CVA OPTIMA V2 PISTOL QUESTION

[MrTom]

"As I mentioned in my opening statement on this thread, I kept getting inferences from multiple posters that they had tried reduced loads with BH209, without success."...Doc

There's a huge disparity between successful ignition and acceptable accuracy. I shoot nothing but sabotted bullets in all of my inlines geared for BH209 use and found absolutely no issues with getting the powder to burn, however accuracy with the lighter loads left a lot to be desired. I could have "settled" for three inch groups at 100 yards but knew the guns and I were better than that and to get to that "better" I had to jack up the charges and I also went a step further and added vent liner plugs to each of these guns, which added a further dimension to the accuracy I wanted. I am sure others found that lighter loads would be fine but if the utmost in accuracy was wanted those light loads had to be vacated to get to where the persons wanted to be. All of this is personal preference. I found T7 granular to share some of these quirks with BH209. People expecting the best accuracy have to shoot a lot of different powders. A lot of different sabots. A lot of different bullets. A lot of different primers. All of this shooting will determine what's best.

 

[Matthew323]

"As I mentioned in my opening statement on this thread, I kept getting inferences from multiple posters that they had tried reduced loads with BH209, without success."...Doc

There's a huge disparity between successful ignition and acceptable accuracy. I shoot nothing but sabotted bullets in all of my inlines geared for BH209 use and found absolutely no issues with getting the powder to burn, however accuracy with the lighter loads left a lot to be desired. I could have "settled" for three inch groups at 100 yards but knew the guns and I were better than that and to get to that "better" I had to jack up the charges and I also went a step further and added vent liner plugs to each of these guns, which added a further dimension to the accuracy I wanted. I am sure others found that lighter loads would be fine but if the utmost in accuracy was wanted those light loads had to be vacated to get to where the persons wanted to be. All of this is personal preference. I found T7 granular to share some of these quirks with BH209. People expecting the best accuracy have to shoot a lot of different powders. A lot of different sabots. A lot of different bullets. A lot of different primers. All of this shooting will determine what's best.

My inquiring mind wonders why the light loads with BH209 & 777 give such poor accuracy? There must be a reason?

The exact opposite maxim usually applies where black powder is concerned. Seldom is any rifle's best accuracy obtained using heavy-to-maximun loads.

Where patched ball barrels are concerned, regardless of a particular barrel's rate of twist, the most accurate load/loads are almost always to be found someplace below two thirds of whatever the maximum safe powder charge might be.

This maxim holds true even with Forsyth rifled, large caliber, patched ball barrels. For instance, I have communicated with several shooters that have .62 caliber Forsyth rifles, and both barrels, from two different manufacturers, have a Sweet Spot for best accuracy somewhere between 110 grains to 130 grains of ffg Swiss black powder. This is from 55% to 65% of the maximum 200 grain top charge that either rifle is capable of safely shooting.

So, when someone like yourself with a lot of experience shooting BH209 tells me that relatively poor accuracy results from reduced loads of BH209 in the Optima V2 pistol, my inquiring mind says, "Hmmmmmmm?"

If there is a 3x to 4x reduction in accuracy when lowering a BH209 volumetric powder charge from heavy to medium, from 90 grains equivalent in volume to 50 grains equivalent in volume; in order to try and obtain a plinking/practice load, then, "Houston, we have a problem!!"

I am going to hypothesize here, and propose that the sabot might be a big part of the equation, as regards the poor accuracy with reduced loads? And, perhaps it is the, compared to a percussion cap, much hotter flame jet being provided by the 209 shotshell primers that somehow interferes with accuracy?

 

[NIGHTWOLF1974]

Has anyone successfully shot a .50cal. MAXI-BALL with real black-powder in one?

My thread is getting offtrack.....I just want to know about plain BP and .50 cal. Maxi-Balls in this platform.

 

[deermanok]

My thread is getting offtrack.....I just want to know about plain BP and .50 cal. Maxi-Balls in this platform.

Black powder is fine for that pistol. The TC maxi balls will work too but you might not enjoy the recoil from such a heavy bullet.

 

[MrTom]

Nightwolf....your gun has a 1:28 rate of twist and was designed to shoot best around a bullet/sabot combination to be used with black powder or a sub. You can shoot anything in it you want as long as it falls within the parameters of the gun's literature and instructions. So, yes, you can shoot a maxi ball in it and should expect to a reasonable degree decent accuracy out to 50 yards. A patched round ball can be shot, also with reasonable accuracy. "Reasonable" has been underlined here for my extended response to you and to Doc.

