Magic Muzzleloader for sale!
Nice modern stock percussion cap front stufer- half round, half octagon barrel made for Charles Daly by Traditions. Accurate as hell, shoots reliably as hell, easy to load, and has the ADDITIONAL magic feature of NOT GOING OFF EVERY TIME IT IS POINTED AT A FUCKING DEER. The cap sputters and nothing.On removal of the cross plug it is discovered that the powder is damp ON A 17 DEGREE DAY WITH ZERO HUMIDITY.
I’m all about tradition, folks, but this is the third time this SOB has let me down when I had a deer in the crosshairs. It has now failed me more often than it has put meat on the table, and that means it’s going to find a new home BEFORE I TAKE IT BACK TO TRADITIONS AND SHOVE IT UP THEIR COLLECTIVE ASSES. Gimme an inline futhuchrissakes.
24 comments Og | Uncategorized
Do you fire a caps of caps before you load it to dry out the oil/humidity?
A blackpowder hunter should sling two horns, a powder horn and a drinking horn. Now, if the drinking horn had White Lightning in it (and don’t EVEN try to tell me you don’t know where to get it, boy) you could dribble some down the nipple, wait a sec, then snap a cap and exhaust it all out the muzzle with a nice flame, THEN powder and shot and recap.
Seems to me, seriously, that I read somewhere that most failures to ignite on blackpowder rifles could be cured by a slight drilling-out of the flash-channel. Ought to try it before you send the rifle back.
I’d suspect either oil from the bore (which runs down to the breach if stored muzzle-up) or dampness in the barrel before you loaded it. I shot thousands of blanks thru a .58 cal Enfield musket as a Civil War re-enactor, and the only time I ever had a misfire was one time I forgot to swab the bore before I loaded. Like others said, swab it, then snap a couple caps (point the muzzle at a blade of grass, if it moves you’re clear).
Mwah-ha-ha!
Bow before my elemental sorcery!
-Bambi
18th Level Archmage
I love my CVA Optima haven’t missed a deer yet with it. Cheap and prints nice 1.5 to 2 inch groups at 100, with Power Belts and 2 50gr. 777 pellets. Haven’t even tried to work up a loose powder load, I’m sure it would shoot even better groups. Best thing is pop the brech plug and clean it like a single shot 20 gauge.
Send it to me, and I’ll shove it up their asses…
Seriously, Og, what kind of sales pitch it that?
Coffee.
Keyboard.
Thanks a lot, og…
(BTW, great hearing you call in to Gun Nuts!)
There are several problems.
You cannot remove the breechplug in this, according to the mfr. It is locked in place because it’s clocked to the stock. Don’t know if that can be undone.
The moisture was apparently because I discharged a round ( I won’t carry it loaded in the car) and didn’t swab it as thoroughly as I could have after discharge (one wet and two dry patches) and didn’t swab it at all before loading.
I haven’t heard about the white lightning trick, though it makes lots of sense. Yes, I have white lightning in the house.
I’m headed back out today. I have sanitized- no, sterilized- the rifle, and it is wrapped in plastic and zipped in it’s case, and I will pull the crosshole plug and confirm dryness before I load.
Sonofabitch.
RipRip mentioned pellets. Have you tried Pyrodex pellets instead of loose powder? With their binding agent, they should be slightly more resistant to the damp.
Can’t use pellets. I am using Pyrodex powder. Side ignition doesn’t lend itself to pellets, or so I’m told.
Pyrodex makes pellets too.
and they dont work in a caplock as ive said.
I don’t know if a #11 cap will consistently ignite pellets in a side lock, never seen it tried before. A shotgun primer has a lot more fire than a cap, and it’s directly “inline†with the pellets, not off to the side.
The best use for Pyrodex is as an oral cleansing agent for liberals. Use it for that and get real, honest to God black powder for shooting. As soon as you can try float testing that POS rifle in the nearest body of water that’s at least 150 feet deep. Then go buy a real muzzleloading rifle. The best bang for the buck in my opinion would be a caplock Lyman Great Plains rifle with a close runner up in the Cabela’s “Hawken”. Both come in .50 or .54 cal. The Lyman is rifled for roundballs and won’t stabilize the grossly overated conicals. Cabela’s rifle is 1:28 and does well with both.
Got one of each and use ’em. Good rifles. If you only use your rifle for hunting, .54 is probably a better choice than .50.
Gerry N.
Gerry: Let me explain a few things to you, so you know.
If I were shooting muzzleloaders to shoot muzzleloaders, I would shoot a flintlock. I am not. I am shooting a muzzleloader because it is what is legal. If it were legal to use a 30-06 as long as i had “MUZZLELOADER” tattooed on my penis, I would make an appointment at the tattoo shop. I am not interested in the “purity” of the sport. I am interested in meat.
I HAVE this muzzleloader because I got it cheap. $90. Otherwise I would buy an inline, and now, I’m inclined to do just that.
