One of my favorite toys

[82Rigger]

Thought ya'll might like to see one of my shooters.

I've had this Pennsylvania rifle since 1972. Made it from a kit. The overall style of the rifle is of several Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, gunmakers of around 1820.

The stock is plain maple full length with brass furniture and a "cherry" finish. I wanted a tiger stripe maple stock, but they cost your virgin first-born plus both your kidneys.

I made the stock stain with red berries and soot mixed with raw linseed oil. I was trying for a dark red color, but didn't quite make it.

Barrel is 7/8" diameter octagonal, 3/8" across the flats, 42" long.
Caliber is .45 with a uniform 1 in 56 twist. Overall length is 57 inches and weight is 8 3/4 pounds.

This particular rifle likes a .445 round ball in an unbleached linen patch, spit lubricated, on top of 70 grains of DuPont FFFg. I prime the pan with FFFFg.

Back when I had good eyeballs, I could consistently hit beer cans at 100 yards from a rest.

[82Rigger]

The lock assembly is case-hardened and the trigger is a crisp 3 pounds.

[82Rigger]

I use agate instead of flints. They can be shaped on a grindstone and don't have to be knapped every five shots!

[82Rigger]

I use just enough priming powder to fill the small depression inside the pan, and I tilt the rifle lock-up and bump it with the heel of my hand to start the priming powder into the flash hole.
I get almost instantaneous ignition that way.

[locksly]

I have an old 54 caliber rifle that I built with a Green Mountian barrel that shoots good with 85 gr. of 2 F blackpowder . My rifle has the older style wooden slidding patchbox with a L and R flintlock on it. If I use 35 grains of blackpowder in the bottom of the barrell and a 50 gr Pyorodex pellet it will also shoot every time.

[revwardoc]

Steve,

When I first got my 1766 French Charleville musket, I was getting several flashes in the pan that wouldn't ignite the main charge in the barrel. Then I noticed that the touch hole wasn't quite on the same level as the pan, so I bored it out a bit larger, and its worked fine ever since.

During the Rev War, some Brit and American troops would bore out the touch hole so that, when they poured the main charge down the barrel, they would give it a slap on the left side and some of the powder would go into the pan and they could eliminate the extra priming steps. After all, the idea was to throw as much lead at the enemy as fast as you could.

Personally, I don't think I'd want to do that but, in combat, I guess you do what you gotta do.

[82Rigger]

Rev,

I'm sitting here laughing, because I just had the strangest thought:

If I had to go out and buy "fuel" for my muzzle-loaders today, I would not have the foggiest idea what to buy!

Back many years ago, when DuPont stopped making black powder, I bought out my dealer's supply and packed it in new modern ammo cans with a bag of dessicant in each can. Four pounds of 2F, 6 pounds of 3F, and 4 pounds of 4F. The price stickers are still on the cans...$4.00 per pound.

MAN, am I glad I did that! Still have at least half of it left. I keep the ammo cans separated and I re-activate the dessicant bags every few years.

What's the name in black powder today? Goex? Do they still have Pyrodex?

[sn-e3]

Yup they still make and sell pyrodex I use ff2 100 grains in my .54 hawkins

[revwardoc]

For years I bought 3f Elephant powder from a place up in Maine for the regiment. Unfortunately, the company that made it (some outfit in Brazil) has gone out of business so the Maine dealer got together with a German outfit to produce what they call "re-enactor powder". Its a combination of 2, 3, and 4f and costs the same as straight 3f. They've sold over 1000 pounds of it with no complaints from Civil or Rev War re-enactors. We're going to burn some of it in Quebec in a couple of weeks so we'll see how it turns out. As long as we get more bang for our bucks, we'll be happy.

[colmurph]

I buy Swiss Powder. Goex, Elephant and all the others are "Bladting Powder" and are very dirty and leave heavy fouling. Swiss Powder is a "Sporting Powder" and is not quite as dirty as the others. I would NEVER use pyrodex in anything other than a re-pop. The stuff is so corrosive that it will start to eat your barrel before you get it off the range to clean it. A gun shot with pyrodex if left a day without cleaning will be unuseable for anything other than shooting blanks.
There is a product called "Clean Shot" that uses no sulpher and is non-corrosive but it's around $20 a pound.

[revwardoc]

$20/lb?! Wow! In the immortal words of Bob Eucker, "Juuuust a bit outside"...of our price range. Too bad it's so expensive. It would be perfect for re-enactor use. I agree with you about pyrodex. We had one guy who swore by it ...until the day he blew out the breach of his Charleville because he just couldn't (or didn't) properly clean it. Fortunately, they were able to save his right hand.

A few years ago we were doing a re-enactment of the Battle of Monmouth and the weather conditions were virtually identical to those of the original battle, VERY hot, humid, and no breeze. There were roughly 1500 soldiers for that one (counting both sides) and about 20 artillery pieces. The smoke got so thick we had to stop the battle because we couldn't see each other, even at 30 yards and nobody wanted to walk into a musket volley or cannon fire.

The Swiss powder is very good but it also tends to cost about $15/lb up here so we just have to stick with the new re-enactor powder.

[chilidog]

Rigger,
Red berries and soot? I'd love to see the receipe and how you did it. What did you use on the barrel? Maybe you could start a new thread on favorite re-finishing techniques.


Chilidog