absolutely shoot the black powder  way more fun  and easy to do   art

Thanks, that’s what I was looking for. The Saeco 571 has the front two bands smaller in diameter than the lower three bands and the base band. Depending on alloy it ranges between 285-300 grains.
How many grains of BP? Now I need to get some wads....

Tom

With that 300 gr bullet, I'd fill the case to the mouth with blackpowder, trickled in slowly with a funnel.  Weigh that charge, and use it as your base.

Then, drop the powder into the case slowly through a drop tube, and it will be about 1/8" below the case mouth.  Add a wad, and use a compression die to compress the powder so that the bullet when seated onto the powder is just barely forced into the lands when you chamber a round.  The rolling block doesn't have any camming capability, so you don't want to have to force the cartridge in.  If you have trouble chambering after the first shot, compress the powder about .010 to .015 more to give more clearance.  You can drop a bullet into the chamber, seat it lightly with a dowel, and use a depth mike or caliper or even a mark on a dowel to figure out how long from the case head to the base of bullet to set the length for the compression of the powder.   

My guess is you'll get a velocity of about 1225 to 1250 fps.  Should be decent out to 400, maybe 500 yards.  To go further, you'd have to go to a 360 grain bullet, which your 12 twist will stabilize okay.

Old-Win,

Thanks for the invite!

I've been to the Gopher R&R range many times. Lots of handgun silhouette matches in the 80's and 90's and the last three seasons for the 2 Scheutzen matches each summer. At those I use the .40 with BP, iron sights.

Believe it or not I joined the Hibbing club so I could shoot their "unofficial" NRA silhouette BPCR matches. Hibbing is just a "short drive" past the Harris range. Haven't been there for a few years. My shooting partner passed away 3-years ago. We did get there for 6 matches.

To use the Roller this year won't work. Next week at this time I need to send it off for some cosmetics. It weighs almost 15-pounds so if I were to use it in a gong match, I sure hope x-sticks are allowed...and scopes are OK. It has a 24X Unertl. I suppose I could use the .40 but the farthest sight setting I have is for the 500-meter rams. Wouldn't know where to start to get on at 1,000-yards.

I need to do better at checking the gong shoot schedule for 2020 and get up there to give it a try. Appreciate your comments and help!

Tom