As mentioned, the pistol was designed around a sabot/bullet combination which has shown to be a great combo with guns with 1:28 barrels. Whatever powder is chosen to shoot this bullet/sabot is entirely up to the individual, however powders are not equal in a whole host of ways even when looking only at true black. Some blacks generate their powder over a relatively long burn curve while others do so over a fairly short curve. The burn curve is where pressures are developed that make the powder either great or a headache when different bullets enter the picture. Whether ffg or fffg powder is used will play another role in this. Since the pistol has a barrel significantly shorter than a rifle barrel one may find favor with the fffg even when shooting the maxi ball. Why? Because the bullet is NOT a simple round ball and has ballistic needs that need to be met to become an accurate projectile. Often times those needs are achieved with bullet speed which will equate to a charge size large enough that the power curve does the best job of stabilizing the bullet and often times the speed needs are best obtained using the T7 or Bh209.

T7 products and BH209 are worlds apart from traditional black powder and their burn rates and power curves are entirely different from black and even Pyrodex. Both of these powders, while they may work minimally with patched round balls, are not really suited to round ball use, regardless of the barrel's rate of twist, especially in this Optima pistol. The pistol was developed for a bullet/sabot combination pure and simple. BUT, in the event a bullet such as the maxi ball which is force fit to the bore or even a swaged bullets sized to the bore or a sabot/bullet combination its the bullet that can require increased powder charges and higher speeds. Logic tells us that there is no golden rule to be found given all the different bullets and bullets weights and bullet shapes and accuracy nor is there such a rule to be found when the T7 and BH209 get tossed into the picture. The sweet spot is where bullet speed and accuracy come together and they do so within the parameters of each bullet's specified terminal performance guidelines. This means that a shooter has to be on the bench with his gun a lot to figure out for himself when his gun is doing what he wants it to. Some will settle fore 2-3" at 50 yards, others will want an inch or less but to get that with both T7 and Bh209 on a light charge level will require the shooter to expect to be on that bench for an extraordinary amount of time because the bullets just won't play nice.

Now if a person is going to be content to punch paper, what a bullet does on an animal is moot. I hunt one of my pistols and have taken 7 deer with it to date: 1 with a 250 grain XTP, three with 240 grain XTPs and three with Barnes 225 grain XPBs. Every one of these bullets hit exactly where I was aiming and everyone of them exited the deer thru a golf ball sized hole, proving to me that the speed of the bullets allowed the bullets perform as I expected them to. True terminal performance. No lead fragments were found in those deer using the XTPs so I know the bullets did not gernade. Of the 7 deer, one went 40 yards, one went 11 yards and one went 7 yards. Three dropped like they'd been smacked by the hammer of Thor.

 

[GM54-120]

If a inline hunter/shooter is going to use a center-fire rifle as the benchmark for which to judge his inline rifle, then center-fire type velocities are what he is going to try and obtain. And, in order to try and obtain those center-fire type velocities, big powder charges are going to be required. Lesser powder charges, that might be quite acceptable shooting a patched ball are just not going make a lot of sense.

Not if you compare caliber to caliber. Such as a 50 Beowulf only gets around 1900fps with a 300gr bullet. A normal 45/70 300gr load is about the same or less. . A 405gr is like 1300-1600fps excluding +P type loads. Factory 44 mag in a rifle is not even 1800fps with 250gr and up. The good old 30-30 that probably killed more deer than anything cant even manage what a 45cal ML can with a 180gr or heavier bullet.

A 50A&E pistol with a 325gr is making less than 1500fps. Seems to me you can get close to that in a Scout V2 pistol shooting a Maxi or similar bullet.

You put any of those rounds in the kill zone and that deer is dead. The 250gr XTP has been shot for ages with common Pyrodex loads and i bet a train load would not be enough to account for them all. The only reason you need a hot load is for the range shooting relatively poor BC bullets. Yet the a huge number of deer are taken each year at under 100 yards. My SUPER DISC shoots that 350gr Gould at just 1300-1400fps. Its fun and cheap to shoot. Deadnutz accurate too.

Check with Dan at Bullshop. I thought he made some much lighter 50cal conicals at one time. Like 330-350gr. I think Sabotloader posted pics of them long ago.

 

[GBG]

Here is about 60 reduced loads using Blackhorn powder. They all ignited instantaneously, and hit where aimed.

Using Blackhorn powder to make reduced loads seems to work good.

Many thanks for all your time and work to post this information. I've been reading and watching for hours at a sitting.

"One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions." - Wernher Von Braun