Any Muzzleloaders out there?

[Ritchie200]

Through a business dealing I got to meet a guy who builds flintlocks and shoots them competitively. His rifles are spectacular and the banded maple stocks rival Tubenits projects!  Out in the sun the grain looks inches deep!  Amazing.  Then he does period correct wood and metal hand engraving.  Interesting in that it was common for the gun owner's favorite bible verse be engraved on the barrel.  All the metal parts other than barrel and trigger are completely hand made.  He also makes other period correct accoutrements such as horns and bags.  To add to the period correctness the leather he uses is deerskin from the deer he has hunted and he brain tans the skins.  If you are not familiar with this tanning process, look it up...    The skins are butter soft and have a distinct smoke aroma.  Some bags also feature porcupine quill work.  This looks like beading from a distance but is actually braided dyed porcupine quills - absolutely beautiful.  If you saw the movie The Patriot, he and two other builders outfitted the main characters who had the close up camera time with clothes and weapons.  He had pics of Mel Gibson with one of his rifles and bags.  Turns out the director said that he didn't want some historical expert saying they weren't the right clothes, guns, etc. for the period.


So I'm a cartridge guy.  I never even considered black powder.  I heard they were not accurate and were dirty to shoot.  Even though as a kid I cut out a stock and strapped a tube to it using strips from a tin can and nailed a fake flint lock hammer on the side - also cut out of a tin can.  I thought I was Dannnel Boone!  Heck I even shoved firecrackers in the barrel (tube) and shot pebbles out of it.  I'm surprised I still have my eyes and fingers....  So this guy offers to let me shoot one of his builds.  He has a 100 yard range set up behind the workshop.  My first shot was a little high and left, second was high right, third was bulls eye.  The set trigger took a bit to get used to and the hair trigger only needed to be looked at to fire!  Plus the flint spark and pan flash was a VERY new experience!  All in all a little over a 4" group.  I thought I was the bomb!  He should have said, "sit down in that chair right there and let me show you how it's done!"  So he shoots it and puts a group of three at a little over an inch, shoots the bullseye clean out.  Open sights.  Crosswind varied 5-15mph.  Lead ball...  Are you kidding me?!?!?!  I got to tell you, I am ready to sell all my long guns and have this guy build me one.  This was the most fun I have had with a rifle!

[tubenit]

I've shot some black powder guns years ago.  It was kind of fun.  However, the .36 caliber revolver had two chambers fire at the same time.  NOT good!  Shot a black powder rifle also.  The flame maple on some of those guns is truly spectacular.

I'll stick with cartridges & what I have now. 

Jeff

[jjasilli]

I hunt deer with a flintlock rifle.

[jjasilli]

Ritchie200,


Glad you had a positive flintlock experience.  Nothing beats quality here.  The only muzzleloader rifle I have fired is my own which I won at an archery competition in the '80's or 90's.  It's a lower Traditions model, barely adequate with a substandard lock mechanism.  I used to call it the Civil Servant, 'cause it won't work and you can't fire it. I eventually learned to pamper it into firing reliably enough.  It is accurate. It has a synthetic stock.  It's a short Hawkins style barrel, well-balanced.  I find quality flintlocks to be barrel heavy.


The lock mechanism should cause an impressive shower of sparks to rain down upon the powder in the pan.  This derives from flint against the iron frisson.  But my frisson is a cheap alloy.  Not only that but the hammer has a short range of travel, so it also lacks proper force to make sparks.  How short is it?  It's so short that unless the flint is ridiculously tiny, it lifts the frisson at half-cock, so the powder leaks out of the pan.  Again, I've learned to compensate for these shortcomings.


A set & hair trigger combo, which I don't have, is a real plus with flintlocks, because it reduces lock time.  Shorter lock time helps reduce the tendency to flinch while waiting for what may seem like hours for the trigger to travel, the hammer to strike, the sparks to shower down, the powder in the pan to flare up in your face, and the main charge to eventually explode.  Then if there's no wind, you wait quietly for the smoke to clear, to see if everything in the world is still where it used to be.  And if the deer dropped in its tracks, or if it used the cover of the smoke cloud to make you guess where it may have run off to.

[PRR]

> hours for the trigger to travel, the hammer to strike, the sparks to shower down, the powder in the pan to flare up in your face, and the main charge to eventually explode...

Convert it to a Bruleelock:

[jjasilli]

 

[Ritchie200]

Haha!  Shoot and grill!

Jim

[jjasilli]

The matchlock rides again!

[alathIN]

Thread resurrection. Hey, hunting season coming up.

I have a Lyman caplock black powder rifle I got for hunting. Every time I took it to the range, I could eventually get it to shoot POA. It always grouped nicely, but it always took a couple sighters and adjustments to get on target. It was fun to fool with but I never felt like I could get a first shot from a cold barrel I'd feel good about for hunting. I know this is just me - there are some deadly accurate black powder shooters out there.

A friend is in to black powder cartridge rifle competition - think Quigley's rifle. They shoot at 600 or more yards. Super fun to shoot - huge clouds of black powder smoke, deep resounding BOOM! instead of the typical rifle crack.

I hunt with technically a 'muzzle loader' because it loads from the muzzle but otherwise a modern new production rifle. The deer hunting laws in Indiana give a longer season for muzzle loaders. Some people have a philosophical objection to this, on the basis that I'm stealing a deer from someone else who's using an actual caplock or flintlock, so it's an unfair advantage. Thing is, at the moment, Indiana is massively overpopulated with deer and my family's farm is in a "deer reduction zone" so even more overpopulated. I do not lose sleep about hunting with this thing - the most effective way I've found to take the deer out of the field and into the freezer.

