So far, I have tried paper patched bullets of roughly .450” .
I mistakenly thought that the loads that shot so well in my other 450No.2 Musket rifles would do in this rifle as well.
Of course, that is not so in my rifle and you seem to have the same bore as mine being .458”

Moving forward (or back to 1882 in this case) I will use almost pure lead bullets.
This is for two reasons.
One, is that my swaging dies like to form pure lead more than any alloy - in fact, I cracked my core die trying to swage 30/1 alloy.
The second reason is that, regarding paper patched bullets, pure lead will surely bump up to fill the grooves better than anything else.
That will be my plan for my rifle and I will report on how that is all working.

85LC, I hope you will report on how you get along with your 1881 and if you need some swaged bullets of whatever weight, I will be happy to provide some. I bet our rifles will like very much the same formula.

BTW, I just bought a supply of really good paper so I will be in paper for quite a while. Eaton 9lb 25% cotton kokle finish typewriter paper.
This is one I just patched which had a tiny bit of overlap - hardly noticeable.

There is something about this paper that works really well. It just seems to pick up really well when wet and once dried, is very smooth and secure to the bullet and very sturdy.
I very much recommend this paper and it can still be found on EBay occasionally as well as estate and yard sales.
I bought a box of Kimberly Clark paper a while back which I have been using which works just as well as the Eaton so I recommend both of these papers.