dragonblood9 wrote on Mar 17^th, 2023 at 8:20pm:


Hopefully you slugged the bore, and got a proper fitting bullet? These having an odd number of lands and grooves need to use a micrometer to measure the diameter properly, or go a bit larger than what you measure the odd number lands diameter to get a good fit.
A lot of old Trapdoors have larger bores, and need a bullet in the .460"-.462" range to shoot small groups. And of course their sights aren't great either.

The BUffington sight is not to be sneezed at .... It is readily capable of making MOA adjustments.   I was taught the appreciation of the Buffington sight by the late Dennis Bruns, a fellow who was known as "MR Trapdoor", and habitually won the military matches in the BP Raton NM championships.  

Some folks set the Buffington sights with a dial caliper, but it is also easily done by eye, using the existing graduations, and much quicker to do it on the firing line that way.

I have found that hte best bullet is one that fits the fired case, never mind about the bore/groove dimensions.   I was able to do very well with a bullet of around 400 gr, and a light load of BP, giving about 1100 fps, using amaranth seed as a filler.   Full "war loads " in a 9# rifle will beat you up un-necessarily.

CHRIS