doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT No Lead in CA Condor County

Per the suggestion of the members, when looking for a nostalgic africa gun, I bought a 450-577MH gun, not a military gun, but something that came from africa that was some poor south african farmer's gun. I am having a blast with it, but in CA, we will no longer be able to shoot lead (in Condor County, about 1/3 of CA) I wanted to take a pig with this gun. So here is my question

The bore of most MH works best with bullets about .461 - .466 (from what I am told). What should I do, use .458 dia barnes and patch them? Barnes used to make .465 bullet and still have some available, would this be to big? Are cast bullets typically larger than jacketed bullets?

Thanks for the advice

Jerry

Have some solids made from pure copper. If you want expansion, make some hollow cavity bullets.

Jerry:

There are a couple ways to approach the problem, but it would be a good thing to know the actual dimensions of the bore. Upsetting a soft lead slug in the bore and measuring the slug is the usual way of determining actual dimensions.

If the groove diameter was indeed .466" then paper patching would be an interesting, and I suspect rewarding, experiment. If the bore is much smaller than that there would be little room for the paper. I know a patched lead bullet can be well over groove diameter, but the copper alloy bullet will be considerably harder than lead.

If you want to be a real traditionalist, the copper alloy could be wrapped with the thin teflon tape that is used to seal threaded pipe joints. This has been used with good success with lead bullets, and I see no reason why it would not work here. It might be just the ticket if your bore was .460 or .461.

Then again, it might be that the bullets will work fine out of the box. It all depends on your bore diameter. I don't expect that the monometal slugs will "bump up" much to fill the bore like lead will. Howsomever, if the bore is .460 the .458 slugs may work just fine as is. You are in uncharted water here and are sailing blind without the bore dimensions. Once you have that, you will be able to find a system that will work.

On the other hand, you could just try shooting the bullets and see what happens... <g>

Best of luck,

Glenn

BTW, teflon tape usually comes in two thicknesses for plumbing. The stuff on the red plastic spool is thicker than the stuff on the blue spool.

I had one of these for a while. It was a bear to get to shoot. The guy I sold it to did better. We both used lead bullets of course, but what I would add here is that these rifles have an immense amount of taper to the bores. So, slug you rifle at the breech, because the muzzle will be very very different. Also, they have seven grooves so they are difficult to slug accurately.

Brent

Thanks for the ideas of teflon tape, it might be much eaier than paper patches.

I haven't slugged the bore yet.
The bullets I'm using shoot pretty good (but could be better, the bore is pretty clean) if I do my part with the open sights. They measure about .464. It is hard to tell with all of the lube on them.

I'll try the .458 plain first, then with teflon.
What do you think would happen if I tried the .465 copper bullets?

Jerry

Jerry,
I would want to know the tightest part of the bore before I put a copper bullet thru a gun like this. If you're way off on diameter the wrong way, I'd worry about excess pressure. Possibly you can shoot a lightly loaded lead bullet thru it into water to capture it then measure the bullet?

Chuck,
Great idea! That would be an sure way to check it.

Thanks

Jerry