Lyman Great Plains rifle

fourfive8 · Jun 18, 2021

curtism1234 said:
I've never seen a buffalo brand ball, ballet, or bullet hit the side of a barn from the inside. The T/C aren't much better.

I have always been a fan of the Harvester Sabertooth

I have not had great success either shooting the swaged, preluded, full length Buffalo bullet in any ML. I tried them a lot in a 48" twist 50 cal and all I can say is they leaded like crazy and what little accuracy potential they showed in the first couple of shots, the accuracy went south quickly as the lead built up. The shorter Ball-et was very accurate and maintained that as long as the load was not over-cooked thus minimizing the leading potential. The issue here, in this thread, is the slow twist roundball barrel of the Lyman in question. Those RB type MLs simply won't shoot any long conical well at all with the exception of a true Minie'... which the Buffalo bullet is not. Two different bullets entirely.

I've also tried several of the saboted and skirted modern ML bullet designs and have nothing exciting to report. Yet I keep hearing reports of how great they were/are. I can't prove some shooters don't do well with them- just have to take their word for it. But I couldn't make it happen and I tried several designs of them in a proven accurate 48" twist rifle and in one of the best scope mounted fast twist inlines available. No joy.

But put the right load together with the T/C Maxi conical in a 48" twist rifle and they can be surprisingly accurate. I looked though my large stack of various targets and found an example of the T/C Maxi Ball's potential out of a factory, 48" twist, T/C Hawken rifle. This target shows a group out of a 50 cal T/C Hawken shooting a T/C Maxi with card wad over 80gr FF real BP at 50 yards- 4 shot group. My standard range lube is Crisco and hunting lube is SPG.