Traditions double rifle

[GBA]

Hi, another member, RCS encouraged me to try to post some photos of a double .50 BP rifle that I recently got from Traditions. The wood is beautiful and the metal work was fine. I think that the metal to wood fit was excellent. A very nice gun. I would have liked to have shot it, but I sent it back for some minor reasons that are unimportant to the design of the gun. They will exchange it for the lower grade version which I should receive sometime next week. Anyway, here are some pix.

The breech is substantial, the gun weighing 12.5 lb. It also locked up nice and tight.

I didn't care for the engraving on both sides of the lock.


Traditions doesn't have any more of this grade in stock. I think that they still have some of the less fancy rifles though.

Information

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[RCS]

Nice looking double o/u rifle, did they say what bullet weights to use and powder charge ?

[GBA]

The max load of BP or Pyrodex is 150 gr, or 130 gr of TripleSeven. They don't specify the max projectile weight, but the examples that they use run from 250 to 300 gr. I don't think that there would be a problem using 350 or 400 gr bullets, but the trajectory would suffer of course. The rifling is 1:28, so would not be suitable for RB or very light projectiles.

[GBA]

I sent back the original double rifle to Traditions.

They have replaced it with one of the lower grade guns. I have tried it out with 80 gr of T7 and a 250 gr sabot. That's is not the load that I eventually would like to use in it, but it was a start. I'm putting a 2.5x Burris scope on for my 70 year old eyes. The next step will be to take it to the range for sighting in and regulating the barrels. The upper barrel is adjustable, so you first sight in the lower, then regulate the upper to the same point of impact.

The first gun that they sent me had a lot of handling marks, dings, etc. The wood was very pretty, but the laser engravings were cheezy! The replacement barrels load easily and the gun looks much more business like. Photos will eventually follow.

[Johnny Peppers]

The earlier versions of the SXS double barrel black powder rifles had two rear sight leafs to correspond to where each barrel hit. I believe the Traditions uses screws to move the point of impact of the top barrel. Your load would be developed with the bottom barrel, and then adjust the top barrel to shoot to point of impact of the lower barrel. Changing loads could throw this off.