nchawkeye

Technically it "is" removable...But I wouldn't...I have never removed or tried to remove any of mine, and have owned flintlocks since 1977...

cayugad

[hr]


While some of the new traditional rifles have breech plugs that do come out.. 99% of the traditional rifles do not and you should not attempt to remove it. You can damage the breech plug which will effect the fit in the hooked breech rifles. Also some of them are actually spot welded in place and you need a professional understanding of the rifle in question as to how to remove it. Now my understanding is many years ago, T/C had a Hawkins that came with a tool to actually remove the breech plug. I never saw one, only hear tell of it.

So the easy thing is, don't monkey with it. Keep cleaning the rifle the way you have been and it will serve you well.

As for bad habits.. there's lots of them. How many people here have blown down the barrel of their traditional rifles to put out embers and blow the smoke out through the nipple? Well I have. Used to do it all the time until I was at a shoot and the range person told me an another person he would disqualify us if he caught us doing that again. I was stunned. Here I had been doing that for years and could not see the harm in it. So now I have a fancy little hose with an adaptor that I still blow down the barrel of the rifle with, except now.. no part of me is over the barrel of the rifle.

Johnmorris

Dave
wasn't the idea of blowing down the barrel also to soften the residue so the next ball would load easier

cayugad

I really don't know. The old fellow thatintroduced me to muzzleloaders, was always blowing the smoke and embers out in the barrel. He alwayssaid that if he didn't do that, when you dumped the next powder charge you ran the risk of a barrel flash. Well at the time it made perfect sense to me, so I started doing the same thing.