Bent Ramrod
07-20-2013, 06:01 PM
In the past, I have posted a time or two on the problems I've had getting my Pedersoli .32 caplock rifle to shoot accurately. A friend of mine got one a few months before I did and had the same problems as I did: minute of tea-saucer accuracy (at best) off the bench at 50 yards, deteriorating as successive shots were fired; stuck balls and patches; lots of wild shots, and general sense that if a Frontiersman had to go through all the grief this rifle was giving him, he'd trade it in for a bow and arrow.
I got lots of good advice from people (some on line, some at the Muzzleloader's club) on how to manage these little rifles. Besides my friend and me, everybody else seemed to get squirrel head accuracy out of theirs out to 50 yards. They all agreed on the importance of cleaning the bore between shots and many advised me to quit lubricating my patches with grease, to use them dry or use saliva. The relationship of bore diameter to ball diameter and patch thickness was gone over as well.
I tried powder charges from 15 to 40 grains, with the lower charges being marginally better than the higher ones, but no quantum leap in accuracy from any of them. I tried all the ball diameters from .310" to .323" that I could get moulds or preswaged balls for and all patch thicknesses that could be used short of hammering the combinations down the barrel. I finally settled on a thin (.005" or so) linen patch with the .319" ball as the best of an indifferent lot. With this combination, I did sometimes have to hit the ball starter rather hard with my hand, and cleaning between shots was essential. What patches I could find on the ground after shooting were not torn or burned through.
The cleaning drill could not be set to a routine, such as two wet patches, two dry ones, etc., either. Whatever procedure I followed, inevitably there would be that ominous draggy feel as the patched ball was rammed home, and the next shot would go "there or thereabouts." I was able to prolong the minute of tea saucer accuracy at 50 yards out to eight shots or so, and three or four would seem to be trying to form a "group," as normally understood. At least, the incidence of sticking ramrods went to zero. Still, a shooting session that used up 25 percussion caps would be better described as an all-morning cleaning session with an occasional shot being fired. My friend gave up and sold his rifle, after giving me first refusal. I refused, with the explanation that I had way enough trouble already. He sympathized, saying maybe we should have started with .36s or .45s and ignored our wishes for a "squirrel rifle."
Recently I traded with a member of this group for a .32 Maxi Ball mould. I cast up a bunch of them from pure lead and pan lubed them with my mutton tallow/beeswax mixture I use for BPCR bullets. The other day I took them out to try them. I was apprehensive when I pushed one of them in on top of an Ox-Yoke wad, since the thing just thumbed in, without any engraving resistance. I used the rod that came with the gun, rather than the starter and the heavy duty range rod, to push the bullet home. It went home very easily. Since my rifle has a slow twist for PRBs, I figured the lack of stabilization for the longer projectile plus the loose windage would result in keyholes aplenty. Well, I was committed now; might as well go through with it.
The first two shots were a little wild, but the second was within the rather generous POI zone of the round balls. Neither were keyholes. The third was on top of the sights, and so was the fourth and fifth and all the succeeding ones. I used up all the Ox-Yoke wads and kept shooting. Apparently, they weren't needed. I was getting closer clusters offhand at 25 yards than I had ever gotten off the bench with PRBs at 50. I decided to see what failure to clean would do to accuracy. The Maxis continued to slide down the bore, but the ominous draggy feel was beginning to show itself. The shots, however, kept stacking up right on top of earlier shots. I went to the falling plates at 50 yards. With PRBs I could hit at the rate of maybe 3-4 shots out of 10 offhand. The hit ratio went up to 7 or 8 with the misses being callable, rather than "What the H was that?"
The ramrod still functioned pretty smoothly, although it was now coated with a thick layer of grease and powder fouling towards the bottom. The gun was shooting like my .32-20 cartridge rifles (perhaps not surprisingly, since with the 100 gr Maxi Ball, it basically is a .32-20.) This was a totally different gun than the bete-noir I was used to struggling with. Thumb the bullet in, sweep in the excess lubricant, ram home with the gun's ramrod. No fiddling to keep the patch straight, no short starter, no struggling to get the ramrod in or out, no pile of dirty patches from cleaning.
I felt guilty and cleaned after about Shot #35, but I don't think it was necessary. The next shot didn't go wild, nor did the rest of them. I finally ran out of Maxi Balls after 100 shots or so. My rate of fire was astounding, and every shot went where the sights were pointed. A friend from the Muzzleloader club drove up as I finished and I excitedly told him of my breakthrough. "Yeah, but you can't use those things in our Matches," was his unimpressed reply.
Well, at least I have evidence that there is nothing wrong with the gun itself, accuracy wise. I'm kind of at a loss on how to proceed with the PRBs though. By the Maxi Ball behavior, an easily started smaller ball with a thick, lube saturated patch should do the trick. It never has worked very well in the past, though, but maybe even more grease than the patch can hold is needed. Maybe multiple patches? Something has to work to get the gun to shoot without all that infernal cleaning. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? I do have to say to previous advisors, that I'm not the kind of guy that asks for advice and then says it's no good just because I don't think so. I tried everything that people suggested, to the best of my ability, with the results I've documented above.
