Took the Shiloh out to the farm today for some sight work. Very basic loading, the Accurate 51-630r, 20-1 lead-tin, over 70 grains OE 2f, compression die, WLR primer, Starline case. No wads. Unsized, Beeswax/olive oil lube. Seated over cross sticks. 30" barrel, 1/22 twist.
Recoil: Not bad at all. Rifle is 11.5 lbs, velocity around 1100 fps. Shot some 450 goverment loads to warm up/foul, did not seem a whole lot different. Maybe prone . . .
Initial sight setting (MVA 108) was 25. 100 yard group under 3", 6" low. Raised to 30, same group, dead on. (Yay!) Extrapolating from the charts in back of "Black Powder Reloading Primer" Garbe & Venturino, 200 yard setting should hit 15" high over the 100 yard group. Dialed the sight up to 40. Same hold, next group 15" higher.
Now I did not load a lot of rounds, thought I'd spend them figuring out the 100 yard setting. It was a lazy afternoon, walking back and forth to the 100 yard target. But all this went a lot easier than I thought it would. Had 1 round left. My brother had cleared a lane and hung an AR500 66% ipsc silhouette out at 200 yards the day before. Leaving the sight set on 40, sighted on it and touched off the last round. A nice solid hit, target and stand fell over. Another nice walk out to reset it. I suppose the .50 hits harder than his .223s.
Damn, but the .50-70 is just easy to work with. Need to cast a LOT more of these big bullets.