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Had a lengthy session with the .54 Great Plains flintlock yesterday. Let me tell you, fifty shots with a flintlock istruly a
lengthy session. But what the heck,I had the hunting club's range to myself and the weather was about as nice as you could want - low 80's and low humidity.
I'vebeen using .018 WalMart pillow ticking for patches, andwhat I thought was a .018table cloth from the GoodWill store(but which turned out to be more like .015/.016 when I re-measured it yesterday). The main purpose of the range session was to see how .021/.022 denim worked as patch material.
All of the shooting was at 50 yards from a bench. Here's how it went.
Shot the first target with 85 grains GOEX FFFg with the first shot from a squeaky clean barrel and wiping with both sides of two damp patches and one dry patch between shots. When I was loading the fifth shot I noticed the rear barrel wedge was missing. Searched all over for it, even went and checked the truck and couldn't find it (found it this afternoon on the bed where I laid the gun getting ready to leave for the range). Here's the target.
Not too bad - probably about as well as I can shoot with iron sights. Looks like the denim patches are going to work well.
But what the heck happened with shot #2. Guess I flinched.
Let's drop down to 75 grains and see what happens. Here's the target.
Looking good. The missing barrel wedge does not seem to be hurting anything.
85 grains and 75 grains look OK. Let's give 95 grains a try.
WHAT THE HECK??? 95 grains shot real well in previous range sessions, but I was using a Wonder Wad under the load then. Could it be the denim patch? Do I need a wad under the heavier charge?
Let's go back to 85 grains and add a wad.
DANG! That's terrible. What's going on here???
Check the gun over and found the locking screw on the Lyman peep sight had backed out, allowing the sight the wiggle around a little.
Tightened the sucker up and re shot with 85 grains and a wad.
Not bad. Did you notice that I shot that target without swabbing the bore?
I'll take credit for shot #4 if you give me credit for the other ones.
I wonder what kind of group I can get if I fully clean the barrel before each shot? Let's give it a try.
What happened? Well after shot #2 I realized I was losing concentration. So I stopped after #2, took a twenty-minute break, ate a sandwich and drank a root beer, then went back and shot #3, 4 & 5. Goes to show you it's not always the gun or the load.
Let's shoot another group without swabbing.
That's OK. I think 85 grains is going to be my hunting load.
Time for another experiment. A while ago I had shot some Lee REALs with a heavy charge - 95 grains - and got a 5" horizontal spread. I knew that was too hot a load for REALs, so I want to try a more appropriate load of 70 grains.
Actually, I'm not too disappointed with the results. Shot #1 didn't even hit the paper. It was about 1" below the bottom left hand corner. And shot #3 isn't in the group with the others either. But I noticed as I loaded that bullet #1 was slipped right into the bore without the rifling cutting lead at all, and #3 only cut the top driving band. On the others, the bottom band fit the bore well and the rifling cut both the middle and top driving bands. I think if I sort them and picked only proper fitting bullets they may give me a pretty good group.
Well, the sun is getting below the trees so I don't have a lot of shooting light left. Time for one more experiment. Heck, make it a dual experiment.
I've never shot less than 70 grains out of this gun, so lets give 50 grains a try, and just for the heck of it lets shoot ten shots without swabbing and using the thinner table cloth patches. Here's the target.
Now that, my friend, is
FUN.
Another GP Range Session (Long Post / 9 Pictures)
