads, though (a mixed blessing!).

Worked the 300gr BTB loads up to around 1610fps with 21gr H110. My last batch was 21.7grs of H110 behind the BTB 300gr, which I haven't tried yet, is probably max for the '92. Hoping to see about 1685fps or so with that (then I can put them away and shoot the much more fun Special loads). The 265gr should go to around 1740fps, and the 240 SWCs to ~1880fps, or so.

You might be able to go a little bit further with the low wall, but consider this about top end. Start lower, just in case.

Note too that mixing cast and jacketed (for accuracy sake) doesn't usually work out. Jacket fouling grabs lead as it goes by, so you need to clean it out to get best accuracy and no leading. (Marshall's tip.)

Neat rifle; let us know how it shoots!

Charlie

 

[Charlie Z]

It's a shame to soil your guns with copper. You haven't tried the BTBs.

 

[Charlie Z]

Jacketed isn't harmful (well, they wear barrels eventually), just unnecessary and more expensive. I didn't believe it either, having shot cheap cast in a 629 after 1000s of jacketed. It looked like a sewer so I gave cast up.

Look around the site and see Marshall's articles (his cast tech book goes more in depth and is highly recommended) on shooting cast. You have to clean all copper out before shooting cast - otherwise it's chore-boy time (another tip on the site for cleaning lead out).

I have a new Brownchester 44 mag, which might have been rifled on the same machine as Rick's, and have only shot lead through it. It will shoot all day and is whistle clean with Beartooth bullets. Cheap, soft bullets (or the powder) do leave junk flakes in the bore, but not real leading. It looks like a dirty shotgun bore. A beartooth or 2 blows it out clean again. I've tried a lot of bullets and beartooth's handmades are incomparable.

Cleanup is better with cast, too. No fussy Foul-outs or caustic copper solvents needed; #9 gets the powder fouling out in 3 swipes and smells good doing it.

There's something about doing it "right," too. Shooting jacketed in a classic design is kinda like adding a scope to it.