I do like the gun much better now, though.:mrgreen: Maybe I should have bought the other one after all.
I got lots of good advice from people (some on line, some at the Muzzleloader's club) on how to manage these little rifles. Besides my friend and me, everybody else seemed to get squirrel head accuracy out of theirs out to 50 yards. They all agreed on the importance of cleaning the bore between shots and many advised me to quit lubricating my patches with grease, to use them dry or use saliva. The relationship of bore diameter to ball diameter and patch thickness was gone over as well.
I tried powder charges from 15 to 40 grains, with the lower charges being marginally better than the higher ones, but no quantum leap in accuracy from any of them. I tried all the ball diameters from .310" to .323" that I could get moulds or preswaged balls for and all patch thicknesses that could be used short of hammering the combinations down the barrel. I finally settled on a thin (.005" or so) linen patch with the .319" ball as the best of an indifferent lot. With this combination, I did sometimes have to hit the ball starter rather hard with my hand, and cleaning between shots was essential. What patches I could find on the ground after shooting were not torn or burned through.
The cleaning drill could not be set to a routine, such as two wet patches, two dry ones, etc., either. Whatever procedure I followed, inevitably there would be that ominous draggy feel as the patched ball was rammed home, and the next shot would go "there or thereabouts." I was able to prolong the minute of tea saucer accuracy at 50 yards out to eight shots or so, and three or four would seem to be trying to form a "group," as normally understood. At least, the incidence of sticking ramrods went to zero. Still, a shooting session that used up 25 percussion caps would be better described as an all-morning cleaning session with an occasional shot being fired. My friend gave up and sold his rifle, after giving me first refusal. I refused, with the explanation that I had way enough trouble already. He sympathized, saying maybe we should have started with .36s or .45s and ignored our wishes for a "squirrel rifle."
Recently I traded with a member of this group for a .32 Maxi Ball mould. I cast up a bunch of them from pure lead and pan lubed them with my mutton tallow/beeswax mixture I use for BPCR bullets. The other day I took them out to try them. I was apprehensive when I pushed one of them in on top of an Ox-Yoke wad, since the thing just thumbed in, without any engraving resistance. I used the rod that came with the gun, rather than the starter and the heavy duty range rod, to push the bullet home. It went home very easily. Since my rifle has a slow twist for PRBs, I figured the lack of stabilization for the longer projectile plus the loose windage would result in keyholes aplenty. Well, I was committed now; might as well go through with it.
The first two shots were a little wild, but the second was within the rather generous POI zone of the round balls. Neither were keyholes. The third was on top of the sights, and so was the fourth and fifth and all the succeeding ones. I used up all the Ox-Yoke wads and kept shooting. Apparently, they weren't needed. I was getting closer clusters offhand at 25 yards than I had ever gotten off the bench with PRBs at 50. I decided to see what failure to clean would do to accuracy. The Maxis continued to slide down the bore, but the ominous draggy feel was beginning to show itself. The shots, however, kept stacking up right on top of earlier shots. I went to the falling plates at 50 yards. With PRBs I could hit at the rate of maybe 3-4 shots out of 10 offhand. The hit ratio went up to 7 or 8 with the misses being callable, rather than "What the H was that?"
The ramrod still functioned pretty smoothly, although it was now coated with a thick layer of grease and powder fouling towards the bottom. The gun was shooting like my .32-20 cartridge rifles (perhaps not surprisingly, since with the 100 gr Maxi Ball, it basically is a .32-20.) This was a totally different gun than the bete-noir I was used to struggling with. Thumb the bullet in, sweep in the excess lubricant, ram home with the gun's ramrod. No fiddling to keep the patch straight, no short starter, no struggling to get the ramrod in or out, no pile of dirty patches from cleaning.
I felt guilty and cleaned after about Shot #35, but I don't think it was necessary. The next shot didn't go wild, nor did the rest of them. I finally ran out of Maxi Balls after 100 shots or so. My rate of fire was astounding, and every shot went where the sights were pointed. A friend from the Muzzleloader club drove up as I finished and I excitedly told him of my breakthrough. "Yeah, but you can't use those things in our Matches," was his unimpressed reply.
Well, at least I have evidence that there is nothing wrong with the gun itself, accuracy wise. I'm kind of at a loss on how to proceed with the PRBs though. By the Maxi Ball behavior, an easily started smaller ball with a thick, lube saturated patch should do the trick. It never has worked very well in the past, though, but maybe even more grease than the patch can hold is needed. Maybe multiple patches? Something has to work to get the gun to shoot without all that infernal cleaning. Does anybody have any thoughts on this? I do have to say to previous advisors, that I'm not the kind of guy that asks for advice and then says it's no good just because I don't think so. I tried everything that people suggested, to the best of my ability, with the results I've documented above.
I do like the gun much better now, though.:mrgreen: Maybe I should have bought the other one after all.