Looking for information

[trooper]

I recently acquired a .54 cal TC Hawken muzzle loader (third hand I think) and I've looked at the rifling depth and I'm wondering if the barrels rifling is purposely very shallow. If I didn't look closely, I would have thought that this barrel is a smooth bore. Checking the internet ie You tube, I can't seem to find any data on the rifling. Can these barrels be shot out? There is no visible pitting or rust down the pipe. Other than being very filthy when I took possession, there seems to be nothing wrong except that the rifling is so shallow.
Any info from the black powder masters here would be greatly appreciated.

[trooper]

I took measurements of the lands and grooves .540" and .546". The barrel has a 1 in 36" twist? Somehow that doesn't seem right.

[saskbooknut]

TC Hawken was originally produced with a 1:48 twist barrel.
With a 1:36 twist, you must have an aftermarket barrel.
The faster twist will be a bit better with longer sabot pistol bullets, but still not as good as a faster twist.
The longest bullet that my TC Hawken .50 will stabilize is the 230 grain XTP. Longer bullets tend to go through the target paper sideways, or with great dispersion.

[Dean2]

Shallow rifling is common in Black Powder rifles, especially those designed to shoot patched round balls. The shallow rifling allows better sealing off the bore with the cloth patch, without having to make the load so tight it is difficult to ram home. They also don't build powder fouling as fast. It is very hard to wear out a BP rifle barrel, even though most are made of much softer steel than centre fire rifles. The 1:36 twist is a compromise between round ball and Minnie ball/bullet twists. Many pure round ball guns have a 1:60 twist, with the 1:48 becoming more popular in the last 60 years.

[catnthehat]

A 1:36 twist is very fast for a bigger bored rifle , fir sure and I was never aware that TC bult them that fast.
When I was building custom plains rifles in the early 80's,
I built with mainly .54 and .58 Douglas and Green Mountain barrels, all were designed for patched round ball with heavy rifling and twists that were 1:60.
We found that shallow rifling works best with lighter charges, my rifles were designed to shoot heavier chargesover 110 grains of FFG with the bigger round balls of 230 and 262 grains.
This produced a very accurate combination that would kill a moose at 100 yards easily and would easily hold a three shot group under 5" off the bench with open sights.

I don't recall ever firing more than 2 Minie balls and I have never fired a maxi ball out of anything ever so cannot comment much about muzzle loading target rifles or bullets , all of my muzzleoading experience has been with barrels of slow twists, patched round ball and genuine black powder.
Cat

[saskbooknut]

Shallow rifling in a ML barrel of is primarily due to the use of a carbide button to produce it.
Any custom patched roundball barrel that I am familiar with has deep rifling.