Second Lyman Outing
 

I took off work late this morining to go shoot my Lyman .54 flinter again. Even though it was extremely windy I wanted to do some more experimenting now that I had the RMC touch hole liners. I knew what the load was for this rifle from the first outing so I just set up the target(s) at 50 yds and started. All balls were patched with .018" pillow tick with bore butter lube. I still haven't gotten the #57 sight yet so I knew the POI would be low and I wasn't concerned.
The first target was using Hornady .530 RB and 100 gr of FFg which gave me a 1.64" C-C group.
Next were my own cast .530" RB and 100 gr of FFg for a 1.87: C-
C group. I was happy there was really no noticable difference between the store bought and my bullets.
The 3rd target was shot with the same load as #2 but with an over powder wad. Results were a 1.4" C-C group. Better but not by much.
The 4th target I boosted up the charge to 110 gr of FFg, using my cast ball and an over powder wad. The group seemed to open up slightly.
This rifle, even with the RMC liner, needs to have the pan pretty full for it to set off the main charge. So it is a powder pig both down the bore and in the pan.
The last target was shot from my Lyman Plains Pistol .54 caplock at 25 yds which put the 3 balls in a 1.25" group right where the top of the front sight was. The load here was 50 gr of FFg. If I get a deer within 30 yds I am going to use this pistol on it.

I found that a 1/3 pan of 4f banked to the outside works best for me. One thing that I noticed was that the pan was kind of rough when I first got it. So I took it off and and used a dremel tool and some valve grinding compound to shine and smooth it up.

HA

Bronko,

If you do any shooting on humid days, give fffg a try as a priming powder. Because the black powder is somewhat hygroscopic, it tends to pull moisture from the air in humid conditions. The larger granules of the fffg retain more space for oxygen and compact less and it seemed to work better in my personal experiences shooting on humid days. I didn't notice any difference in the ignition time, even though I know that ffffg has a faster burn rate (although very minute) when measured electronically. The fffg powder used as a prime worked very well with the RMC liners I use.

BPS

I'll try and remember that next time. Also try the outside edge of the pan too. I was just reading a post on the same subject on the other ML forum. There are several techniques that they use that I haven't thought of. One is using a pipecleaner in the touch hole to keep it clean during swabbing between shots! I find this hard to believe to work as I ran a slotted dowel with patch down the bore to wipe the chamber area and could never see the patch through the touch hole port. Second is the use of FFFg as the main charge in lieu of FFg. Again, I can't see a reason why this would be different.
Someone else got a solution?

I do put a fuzzy pipe cleaner in the vent hole when I load. This does a couple things. I know when I SLOWLY pull that out, the vent hole is nice and clear, also it drags a little powder with it to the very back side of the vent hole. So then all it takes is a little spark to land there and I get a nice fast ignition.

That is some nice shooting there. Some of them groups, with open sights are very very good...

My load process
Clean flint, frizzen and pan
Put paperclip in vent hole
Load main charge
Pull paperclip
Prime pan
Shoot
Clean
repeat

If I forget to clean or put the paperclip in the vent, within a few shots (usually 5 or so), something will go wrong and it will not fire.

HA

thanks cayugad and huntaway - I will try the pipecleaner bit next time out and also FFFg instead of FFG.