I've done some experimenting in the last week that I thought some of you might find interesting.   I own a C. Sharps 1885 rifle in .38-55.   I ordered it unchambered and had the chamber cut by a local gun smith as I wanted a specific chamber.  To make a long story short the chamber was cut such that it is very non-concentric with the bore.  I've been playing with ways to get around this issue.   In Milton Farrow's book he mentions that even a bore diameter paper patched bullet will shoot better when seated ahead of the case.  I've done a fair bit of .45 calibre paper patching so thought I'd give this a try.   

  My thinking was that the rifle might shoot well if I could put the bullet ahead of the majority of the buggered up chamber.   ( A groove diameter bullet wouldn't work well as it gets very distorted as it makes its way into the rifling. ) 

I made an ad hoc breech seating tool so that I could breech seat a Brooks elliptical paper patched bullet and a 0.030" LDPE wad.  The base of the bullet sits about a tenth of an inch ahead of the case.   

Cases were loaded with Federal LR Match primers, over primer wad, 58gr of Goex Express, and a 0.030" veg king wad.

At 100m the load grouped nine shots of ten into about 0.6" of vertical with one big flyer.

More work needs to be done as the results at 200m were not as good as I'd like, but I'm on an interesting   path I think. 

I thought this might prove interesting as I'm sure that there are other single shots out there with problematic chambers. 

Chris.
 

Interestingly 58gr comes just short of filling the case.  I've put 59gr in and it comes right to the top.  I compress just about the thickness of a 0.030" wad.  My batch of Goex Express FFg seems like really dense stuff.   

I haven't had firing pin issues on my C. Sharps 1885's.  My first was a .45-70, not sure on the round count,  but it's got several years of shooting on it.  My .45-90 has only seen a couple of hundred rounds, the .38-55 maybe a little more, and they are good so far.  I  probably shoot my Shiloh long range express the most these days so the 1885's have been getting a break.   I've been meaning to get some spare parts from CSA just in case.   It sounds like it's just a matter of time before I break one.
 
Chris.