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Inline Muzzleloaders Questions

MFI
Can you shoot roundballs in these models Encore, Omega, Kodiak, or new Knight Revolution.
What is the basic premise to know what you can shoot out of a certain type muzzleloader. Sabots, conical bullets and round balls ?

God gave us all a gift. Have you found yours yet ?
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Comments

8 comments

Date Votes
  • He Dog
    Twist rate determines what you shoot. Round balls use a slow twist rate and the "bullet shaped" projectiles, whether saboted or not use a faster rate.
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  • perry shooter
    Hello HEDOG has it right tell us the twist and we can give info on what types of projectiles should work the best. As a rule of thumb the new type muzzel loaders. INLINE have a rifle twist too fast for round ball. NEW rifles that you can buy that look like a PENN or KY type long rifle.would stand a better chance of having round ball twist.
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  • Raoul
    I'm not qualified to talk about inline muzzleloaders, because all of mine are traditional muzzleloader, but I can offer a little input on twist rates in barrels. To use the Lyman Great Plains Rifle as an example, they have two basic models: the standard model has a 1 in 60" twist rate (with deep grooves) and is for soft lead patched round balls only; and the Hunter model has a 1 in 32" rate (with shallow grooves) and is for "maxie" style bullets up to 400 grains or thereabouts.

    The slow twist standard model barrel won't stabilized a long conical bullet or sabot. I haven't tried a patched round ball in a faster twist (& shallow groove) groove barrel, but it's quite likely a patched round ball would probably "blow through" the rifling on a fast twist barrel, and so wouldn't be very accurate.

    I have some custom made Hawken style rifles with fast twist barrels: a .40 cal with a 1 in 14" twist, and a .45 cal with a 1 in 22" twist. In the .40 I use a 400 grain soft lead bullet, and in the .45 I use a 400 or 500 grain soft lead bullet. Both are very accurate at long range with these bullets, but I wouldn't use patched round balls in these, any more than I would use bullets in any or my round ball guns.

    Hope this info might help you in determining what to use in your guns.
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  • allen griggs
    He Dog is right.
    The inlines are not designed to shoot round balls. However, I know a guy with an Omega who gets pretty good accuracy with round balls with reduced loads. He was shooting 45 to 50 grains of powder and doing pretty well at 50 yards.
    In other words, not enough power for a good hunting load.
    Inlines shoot well with sabots, with long slugs, and with powerbelts.
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  • steve45
    I have a Traditions Lightning with a 1 in 32 twist deep rifling and it is accurate with patched round balls and near max loads.
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  • steve45
    Forgot to say that before the Traditions I owned a Knight Bighorn with a shallow rifling in 1 in 28 twist.It was inaccurate with patched roundballs.
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  • mazo kid
    As I recall, the cut off for using round ball is about 1 in 48" twist. Anything faster than that would take a bullet or sabot. Emery

    "Well done is better than well said"
    Ben Franklin
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  • He Dog
    Given the number of round ballers with twist rates of 1 in 42 and 1 in 44, I would think the normal round ball cut-off might be more like 1 in 36, but as stated above sometimes a 1 in 28 gives reasonable accuracy. As with any rifle, ya just gotta try different projectiles and loads to see which fodder your particular smoke pole likes best.
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