Besides the 30-40 I also took my 45-70 Comblain carbine to the range yesterday. This has a near perfect barrel off a 577-450 Martini-Henry carbine on it. Of course to clear the old chamber the barrel is even shorter than when it was on the Martini-Henry. This combination has been quite defiant in developing a good load in the past. As you know the Martini-Henry barrels had considerable variation in groove diameter which may not be much of a problem with the expansive effect of black powder but could be with smokeless. So through the years I had tried everything from the 330 grain Gould hollow point to a 500 plus grain bullet with a full load of black powder (ouch!) without great success. I decided maybe the Lee 405 grain hollow base might be worth a try so I cast some and lubed them in a .459 die. Also I had been reading about how well small charges of Unique worked in the 45-70 so decided to try that too. The combination did well and both 12 and 13 grains of Unique gave satisfying groups. Now I have a couple of more loads to tweak as soon as I get a slightly higher front sight.

In case anyone wonders what one looks like with a proper bayonet on it!  No longer have either, they went into a collection several years ago.

A rook sized Comblain would be pretty nifty and very attractive to me. Admittedly the innards of a Comblain with all the working parts in the vertically elongated block don't bode well for a light trigger but many of my old rifles have a heavy pull so I guess I am used to it.