With such a fast twist rifling, your rifle, just like the original, was made to shoot a long bullet. THE definitive bullet for your rifle is the .451" calibre Lyman 450gr cylindro-conoidal multi-groove bullet, made with pure soft lead, and your own bullet lubricant - do NOT use Lee Alox. For your kind of climate, I recommend a 80/20 mix of Beeswax and Neat's Foot Oil - if you can get it in Finland. If not, please PM me and I'l send you some.
This rifle is NOT designed to shoot either a Minié OR a R.E.A.L design bullet, only the bullet I mentioned above.
Your load should be between 80 and 90gr of FFg or the Swiss BP equivalent. You will also find that the nipples will burn out very quickly, and a sign of this is shooting and the hammer blows back.
Always wear safety glasses!!!
Hints & tips - -
1. Fire off two or three caps to clear the nipple.
2. Dry clean the bore.
3. Using a drop tube, load the powder charge directly into the breech and tap the butt to settle it against the flash-hole.
4. Make some cardboard wads out of the shiny-sided cardboard that you get when you buy a new shirt - it is used to make the collar stiff. You can make a cutter from a .45 Long Colt cartridge case.
5. With the shiny side up, place it in the muzzle and put the bullet on top, and load in one easy movement down on to the powder charge. It is important to compress the charge with 18kg of down-force - to begin I used to use a set of bathroom scale to get it right, but after many shots you can judge it for yourself.
6. Clean the barrel once more to make sure that all the lubricant from the bullet passing down it has been removed.
7. Cap and fire.
8. Do it all over again for every shot.
tac
Whitworth #888