.50 Cabela's carbine shoots great!

[Daizee]

I took my .50 carbine to the range for the first time today.

I fed it:

230gr .452 hardcast LRN bullets in plastic sabots
200gr .451 jacketed XTP hollowpoints in same sabots

60 and 70gr of Triple-7

CCI No. 11 Magnum primer caps

I shot it offhand only at 15 yards at a 50ft smallbore pistol bullseye target.

The first shot went through the 9 ring. The rest were either nearby or in another cluster a smidge lower and left, but in the black. All told, maybe 3.5". Not bad for me shooting offhand, open sights, short sight radius, more recoil than I'm used to. A few more outings and I'll rock this thing for real.

Man, what fun! recoil was fine, less than my 20ga pump.
I didn't get up to 80gr of powder.
The gun fits me GREAT and the sight picture is fine.

Next time:
chronograph and benchrest at 50yds for serious testing.
Keith style 250gr bullets for hunting? maybe, but I've got tons of LRN at the moment.

The blackpowder scum was.... scummy. I swabbed between shots with dry patches. I probably need a plastic solvent, or something. I have Hoppes #9, the copper solvent variation, break free, M-Pro7. Dishsoap?

Oh yeah, and I got the cleaning rod stuck in the thing when trying to swab after the last patch. I think the head of the rod got stuck under a projection from the flash hole area. Gotta get that out before cleaning.

One other minor glitch - the caps took two hammer strikes to go off.
I think the nipple is peened, and the first strike would generally set the cap all the way down. Then the second strike would set it off.

I love my smoke pole!

-Daizee

 

[Daizee]

here it is.
I flinched a couple.

 

[arcticap]

Nice shooting Daizee, especially with only a dry patch.
TC has some solvent named 777 that's made just for removing it.

You should be able to fix the peened nipple with some careful sanding, even if it's only kept as a spare.

Thanks for sharing the range report.

 

[Daizee]

Thanks, arcticap!

I got the ramrod out, and learned a bit more about the rifle.
The nipple and flash hole cleanout plug came out easily enough, considering that I don't have a nipple wrench yet.
I squirted some stuff in to try to lube the patch.

I shortly discovered that M-Pro7 is *awesome* at removing BP fouling. Not sure I want to tote it around, but hm.... it was very effective.

I sanded the nipple slightly to help with the peening problem and cleaned it out as best I could. We'll see how that goes. It would be good to have a new one or spare regardless.

To bad nobody took a picture of me blowing smoke.

-Daizee

 

[scrat]

Wow thats some very nice shooting.