Bought a FireHawk Today
 

Went pawnshop hopping this morning. At my third shop there was a .54 FireHawk with a sticker price of $175. Told the counter lady i might come back with an offer. The shop owner lady said: "I'll take 100 buck for it". Out came the plastic money card and the gun came home with me. The gun has nice sights, the bore is perfect and the stock is scratched in a few places.

i know nothing about these older TC inline guns except the fact they do not have breechplugs. This one is set up for musket caps.

Will it shoot conicals?

Correct. no breach plug and they make or made 2 style of "nipples". One is called a Flame Thrower and IMO is total garbage. It throws flames alright!!!!!! I dont remember if i tried the musket cap but it should be reliable.

The 54cal is a 1-38 twist

The triggers are very very good for a meat and potatoes rifle. Possibly a real Timney but i cant remember what mine looked like. You are not supposed to remove them from the action according to T/C.

Stick with nipples without the flame thrower label (harder to find now) and the 209 conversions are all FT versions and terrible IMO. LOT and LOTS of blowback with any Flame Thrower but the 209 has a habit of tearing 209 primers apart also.

Keeping the "plug" nipple threads and short passage clean is a must and a bit inconvenient but not impossible. Mine did not look like the entire hole for the nipple was threaded and it gets dirty (obliviously) resulting in hang fires.

Mine shot rounds balls ok with about 80gr of Pyro RS. Not great but still good enough for 50 yard shooting.

435gr Bullshops shot ok too but i forgot the charge. Its my friends load after i sold it to him. I used Maxi Hunters IIRC but its been so long im not sure.

I used to shoot the MMP 54x50 sabot also and a Barnes 275gr Expander MZ with 100gr of T7. Still not great but good enough for sub 10 yard shooting. Shorter bullets should work even better in the slow twist.

Sorry, i cant remember more atm, ive got a few things going on atm.

I knew one person that owned one of them, He shot maxiball out of it and took deer every year, so it must have been accurate. That was the ancestor of the Black Diamond.

Not familiar with the firehawk, but I found an online manual.
http://www.tcarms.com/assets/manuals...awk_Manual.pdf
I'd get one of those adapters you replace the nipple with and put a vinyl hose in a bucket of water for cleaning if it were mine.

Thanks, i'll do that.

Great gun I had for a long time in 54 cal. I will say I been out in all types of weather condition rain,snow, sleet the gun never let me down.
ONLY 1 time it failed to fire when I switch to a musket cap stay with the t/c flame thrower nipple and RWS 1075 plus caps if you can find them.

I have 2 Firehawks and they were my bread and butter ML for years. In 06 Got a Savage MLII and never looked back. My firehawks shot very good. They are 50 cal. I shot mostly 250 SST in sabots for 1st shot and field reload 250+- gr. belted bullets. 2 shots a day for ML hunting is a lot. With the sabots need to swab between shots to load. 85 gr. of 777 was really accurate and I took deer out to 150 easy. Be sure to put a "bra" on any scope as the blow from the open bolt will burn stuff. I'd suggest you try any of the 54 sabot bullets and get to 0 like every shot was 1st shot of day, ie: clean cold barrel. Then see what shoots close in the belted line for field reloads or carry a jag and couple patches and swab after every shot even in the field. My firehawks were extremely accurate and I would still be using them if I hadn't gone smokeless ML. 10

Buddy of mine has one, it shoots well...but real tough to load 2nd shot without swabbing. 3rd is impossible. But hey, you really only need the first shot anyhow :D

I did find maybe three shot before the grud ring on mine using RWS 1075 caps and triple 777.
I did favor Goex 3F powder 115 grains with the silverlighting 300 grain bullet or Buffalo SSB 325 to 375 grain HP bullets
I would never of sold the gun if I could have used BH209 powder in the gun,I did replace the gun with the CVA Optima thumbhole set up GUN SHOOTS GREAT

my hunting partner's got one 50 cal ss with black plastic stock shots 209 and he used maxehunters and like 80 grains of pyrodex. shot a bunch of deer with it... he's got a red dot on it

Falcon,

You got a great rifle at a great deal. Sometime back around 2000-2001, Cabela's had a closeout on their stock of Firehawks but all they had left were .58 and .32 calibers. The price was $129.95 NIB so I said "What the heck" and bought one of each. The big 58 likes FF black powder only but the .32 shoots great with Pyro P and very good with FFF black. Your .54 has the 1:38 twist and will probably perform best with a solid conical or sabot/bullet combo while both my .32 and .58 are 1:48 twist and shoot roundballs very well. I have scopes on each and the little .32 shoots as well as any of my scoped .22's out to about 35-40 yds. with 20 gr. of Pyro P, a .310 ball and .015 patch. The big .58 shoots roundballs OK and I have taken a few deer with it, but I never spent much time developing a load for it. It shoots 2-1/2 to 3" groups at 75 yds. with 80 gr. of FF black, a .570 ball and .015 patch. I tried some .58 Maxi-balls in it once and believe me, once was enough! It was not pleasant to shoot with 90 gr. FF black pushing that big hunk of lead. Both have the standard #11 nipples and I have never experienced any ignition problems with either. As 10 ga. suggests, you should use a breech cover or "bra" as he called it to protect the underside of the scope from scorch marks as the cap will burn them if you don't. I just put a layer or two of duct tape on the underside of the scope above the breech area prior to shooting and that works fine.
So get out there and enjoy your new rifle, I'm sure you'll find out it's a good shooter!

BPS

Thanks, everyone.

Cleaned the gun up. The bore had a lot of grease and the nipple was full of grease. The bore is perfect. The gun looks like its never been fired. The blue is really nice; much better than current TC guns.

Am waiting for the round balls and sabots along with the scope mounts i ordered. Hope to take it to the range next week.

The old FireHawks are now a meat and potatoes gun but back in the day, they were top notch. They still are top notch imo and very close to a MK85 in build quality. Its a great gun to carry all day and just plain feels good too.

My old Firehawk SS 54cal (sold to a friend) is still going strong and IIRC it was bought soon after the SS was available. I can not begin to tell you how many rounds have been though it and it still shoots like a champ.

Back then i did not know any better and used bore butter on patches and dried out conicals. I think i kept it stored with regular gun oil or Ballistol but i cant remember.

The odd part is....now it shoots T7 for a friend with very low crud ring build up. It can be loaded 5 times easily. The crud ring is also much easier to remove?

I bought my .54 Firehawk back in the mid 90's when they were top of the line. These are good shooting guns. I have shot many different projectiles, round balls, conicals, powerbelts, and sabots. I have the best accuracy with MMP white sabots, with Hornady FTX, 225 grain, .430 bullets. 90 to 100 grains FFG Goex, or Pyrodex P. 90 grains of 777, works well to. If you do get an owners manual, it shows how to take the gun down, including trigger removal, so you can put the barrel into a bucket of warm soapy water, and clean it completely that way. I have been doing this since day one, and my barrel and bore are completely corrosion free. If you are going to scope yours, consider quick release rings, so you can remove the scope when cleaning. You can get a manual download from the T/C website. Notice the scope protector in the picture.