Funny that you should ask. So it's been raining here since Friday. When I say rain I mean hard rain and then harder still for periods of time. Today around 1pm the sun came out, the skies turned blue and I'm sitting at work and I get a call from a buddy and he says you want to go to the range. I say heck yeah!

His son is going on his first rifle youth hunt so I was showing him the ropes with trigger control, breathe control etc...

Well after about 15 minutes of being at the range the skies rain down once again but this time it decided to make up for the hour and half that it had stopped. Sitting at the 50 yard line I fired my first shot of loose powder in the pouring rain. Luckily the range has a really nice roof over it so not overly bad except that some wayward fellow had shot a hole right through the roof, right above my bench! Any how I manned up and shot. Since you hadn't posted the above prior to my departure I started right at 110gr. Let me tell you that is heck of lot beefier than two pellets and it was surprising. It wasn't ridiculous but it was stout. Stout enough that I could see a red flame in my scope after pulling the trigger. I only took two shots mostly because of the weather but on both of them I saw the red flame. The two shots were about 2.5" apart at 50 yards which of course isn't good but honestly it's on par with what I was getting with the pellets. Leaving the range was more like a sprint than a stroll. Drove the truck right up to the range so I could keep my powder and cleaning case as dry as possible.

The HPH/24 sabots with the gold dot bullets went down the barrel a lot like the Shockwaves with the yellow sabots. It was firm but not overly difficult to get them down the barrel.

I'm going to check the action tonight when I get home as I'm back at work right now. I know the scope and mounts are good as that was one of the things I did after not being able to get the rifle to group. I also went ahead and installed a brand new scope that had never been placed on a rifle before. I even ended up sending the original scope back to be repaired just in case.

I will let you know what happens when I take the action off the stock, if there is any rocking or whatever. Not sure what you mean by teflon cutting sheets. Are you talking about those ultra thin cutting boards? Where can I get one of those? Do you have a pic for me?

As for the dollar bill trick, floating. Are you saying that a muzzleloader needs to have a floated barrel? Seems kind of odd to me since there is a ramrod stuck in there anyway. Will the ram rod rattle around in there after doing that?

Having your help is keeping me confident that I will get this thing to shoot eventually.

Thanks again.

Tom

So went home and disassembled my rifle. There was no rocking whatsoever. The dollar bill would not pass. I then placed the dollar bill at several places along the barrel between it and stockand an none of the places would the dollar move atall. So essentially completely unfloated along the entire length of the barrel. Any suggestions?