I gotthe.54 Green Mountain barrel for myRenegade back in November, at which time I shot four 5-shot targets and haven't shot it since then. I was waiting to get a scope mounted on it, which I managed to do last week. So one shooting session this week end was devotedto the .54GM Renegade.I'll post shooting results later, but I wanted to tell you guys about the misfire problem I had today.

I was shooting GOEX FFFg, cast balls with olive oil patches,CCI #11 magnum caps, and wiping with both sides of one alcohol patch between shots. I was "slapping the lock" each time after dumping powder to make sure powder got under the nipple. Temperature in the upper-80's & slightly humid.

First and second shots went off fine.
Had a misfire on the third shot. Put a second cap on the nipple and it fired.
Fourth shot went off fine.
Misfire on fifth shot. Did not firewith a second cap. Pulled the clean-out screw from the bolster and put some powder in there and it went off with the next cap.
Misfire on sixth shot. Had to pull the clean-out screw again and prime the bolsterto get it to fire.

Man, was I getting frustrated.

After the sixth shot I took a good look at the cleaning patch after the first swab- and took a picture of it.




It's kind of hard to tell from the picture, but some of the fouling pulled out by the patch was almost like little flakes of clay.

Then I flipped the patch and swabbed again. Here's the picture of side two.





Do you see that "flake" of fouling at the 11 o`clock position on the face of the jag? It was actually sticking out from the face.
That got my attention.

So I put a clean sheet of paper on the shooting bench, held the gun in a vertical position, butt up,with the muzzle over the paper and slapped the side of the lock.

Here's what fell out of the bore (not the cap - it's there for perspective).




Well, it was pretty clear that those flakes of fouling were somewhere down in the barrel, probably near the breech plug, and when I dumped powder in the bore the powder was knocking theminto the flash channel.

So I changed my swabbing/loading routine. After swabbing the bore with both sides of the alcohol patch, I pointed the muzzle toward the ground and slapped the lock. I could see crud falling out of the bore every time. Twenty-five shots later - NOT ANOTHER MISFIRE.

This is the first time I've experienced this kind of thing. I believe it has something to do with the way Green Mountain flash channels are configured. Back on May 8th. I shot the Great Plains about 30 times with basically the same load and swabbing the same way and did not have one misfire. Temperature and humidity wereabout the same.