Goblintrain
Hi, i have recently become the proud owner & shooter of a blunderbuss my father & i built from a kit. It fires a .75 cal ball or (usually) a load of bbs. It took a while to get used to the barrel flare, i shot low for longer than i care to admit because i was putting that barrel flare to the bottom down my line of sight. Once i started imagining a straight barrel, my aim got much better! ; ) Very simple mistake, but very easy one to fall into too.
A few questions.
First, i could use some experienced advice on ignition. I can't seem to get better than a 2/3 success rate using German flint & Hodgdon Triple Seven in the flashpan. My suspicion is that the propellant is not fine enough for ideal ignition use.
Second i don't seem to understand the ideal way to wadd a shot-load in a muzzle loader. I say this because my spread at 20 yards seems to vary a "little", from perhaps 6 inches to up to 2 yards! Thats not a small amount of variation! Any suggestions on how to make the spread more consistent? Lol, i live on a small farm, if i'm shooting at pests here at home, i'm liable to hit my own animals! ; )
Third, i am new to black powder in general, but there is a detail i'm curious about. I keep seeing on tv, how muzzle loading weapons use a ball smaller than the bore that "bounces" down the shaft when its fired. In my experience that is complete rubbish. A .75 ball fits perfectly down the muzzle of my weapon without baggage from the patch, & of coarse this is a smooth bore barrel, no rifling. I have also fired 72 cal balls from it too, & yes, they needed wrapping to fit right, & i imagine it did bounce. I guess my suspicion is that early on, when neither bore size or ammunition size had a universal, consistent standard of measurement that yes, it was necessary to undersize the ammo. However, by the time of barrel rifling, there must have also been some degree of standardization in these measurements, because i can not see rifling being able to provide that stablizing spin on a ball unless it consistently fit pretty tight in the barrel. To do that, you need consistency both in the bore size & the ammunition.
Thank you so much for reading through all this drivel, & i hope it can open some discussion on the Blunderbuss! ; )
A few questions.
First, i could use some experienced advice on ignition. I can't seem to get better than a 2/3 success rate using German flint & Hodgdon Triple Seven in the flashpan. My suspicion is that the propellant is not fine enough for ideal ignition use.
Second i don't seem to understand the ideal way to wadd a shot-load in a muzzle loader. I say this because my spread at 20 yards seems to vary a "little", from perhaps 6 inches to up to 2 yards! Thats not a small amount of variation! Any suggestions on how to make the spread more consistent? Lol, i live on a small farm, if i'm shooting at pests here at home, i'm liable to hit my own animals! ; )
Third, i am new to black powder in general, but there is a detail i'm curious about. I keep seeing on tv, how muzzle loading weapons use a ball smaller than the bore that "bounces" down the shaft when its fired. In my experience that is complete rubbish. A .75 ball fits perfectly down the muzzle of my weapon without baggage from the patch, & of coarse this is a smooth bore barrel, no rifling. I have also fired 72 cal balls from it too, & yes, they needed wrapping to fit right, & i imagine it did bounce. I guess my suspicion is that early on, when neither bore size or ammunition size had a universal, consistent standard of measurement that yes, it was necessary to undersize the ammo. However, by the time of barrel rifling, there must have also been some degree of standardization in these measurements, because i can not see rifling being able to provide that stablizing spin on a ball unless it consistently fit pretty tight in the barrel. To do that, you need consistency both in the bore size & the ammunition.
Thank you so much for reading through all this drivel, & i hope it can open some discussion on the Blunderbuss! ; )
