Loading for a very unusual Remington Rolling block - .58 Roberts!

ndnchf · April 29, 2014, 02:30:33 PM

I took the big roller out the other day and tried the long and short bullets from the Steve Brooks mold. To my surprise, the longer bullets grouped better than the shorter ones. But accuracy was still not great, about 4" @ 50 yards. It did help to wipe between shots. I don't really expect this to be a tackdriver, but rather just a historical oddity from the early days of cartridge development. But dang, it sure is cool to shoot.

ndnchf · July 26, 2015, 10:08:07 AM

Well it's been over a year since I last gave an update. You know how life, family and job interferes with fun sometimes.

Previously I mentioned the very heavy trigger pull on this rifle. This week I set out to improve it. It took a while to get the badly buggered up tang screw out, but it finally came out. This allowed be to remove the trigger plate. It was nasty deep down in there. I got it all apart and cleaned up. As expected, the trigger spring was very heavy and strong. First I tried putting a couple washers under the spring to lighten it. It helped a little, but not much. So I then decided to make a new spring from an old hacksaw blade ( a tip I read on another forum). The hacksaw blade already had a small hole in the end which could be used for attaching the spring. After cutting, grinding and shaping, it was installed and tested. It made a huge improvement! It returns the trigger smartly, but doesn't take magilla gorilla to pull it now. Hopefully this will help with the vertical stringing problem.

Next I turned to the cartridges. I decided to try something a bit different - paper patching. All I have are the. 590" minies to work with and I know they are a little undersize. I found that using. 002" onionskin I could bring up the OD to. 598". It's a snug fit, but I can load these in the fired and unsized cases.

I filled the bullet cavity with lube and loaded them up over 60gr of old E 2F. Hopefully I can get to the range this week and try them out.

Coal Creek Griff · July 26, 2015, 03:45:53 PM

Somehow I missed this when you started a couple of years ago. This is a very interesting project. Thanks for keeping us informed!

CC Griff

dusty texian · July 28, 2015, 04:54:50 PM

Looking forward to seeing how the patch bullets shoot. They sure look good!,,,,,,DT

ndnchf · September 29, 2015, 05:35:10 PM

I just realized that I hadn't posted an update after trying the paper patched bullets. Well - they did not work well at all. It was more of a pattern than a group.

But after replacing the trigger spring and weighing the minies and grouping like weight bullets together, the groups tightened up a good bit.

In a further effort to improve things, I just sent a Lyman 575 minie mold off to have the bands enlarged to. 594". That should give me a perfectly fitting bullet.

PJ Hardtack · October 08, 2015, 03:54:14 PM

Wonderful journey! Thanks for bringing us along ....

Feathering the trigger spring does a lot to lessen the trigger pull of a rolling block.

mtmarfield · March 19, 2016, 06:20:35 PM

Greetings!

Please, continue to update us! I've moved to Colorado, and my reloading goodies are in temporary mothballs,
but I'll be getting back in gear, soon!

Be Well!

M.T.Marfield

ndnchf · March 19, 2016, 07:16:48 PM

It has been a while since the last update. I appreciate the interest. I had the Lyman minie mold enlarged to .594" and it casts a nice bullet. They are a tight fit in the shell, so I reamed case ID another .001". I've been sidetracked lately with other guns, so I haven't taken it to the range with the new, larger bullet. But I hope to get out soon. I'll post an update when I do.