Brief outing on Sunday

dmurphy317 · 01-19-2009, 03:54 PM

Sunday afternoon turned out to be a nice day for a short range session with my older son. He needed to finish up some testing for this years science experiment, he's doingit on momentum of various materials shot from a MLer with the same powder load (more on that later).

I thought I would take a couple of my guns just to have something else to play with. I recently change out the trigger on my Magbolt (old one had some issues) and needed to try it out. The other gun I took was my flintlock Bobcat (I converted it last year).

I haven't shot PRB out of my Magbolt in a couple of years so I thought that would be a good and cheap thing to play with. Last time I did that I was able to get good groups using a tight (.022) patch and a .490 ball up to 80 grains of 777 2F, but not this time. I started off with 70gr of powder and the first shot at 25 yards was .5" high and .5" left of POA, not bad considering I'm sighted in for a 200SW with 100gr of BH-209. Shot 2 was without swabbing and it hit 2" high and centered, not bad but not as tight as expected. Shot 3 was just above and 1.5" right of shot 2. Before shooting shot 4 I decided to swab the bore (I had noticed the begining of a crud ring while loading shot 3), shot 4 was almost in the same hole as shot 2, just made it about 50% bigger. That was enough for that rifle, I had already determined that the trigger needed some more work. The new trigger has a lot of travel and creep compared to my old one so I need to smooth it out and get it back to something closer to what I had (without the broken parts of course). I did check the velocity of the load and was surprised that it was going 1800fps.

Next was my low budget flinter. I didn't really shoot for groups, just wanted to see how it was working. I decided to stick with 70gr of powder but switched to 3F Goex. My first shot I just shot into the berm to verify it was going to go off (I haven't shot this one in about 6 or 8months). It did go off with only a slight delay. Shot 2 was not as successful with 2 flash in the pans before I got it to go off. At that point I noticed the jaw was a bit loose and the flint was moving around a bit so I loosened it up and got everything squared up and tightened it back down. Shot 3 saw 3 more flash in the pans before I got it to go off (got to remember to use the nipple pick in the flash hole). Then I noticed the flint was getting pretty dull and was giving a very weak spark, time to get another flint or learn to knap the one I have.

All in all I learned that I need to spend some more time with my flint gun to get to know it better and to perfect my technique in using it. Considering that was only it's second outing and the fact that I have only shot a total of maybe 10 shots with a flintlock, I guess my learning curve is still on the upstroke.

Semisane · 01-19-2009, 04:10 PM

What kind of flash hole liner do you have in that Bobcat Murph? If your pan was flashing the problem has to be flash hole related. If you don't have an RMC liner I'd bet one would cure your ills.

dmurphy317 · 01-19-2009, 04:18 PM

I'm not 100% sure but I believe it is either a CVA liner or an Uncle Mikes liner. It has a slot for a screwdriver to install it.

cayugad · 01-19-2009, 04:29 PM

It sounds like a lot of fun. And you're right.. flintlocks take some learning. When I was teaching myself, I hate to think of all the pans of powder I burned off.

I personally like a RMC allen head vent touch hole liner. They seem to work the best for me.

dmurphy317 · 01-20-2009, 06:51 AM

So where's the best place to get them? I'm sure I will need to replace this one at some point.

My other option is to make one myself out of a stainless allenset screw or flat head screw. What size hole seems to work best for you guys?

Semisane · 01-20-2009, 09:03 AM

As Cayugad states, the RMC liner is installed with an allen wrench. The socket for the allen wrench acts to funnel the pan flash to the charge. They work great. The picture shows my old Lyman liner (right) and the RMC liner (left).

Go here http://rmcsports.com/catalog.htmand type touch hole liner in the search box on the upper left hand corner of the page.

dmurphy317 · 01-20-2009, 09:32 AM

The slotted head one you posted is similar to the one I have on the gun. The threaded part of mine is smaller than the head but otherwise looks the same. Thanks for the link, I will check them out.