[Ritchie200]

Hey alathIN!

Yeah I have been considering selling some of the rifles I don't use and buying a nice Pedersoli Sharps.  Then after a LOT of range time and a LOT of 45-70 reloading time, make the pilgrimage to Montana to attend the Quigley shoot.  I've been keeping tabs on this since its inception when less than 50 showed up - now up to almost 700!  Looks like a blast and if you are lucky enough to win, there are super cool prizes.  Lots of big booms going on up there!

https://www.quigleymatch.com/

Besides, who doesn't want to make a shot like this....

Jim

PS, by the way, whereabouts are you in Indiana.  I have some friends in Jasper.

[alathIN]

PS, by the way, whereabouts are you in Indiana.  I have some friends in Jasper.

Carmel. But don't think I'm a kazillionaire. I live in the slums of Carmel - which means it's like a normal 1960s ranch house neighborhood. By Carmel standards, we might as well be living in a cardboard shack.

If you want to talk to my buddy about black powder rifles, he'd have good advice for you. You'd need to set aside some time because he has a wealth of knowledge and is determined to share ALL of it 

[shooter]

I live in the slums of Carmel

   
Been in the area a few times, my Son is in Indy.  You have a couple regionally "famous" music guys there in Carmel.  One owns, or did, a small guitar store and was well liked for set-ups and service, likes steam-punk.  The other does amp repair and builds, top self work.

[alathIN]

  The other does amp repair and builds, top self work.

Uncle Albert?

Dude is really good. He's been nice to help me out with a couple of smaller jobs that didn't require his level of brilliance.

[shooter]

Yup, I only met him once, but that's all I needed 
The other one shares the same 1st name and can do with guitars, Uncle A can do with solder!

[1blueheron]

Through a business dealing I got to meet a guy who builds flintlocks and shoots them competitively. His rifles are spectacular and the banded maple stocks rival Tubenits projects!  Out in the sun the grain looks inches deep!  Amazing.  Then he does period correct wood and metal hand engraving.  Interesting in that it was common for the gun owner's favorite bible verse be engraved on the barrel.  All the metal parts other than barrel and trigger are completely hand made.  He also makes other period correct accoutrements such as horns and bags.  To add to the period correctness the leather he uses is deerskin from the deer he has hunted and he brain tans the skins.  If you are not familiar with this tanning process, look it up...    The skins are butter soft and have a distinct smoke aroma.  Some bags also feature porcupine quill work.  This looks like beading from a distance but is actually braided dyed porcupine quills - absolutely beautiful.  If you saw the movie The Patriot, he and two other builders outfitted the main characters who had the close up camera time with clothes and weapons.  He had pics of Mel Gibson with one of his rifles and bags.  Turns out the director said that he didn't want some historical expert saying they weren't the right clothes, guns, etc. for the period.


So I'm a cartridge guy.  I never even considered black powder.  I heard they were not accurate and were dirty to shoot.  Even though as a kid I cut out a stock and strapped a tube to it using strips from a tin can and nailed a fake flint lock hammer on the side - also cut out of a tin can.  I thought I was Dannnel Boone!  Heck I even shoved firecrackers in the barrel (tube) and shot pebbles out of it.  I'm surprised I still have my eyes and fingers....  So this guy offers to let me shoot one of his builds.  He has a 100 yard range set up behind the workshop.  My first shot was a little high and left, second was high right, third was bulls eye.  The set trigger took a bit to get used to and the hair trigger only needed to be looked at to fire!  Plus the flint spark and pan flash was a VERY new experience!  All in all a little over a 4" group.  I thought I was the bomb!  He should have said, "sit down in that chair right there and let me show you how it's done!"  So he shoots it and puts a group of three at a little over an inch, shoots the bullseye clean out.  Open sights.  Crosswind varied 5-15mph.  Lead ball...  Are you kidding me?!?!?!  I got to tell you, I am ready to sell all my long guns and have this guy build me one.  This was the most fun I have had with a rifle!

Years ago, I built a Thompson Center Renegade from a kit.  I still have it and it is one of the most accurate guns I own for open site shooting.  Deadly with a round ball.  It's .54 cal.   Shooting a maxi-hunter, that's moving a 435gr. hollow point lead bullet down range.  Talk about knockdown! I would have no fear hunting moose with it.  It is unique in that it has interchangeable barrels.  I could set it up as  .50 cal or as a .58 or as a  Blackpowder smoothbore shotgun.  My goal was to use it for wild boar hunting in NC.  Never got there but it is a fun gun to shoot.  They have come a long ways with blackpowder since then. 

[nandrewjackson]

My dad was into muzzleloaders in the 80's and early  90's, I was in middle school and high school. 


He had a percussion cap store-bought rifle first, then he built a high dollar flintlock kit later and built it up.


They had a house fire in 98, the flintlock got burned beyond repair. I don't have a clue where that percussion cap rifle is.


He also made a few powder horns, and a nice leather shooting bag.


He passed away may 2018, bone cancer.
Those "colonial" "mountain man" "primitive " things are still out in mom's garage. 


Its "nice" to see those things out there, he put a lot of time into them.

[Ritchie200]

Nandrew,

I'm sorry to hear that.  You should rescue those items before your mom thinks nobody wants them!

Jim