Lee Loader

Finally, on Saturday I went to my not so local dealer, and picked up my LeMat Navy that I ordered as a christmas present to myself... in 2013.

A really nice gun, but unfortunately nobody near me has any experience with this neat pistol.

What I read from the forum, the original design used something like Minie bullets, instead of round ball. But I'm especially interested in the shotgun barrel. I've never used a muzzleloading shotgun, so I have no clue what I need (wads, patches, whatever) to keep the shot from falling out the muzzle again. Does anybody have any experience with muzzleloading shotguns, or even with the LeMat itself?

Cheers,
Jochen

P.S.:
Pictures will follow later this week, because I know that:

My understanding of shotguns is that powder and shot should be equal measures by volume. The 20 ga should be about 3/4 Oz of shot. Like old pre-1 piece wads it will need an over powder card felt wad and a similar over shot card to keep it all in place.
I have looked into it as I have a ruined 45 bbl that I want to bore smooth for a grouse/squirrel shotgun .

There she is:

Looks very interesting! What caliber is it? You, talked about using it as a shotgun so is it like the modern day Taurus Judge (45 Colt/410)?

Ranch Dog wrote:Looks very interesting! What caliber is it? You, talked about using it as a shotgun so is it like the modern day Taurus Judge (45 Colt/410)?

Rd
I believe that it actually uses the shotgun bbl as the cylinder arbor . The LeMatt revolvers were made in configurations up to at least 20 shots and a central 20 ga that I know of .

@ RD:
Well, the LeMat is "different".

The cylinder has nine (!) chambers for .44 bullets, and the cylinder shaft actually is a 20 ga shotgun barrel. So this little piece of southern history can fire nine .44 slugs and one 20ga shot load before it needs to be reloaded.

EDIT:
The original LeMat was made mainly in Belgium and was wielded by some Cavalry officers of the CSA. The original version was chambered in .42 and had a 16ga shotgun barrel. A fairly popular pinfire version and a not so popular cartridge version have been produces later, as well as a carbine version of the percussion variant. A "Baby LeMat" was also designed, I believe in .32 and 16ga, but only about 100 have been made.

One of the coolest handguns made, imo. Would love to shoot one. Other one I really like is the break top Schofields

The Schofields are great revolvers, too. I'd love to have a pair for Cowboy Action, but they are just too expensive. The LeMat is similar expensive, but I won't be wielding two of these, anyway .

Currently I'm trying to find all the consumables I need, bullets, pellets, wads, all the stuff I never used before, and hope I can bring it to the range soon.

I"m not familiar with the LeMatt as the aren't legal to own here, but I am familiar with the 20 guage. I have a 20 guage double muzzleloader and here is what I and my shooting buddies do: powder, fiber cushion wad, shot, thin cardboard over shot card.
Your loads for a short barrel will be much less than a long barrel. Experiment to see what loads suuit you best starting with light loads of shot/powder IMHO.

Well, a few weeks ago I actually test fired it. Pure fun! And you make a lot of friends very fast, everybody wants to shoot it, too.

The balls I had for the nine chambers were just a bit too small, so it did chain fire once, but doing no damage. I emptied the chambers, and did not reload them that day. On that evening I ordered some larger balls according to the makers specs, and some grease to seal them from the front. But I didn't have the opportunity to fire it again.

But we had a lot of fun with the center shotgun barrel. I got relatively small shot (3mm), which was recommended by the maker, and used hemp fibres as they are used for plumbing as wads. A friend who is very into historic cap and ball shooting told be that was what they used in those days, and it worked very well. I thought the shot would spray all over the place, and hitting was just a matter of luck, but despite the short barrel, the cloud of lead did hit where I aimed at, and did spread to less than a foot across on 7 meters distance.

I talked the Match Director of our German Championship in Cowboy Action Shooting into offering a side match for this pistol, and offered to bring mine for others to shoot, too. I'm very excited already