Ruger Old Army shooting low?

[steve medlock]

My Old Army with adjustable sights shot high irrsepective of load or bullet type. I made a new taller foresight element for it to bring it down to POA.

[timtriple]

Hi

Thanks for all comments and info.

Today I tried 30gr of 777 and it shot way low!

I then tried 20g of 777 and I hit target board so I guess I need to work on that load and start practising

Tim

[Auto culto]

bend the barrel in a hydraulic press

[Napoleon IV]

I second all that's been said before. Find your ideal load first.
One of the bizarre things about BP revolvers is that they need a certain amount of power to acheive accuracy. Too little is as bad as too much. This was proved to me when I started shooting my Roger OA at 50 metres. My normal load was 23 grains of black powder and I thought I would up it to 30 to cope with the extra range. Absolutely hopeless. Of course what I should have done is to stay with the normal load and wind up the sights 3 clicks which is what I did do eventually. Obvious when you think about it. My friend had a Pietta revolver that just wouldn't group. I found he was only using 15 grains. When he upped it to 20 things started to improve dramatically. This seems different from the old Police Pistol days when we used to use 3.5 grains of Bullseye at 25 metres and 1.9 at 10. (In a .38 special of course)

[Napoleon IV]

bend the barrel in a hydraulic press

Have you ever done this?

[Wobbly 2]

Have you ever done this?

Think it was a JOKE

[Napoleon IV]

Think it was a JOKE

It might not be!! I was just looking through the GUN DIGEST for 2000 and there was an author who suggested bending the barrel of a Colt SAA to correct the aim. Until then I'd never heard of this procedure. Very hit and miss I should have thought unless it was bent to start with.

[tacfoley]

My Old Army with adjustable sights shot high irrsepective of load or bullet type. I made a new taller foresight element for it to bring it down to POA.

Mine, too. I`ve had it since 1986, and have only ever shot Pyrodex in it with the one charge that suits it well - 24gr of Pyrodex P and a cast RB. I don`t use a wad, a. because I`m a tight-fisted old fart, and refuse to pay the prices they cost over here, and I often shoot around a hundred shots at a session, and b. I have used E45 as a chamber sealer, an emulsion hand preparation sold in large tubs [Boots, the chemist], since I began BP shooting back in the mid-1970`s in Germany.

Last sunday, my first five shots at 20 yds went into just over an inch and half.

Shooting the same charge with the conical results in the bullet heading up about 12 inches higher, but still very accurately. I`ve never bothered to replace the foresight, in fact, after writing a few times to Viking Arms to get ahold of one, I gave up after two years.

One of our club members has been experimenting with paper cartridges made using Rizla `reds` and a former. Having tried them out, I can say that they work VERY well, but were made using BP, a propellant I am not allowed to keep in my house for insurance reasons.

tac

PS - Please note that all weights and measures in this post are Imperial. If any or all of you are offended by this improper use of dimensional data in a metricised country, please write to your MP. Meanwhile, please convert to metric by using 1 inch = 25.4 millimeters. To save looking it up, there are thirty-six of these `inches` in one `yard`. Grains to grammes is something I`ll let you figure out yourselves.