[Jeff Higgins]

Very cool, Bob. I was mistaken on the years for the early slant breech rifles - they stopped building them in 1855. I see your 1859 issue rifle is indeed a vertical breech.

I love the Lawrence patent percussion cap feeder. I'm not sure they actually worked as planned, but it's a cool thing to still have on the earlier rifles. Lots of them were removed.

Boy, if you can still seat bullets two grooves out in a 2.6" case, that thing is going to hold some black powder. 100 to 110 grains will have to be the order of the day. Ouch... I've not only found recoil from such charges to be a bit much in my 14 pound match rifle, but fouling builds too quickly as well. It's definitely past the point of diminishing returns for a .45 caliber. Maybe you can seat them deeper with black powder and live with a bit more jump into the rifling. I like about a .100" jump in my black powder rifles.

My current lot of Swiss 1.5 fg likes minimal compression, so I'm only loading 85 grains of it. This makes it much easier to control the fouling, and recoil isn't so bad. Try seating deeper so all grooves are covered and you can load less powder. You might be surprised.