1863 Accuracy

[Crazy Cat]

I'm thinking about purchasing a Shiloh 1863 Sharps military rifle with the standard sights. I want a gun that will be fairly accurate. What kind of performance should I expect to get at 100 yards?

[Rich Siegel]

With the military sights, and a paper cartridge with a ringtail bullet attached, you should expect 3" or better.

You may get better groups of you seat the bullet with a short starter and then pour in loose black powder.

Rich

[1stregtengr]

Check out my post

viewtopic.php?t=4738&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15

[Rich Siegel]

Hey 1stregteng,

What's the story with Charlie Hahn's cardboard tubes. Are they reuseable? How do you get them out of the chamber. Those are great groups you shot at 200 yards with your rifle. Do you think the tubes helped?.

Rich

[1stregtengr]

Rich,
Charlie's tubes burn, curl and fly out the barrel when the rifle is shot, there is little to no residue left in the barrel or chamber. They fit the ringtail very good. When I was developing a load for the N-SSA long range shoot I tried the sharps reloders using loose powder, and the tubes. The accuracy of loose powder was never less than 3-4" (I attribute this to the fact that the chamber was not anywhere near full) with the tubes, accuracy went down to 2-2 1/2" at 200yds. I was using Charlie's 1.5" tubes which do not quite come to the back of the chamber. He is making a run of tubes 1.875" that when used in my Shiloh '63 with the rapine ringtail, will allow me to use Puff-lon filler and 64 grs of Swiss 3F and have the rear of the tube less than 1/16th from the breechblock. In my tests, glueing a tube together to this size, 1.875, with the Puff-lon filler, I got accuracy of 2" at 200yds, and very little fouling. I was impressed that this '63 with Charlie's tubes shoots as good as my Shiloh '74. I have a 350 yd range at my house and did extensive testing @ 200yds, and load development to get this accuracy. This spring I am going to try some Goex express and see what the accuracy is, my bet is that it will be a tad better. As an added note, while I was doing load development for the '63 I was shooting all the rifles in my 03 springfield collection which I was about to sell, but I wanted to keep one or two of the most accurate for some shooting trips to Camp Perry. I was shooting handloaded match grade ammo in the 03's, and all except one rifle shot larger groups at 200 than my '63 Shiloh. I'm sure I can work up a load to tighten some of the groups up, but at least 10 of the 16 03s tested, will never match the accuracy of the '63. BTW all the TE and MW on the 03s was 3 or less

[Todd Birch]

After talking to Charlie Hahn over the phone, I just ordered myself 300 of his paper tubes.

I'd be more inclined to shoot my '63s more often if'n I wasn't so lazy 'bout making up the *%$# tubes!

I'm gonna try making up loads with and without fillers. If I get the results I'm after, I'll be ordering a lot more.

Todd