Added a crown to my barrel

Last year I upgraded to a 54cal but when I got it, it was straight cut, without a crown. The barrel always shot excellent, even out to 200 yards, but popping in a tight patched round ball was always a little bit of an effort and would make a loud pop sound when it went in.

A friend of mine is making me a buffalo case for the gun and I showed him the barrel and he was like like, no problem! Look at this.

He pulled out a countersink chamfer cutter bit and after about 15 seconds with a hand drill, the crown was cut beautifully. A little 600 grit sand paper around my thumb and some 0000 steel wool and everything was nice and smooth.

I did take a dozen shots at 60 yards and they were tight and tight, shooting center, as it always does.

Now that I have a buck tag in my pocket for September, I look forward to finally testing out that 54cal on big game.

I can imagine the difficulty. I always wanted a coned barrel, so one day I took the risk and sat down with a wooden spindle that my then wife had ( she wove ). The spindle being tapered from less than .50 to more than .50 ( exact size is not recalled being about 30 or 35 years ago ) looked suitable for the job.

To hold it centered in the bore, I used a .490 that I had pulled at some time since it already had a hole from the ball puller near perfect center. I drilled through the ball, inserted a wood screw through the drilled out ball then screwed that into the tapered end of the spindle (it was hollow, so already center bored).

I then wrapped emory paper around the spindle and sat on the floor and turned that spindle by hand for a few hours while watching TV, followed by scotchbite the same way.
Tedious work but very effective.

Coning the muzzle had no effect on accuracy and made loading easier, requiring a light tap with a ball starter. My goal was to be able to load without a ball starter, didn’t quite achieve that, but I was happy none the less.

This one was a slightly coned barrel. It was the only way I was able to shoot it in the past due to the missing crown. Without coning it, it would cut patches every time i loaded it up.

Where did you get the tapered brass ?

A buddy of mine gave it to me. They sell coning tools, but I do not remember the place this one came from.

Here it is,
https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=4330.msg40386#msg40386

Thanks

I’m going to look through my stuff. I may still have my crude set up. If I do, I’ll post a pic.

great info. I have been tearing patches for years. thanking you toot.

I used sandpaper, various grits, steel wool and my thumb to polish the crowns on my rifles. I started off several years ago by wrapping a plum-bob with the paper to get it off to a start. No coning, just smoothing. I load tight prb using either heavy canvas almost exclusively (.024") or similar denim on occasion.

Had a nice .40 flintlock Lancaster style rifle built around 15 years ago. Weighed in at just over 8 lbs with a GM "B" wgt X 38" barrel and was super accurate. Accidentally, long story, the bore in the breech area became very pitted. My eyes were already going south but it was still obvious the gilt-edged accuracy was gone.

Then 10 months ago I had retinal eye surgery on my dominant right eye. It took months to heal and improved my vision a fair amount. Vision is still not "great" but at least I can shoot reasonably well at last. Back in late March I sent the .40 barrel to Bobby Hoyt for a re-bore to .45 - this now gives me 4 .45s, my favorite caliber. The barrel was returned a few weeks later splendidly smooth and bored out (1-56" + or -) with nice, deep roundbottom rifling. To the range I went! Fiddled with the powder charge and found 70 grns of 3F giving excellent accuracy at 50 yards. Still gonna work on the load situation a bit as time goes on. But it's already rock & roll for fall. Can't recommend Hoyt too strongly as he's already unmatched.

I have had 13 laser surgery's on both of my eyes for MACKULAR EDIMA,
bleeding of the retinas, caused by many years of DIABETES. and I now am left eye dominant. not bad shooting pistols, but a bugger to get my cheek close enough to sight in on a rife, with my left eye. oh, well. well it still is better than that dirt sleep. so I will put up with it. and pick my battles! toot..

I generally shoot a match once a month, and we have to load from a table behind the shooting line. I sort of got in the habit of using a small rubber hammer to start the ball, and it works just great for me. I just give it a light tap and everything is in place to go ahead with the short starter and ramrod. I've never had any problems with patches and loading using this procedure.

I most always reload with the wood rod as I would do in the hunting bush. Any load that I can't safely get seated is pretty much useless to me for that reason. And I load "tight" so there's plenty of patch compression in the grooves. I noticed long ago that tears & holes in the fired patches happened when started into the muzzle. That stopped when I started smoothing the crown.

I finally dug out my coning tool. There wasn’t any internet and there was no place that I could reference when I did mine, only the general concept.

It measures .48 at the top of the wood and .31 at the tip of the wood.

so there was life before the internet? this proves it!

why can I not reply or post to any post on this site? I am a member. this is not a pleasant site to be on and have no interaction. will an administrator please let me know why and address it. I await a reply. toot.

toot wrote:why can I not reply or post to any post on this site? I am a member. this is not a pleasant site to be on and have no interaction. will an administrator please let me know why and address it. I await a reply. toot.

Toot, you replied here, and as of this posting you have 22 total. I’m confused.

BP-BS STORE & BUY & SELL & TRADE. I am not allowed to post or reply on them. why? that is the posting that I am refering to. I await your reply. toot.

toot wrote:BP-BS STORE & BUY & SELL & TRADE. I am not allowed to post or reply on them. why? that is the posting that I am refering to. I await your reply. toot.

I can, so should you

toot wrote:I have had 13 laser surgery's on both of my eyes for MACKULAR EDIMA,
bleeding of the retinas, caused by many years of DIABETES. and I now am left eye dominant. not bad shooting pistols, but a bugger to get my cheek close enough to sight in on a rife, with my left eye. oh, well. well it still is better than that dirt sleep. so I will put up with it. and pick my battles! toot..

Toot, it's hell to grow old, to make it this far we have to be "one tough SOB" is what my daughter told me.

I had both eyes done with new 20/20 lenses, was scary at the time but my doctor was right. Now don't need glasses and my shooting has improved.  Best part our government paid for all of it but $125 per eye. Sweet ....

Buck Conner, at least we both can see. that is surely a + TOOT.

Amen brother ...