A confession to make:

Short while ago I became the owner of one of them old-style boom-makers

Pedersoli Sharps in .45-70, with that lesson I learned demonstrated by the presence of the recoil pad.  That's a Pedersoli mid-range tang sight, and a Lyman hooded front sight

About that pad, I'd thought of getting another stock and cutting the thickness of the pad off the back end(as the length of pull was just about perfect), but ran into two problems:
Nobody had one, and ordering it from Pedersoli would be damned expensive.  So pad mounted on the original it is.  And yes, the buttplate is safely put away.

Among the things I've learned about such:
Fun.
Take care of the cartridge cases, and they'll last for many loadings.  With black-powder loads, you don't resize them after firing, just check the length and expand the case mouth enough to allow the bullets to freely seat(we're talking just push it in by hand).  For smokeless, resize about the first half-inch or so to get the neck tension needed on the bullet.  Either way, little stress on the brass.  I've read that you should anneal that half-inch or so every half-dozen firings.
When you're casting bullets anywhere from 330 to 500 grains, you go through a pound of lead fast.

I've been using the pan-lube technique on the bullets, which you may not have heard of. 
You take a small metal pan with a flat bottom.
Place the bullets in it, sitting up and with a little space between them.
Melt the lube.
Pour it into the pan until it's deep enough to cover the lube grooves.
Let it cool.
Use a cartridge case with the base drilled out and the mouth expanded to remove them: push it down over a bullet, twist or tilt to break the bullet free of the pan, lift out, then use a dowel through the hole you drilled in the base to push it out of the case. 
It's slow, but it works.  Then, depending on the bullet, either use as-is, or run it through the sizing die, which in my case is a Lee push-through type.

It came as a .457"; I did slug the bore of the rifle, and it's .457, so exact fit.  However, past experience with cast bullets showed best performance with the bullet being 1-2 thousandths over bore size, so I polished it out to .459"(because they don't sell a .459), which seems to work well.  But it does bring up a question: with black, I've read that it was common to have the bullet at or a fraction below bore diameter, as the ignition characteristics of it are such that it causes the soft alloy used to 'bump up' to tightly fit the bore.  So should I use .457 for those loads?  I'll have to obtain some to try that out.  With smokeless this diameter seems to work quite well, and so far with black as well.  At least as far as I can tell at 100 yards.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get to some of the house stuff I've been putting off with all the rain and chilly lately.  And because I'm lazy.