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In the .45 and .50's the lube disk, which is a compressed ball of bullet lube, comes out about 1/8" thick in the case. Depending on the bullet/patching or lubed grooved bullet, you may need more or less.

One thing that worked beyond expectation was a suggestion from Paul Mathews in his book "The Paper Jacket" a worthwhile buy - cheap, too. He suggested a pure, or almost pure lead bullet that when paper patched, came only to bore size, at the most, .002" larger only at the base with a tapered bullet. As our bullets weren't tapered, but had ogives, the paper patch stopped just past where the rounded taper began.

A patched bullet could be shoved through the barrel with a rod quite easily, showing land marks on the paper, yet not impressing it much if any. They were snug in the bore is all. This allowed any seating depth as well for long bullets.

Upon discharge, the bullets will 'obturate' (swell or slug-up - there's that word again) and fill the rifling, just as they did with the original Sharps, Remington and Winchester paper patched factory ammo. Sometimes it seems we have to learn over again what worked in 1880, before we are blessed with success today.

We tried this method of loading in a .45 3 1/4" Sharps with .0250" deep rifling that NEVER shot anything well except for jacketed bullets, as well as my own Hotch Barreled Rolling Block .45 3-1/4" with bullet weights from 404gr. to 580gr. with good results in all weights. The heavier bullets worked best in my rifle, while the recalcitrant Sharps preferred the light 404gr. bullets in pure lead - that is, they both shot barely over MOA (1" to 1 1/2") for 5 shot groups at 100 meters - off bags, of course. We were tickled with our success and placed 1st and 2nd in the forthcoming 300 meter silouette match at our range - 12 competitors.

The lube we used for that shooting was 60% Beeswax (1st filtering - smells good enough to eat) and 40% Vaseline. Gouging out a small ball of lube with a flat bladed screw driver and then rolling it between your fingers softens it enough for wiping around the patch before shoving the bullet into the case after a pea sized ball was placed on the wax-paper disk on top of the already compressed powder charge (3/16" comp), then another wax disk, then the bullet seated down onto the powder.

In my current .45/60 Sharps I partial size (squeeze) the cases to get the correct bullet 'pull', with a slight bell, I can almost, but not quite shove a grooved lubed bullet down to the compressed powder. Due to the square grease grooves (meant for BP) the bullets hold enough lube and odn't need a grease wad. In the .577, due to the enormous in comparrison charge, a grease wad will probably be necessary.

We have found placing a lube disk between 2 hard wads to be next to useless in softening the black powder fouling. The flame must be able to melt the lube and have it fly out the bore with the gasses, thus being laid down onto the bore behind the bullet with the fouling.

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Daryl

"a gun without hammers is like a Spaniel without ears" King George V