Pyrodex is functionally identical to black powder, but safer. No argument is possible on this score, period. Anyone who makes the utterly specious claim that “Black powder is better” will be ignored. If it’s what you like, fine, don’t make up stories about how much better it is than pyrodex. I’ve made and proofed my own black powder I’ve used swiss and Goex in quantities far larger than anyone reading this blog, I suspect, aside from Contagion, who owns a mortar. I have probably forty empty Goex cans in the basement, and I’ve personally emptied every one. Oh, there IS one thing black powder IS superior to pyrodex at: As a dessicant. Black absorbs ambient moisture at a positively alarming rate.
As for the Lyman Great Plains and Cabelas Hawken: THey both have precisely the same ignition system as the rifle I have, which has malfunctioned due to moisture. How is buying a different gun with an indentical lock going to fix anything?
No, I can’t disagree that modern inlines are hideous and gross, but they go bang. This is the way the ought to make the things:
https://www.thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218916
but Pedersoli stopped making these. Damnfools.
I’ve got a tradtions Pro Hunter dueo the season I can use it in. Pyrodex pellets will not work in a side fire. I’ve a Antitoli Zoli hawkens knock off that is side lock and I can’t use pellets in it.
209 primer on pellet is a good all weather round and that is why the Hawken is on the wall. I’ve a little more respesct for our forebearers, but as they would, I moved up when I could.
Of course any black powder is not as relabiel as a modern brass round.
Hope you get one (deer)soon. I’ve got 3 tags a wasteng right now from early season shotgun. Only deer I saw where leaving the area post haste. Still got about 45 days to add to the deer pile so I’m not overly concerned yet.
I think Iowaoutdoors.org had a ML for sale in the classifieds, should you be so inclined.
Thanks, Paul, I just want a deer.
One thought I had on your problem could be a patch. Run the powder down after a couple of caps an then a parafin patch down and then the bullet. It might keep the powder dry enough to fire. Seems I might have read that sometime ago in a old book on the subject. Also I might take a drill and open up the channel in the nipple that the fire goes down. I was going to do that to the Hawken if I had still continued using it.
Good luck with the deer
Part of the problem is, the way it is constricted there’s a narrow channel that powder must go down to be ignited by the cap. And the channel gets full of carbon residue. Which seens to attract any kind of moisture. So tonight I cleaned and reamed and etc. and sanitised/sterilized the fucker, and capped everything so tomorrow it will have no excuse.
The problem is the rifle, not you. I hang out on a black powder forum where the geeks start with a tree and a billet of steel and make the rifle from the ground up and some of them turn out masterpieces when they are finished.
When talk turns to mass produced guns most seem to hold a negative view toward Traditions. (Not to slag any of you hear – I am just repeating an opinion held by some very knowledgeable shooters, your mileage may vary).
I had seen a few threads too where exasperated owners had problems exactly like yours. They are doing everything right, and they get disgusted with the sport when it is the gun to blame.
The caplock system is as reliable as a centerfire if you do your part. So are flinters. Any idiot can make them fire reliably (as they did for over two centuries). Sometimes Neanderpundit, it just ain’t your fault.
It is a psychologicl flaw on your part that I happen to share. If a machine isn’t working right there’s a reason for it and with a little head scratching and fiddling a feller can usually figure it out and fix it. That is true – except when you get a piece of shit that isn’t worth fixing and sometimes it happens. For some reason, when that happens to us, admitting we have a hunk of junk feels like we are losing or giving up something.
I had a spaghetti plains rifle made by some Italian outfit that drove me nuts too. Then I bought a kit from Jim Chambers Flintlocks and built a gun with a top notch lock and trigger and barrel and that sumbitch worked like a house afire! I took two does with it and a modest bull elk with it on my last hunt about 7 years ago.
If you are handy with tools look up Jim Chambers on the internet. You will end up with a fine rifle and a family heirloom.
If you really want deer, I’d suggest more night driving.
I’ve got two kills to my credit that way…
Oops. I should have read before I shot my mouth off..sorry Og.
Just so you know, I agree with just about everything you say about Pyro. I shot as many cans of Pyro as you did with black and I went the other way. Pyro has a higher ignition temp than black and for most, this is not an issue because the better guns have a proper flash channel which, in my opinion…the lower end muzzleloaders do not. That channel is the critical part of the system. If it ain’t right, the fire cannot reach the charge and black powder may fire for you more reliably than Pyro will because of it’s lower ignition temp. It’s something to consider if that flash channel is marginal. It may be that black powder IS the way to go for you for that reason only. Most flinters will shoot black for the same reason – it fires more reliably with marginal ignition.
Mind you I am a black powder nut and traditional rifles demand that you know how to manage your balls and powder! I have never had problems with wet powder because I take precautions. My guns always fired when I loaded them with care and embarrassed me when I didn’t. The only real advantage Pyro has over properly handled black powder is the lack of fouling, IMO – but that comes at the expense of nostalgia which is a big part of the sport for me.
Good luck with that front stuffer son.
Gun no go boom.
Gun get melted down PDQ.
Just like car no start…. now somebody else’s car.
Libs, that’s prezactly how I feel. It has this weekend to redeem itself, or it finds an new home.