Saturday was flintlock day.
So far, the Great Plain's pet loads have been65 grains (light target load) or 95 grains (hunting load) of GOEX FFFg with a .535 Hornady ballin a .016 patch lubed with my bees wax/Crisco/olive oil mixture.
After using (and liking)straight olive oil for patch lube whenshooting the Zouave on Friday, I decided to try it with the flintlock. I also wanted to do a FFFg vs. FFg comparison because I'm getting ready to buy another case of GOEX and can't decide which granulation to get.
I hit a small stumbling block right off the bat. DANG!!! Iused up all of my .016 patches shooting the Zouave, andthe second pack of them I "thought" were in my shooting box must be at home on the shelf.Well, no matter. I have lots of .018 pillow tick patches and .020 denim patches in the box. I'll just use the pillow tick. So I counted out 25 PT patches and doused them liberally with olive oil. Thenput them in a stack, wrapped the stack in a couple of paper towels,and squeezed them as hard as I could to absorb anyexcess oil.
With atarget out at 50 yards I wiped the bore with one dry patch to take care of any oil andloaded up with 95 grains of FFg. Ifound thatthe short starter took a pretty good WACK to seat the .535 ball with that pillow tick patch. It went down fine after the initial startthough.
I didn't wipe the bore at all between shots.
Here's the target.
Sure I was happy with that group. Thiscombination is looking
good.Also pleased that shot #1 on the cold, clean barrel is right there with the fouled boregroup.
OK, wipe the bore with one very wet 91% alcohol patch and let's see what FFFg will do with the pillow tick/olive oil combination. (Big OOPS coming up!)
Here's the target.
See where shot #3 hit? Did you notice the velocity of #3 ? I knew something was wrong as soon as that shot went off. It sounded funny and there was no recoil to speak of. [:-]
The first thing I did was check the powder tube to see if I had somehow failed to dump the full load in the barrel. Nope, that wasn't it. Also, I've shot loads as low as 40 grains out of this gun andthat shot just didn't feel or soundlike a regular light load. Something else is going on.
Now there were three of us on the range at the time - two of us shooting muzzle loaders and one shooting a cartridge rifle. We were taking turns shooting off the bench. Of course, we were talking about guns, loads, targets, deer, politics, women and beer. I'll never know for sure, but I've concluded that I got distracted and seated the ball with the short starter but failed to ram it home.Checked the gun over real well and ran a tight patch down the bore. Everything felt good - no bulge or loose spot. Man, what a relief. Shots 4 & 5 loaded and shot normally - actually, real well.
Anyway the FFFg combination looks good too.
I put out another target and
very very carefully loaded up again for another target with theFFg. Here it is.
Not as good a group as the earlier ones. I suspect I was tensing up my hold on the stock a little.
Time for one last round. Just for kicks I loaded up with
85 grains of the FFg instead of 95. Here's the results (with an interesting side note).
As you can see, I marked this as two groups. Here's why. Notice there are no chronograph readings.That's because the guy shooting his cartridge rifle had asked to usethe chrono while he wasshooting some 100yard targets. I was able to shoot shots#1, 2 and 3with the rifle rest positionedthe way I usually do. But after my third shot he repositioned the chronograph and it blocked my 50 yard target. As a result, I moved my shooting rest further toward the center line of the shooting bench and had to really lean into the bench to get behind my sights. I believe that change in position changed my hold enough to cause my last two shots to have a different POI. Maybe I'm kidding myself, but that's what I think.
Anyway, aside from the OOPS scare, it was a fun shoot. But I still don't know whether to order FFg or FFFg. Probably should just go ahead and get a mixed case with half of each.