some of the so called experts in muzzleloading.

[ironjaw]

I have been involved with muzzleloading shooting for over 30 years. shot my first rifle in 1966.
the current crop of article writers leave me shaking my head. seems one in peculiar has such an ego that even he can not get the simplest facts right.
example: he has a 20 gauge ,.620 i.d. bore, and said that a .600 round ball will not fit and we all should use a .595 ball. now he never says what thickness patch or if he measured the ball with a micrometer. just do like i do boys and it will work.
any fool can see that the combination of .600 and a patch of .015 will compress slightly and load right down.
i have read and wondered why the guy is still out there. must be the words he sells to the magazine are cheap.
please ask /read as much as you can before you use advise from writers. forum will get you answers to a lot of questions without danger.
be smart, ask many.

[GoodOlBoy]

It's amazing to me how sometimes a single piece of a single topic of load information will get you half a dozen different answers from a dozen different sources. It's a good and fair warning you post ironjaw. Always take ANY information with a grain of salt, and always remember how many hands that piece of info had to go through to get to you. Any one of those people from the writer, to the publisher, to the printer, could have been having a bad day and transposed a number here or there.

Anyway thanks for this post.

Richard

[Gtek]

Just about everyday I realize how truly blessed I was having the father I had and to have received/trained through his thought process. Nothing of what you hear and half of what you see and did he love his Holy Black. Every time I pour that 777 down the hole on a 209er this small feeling of guilt comes over me for a second or two. Measure twice, sticks and stones, the real men, mentors all seem to have been lost in time and the new world. Education, understanding, application, dirty hands. And just for fun let us start by finding the CORRECT manual.

[lobogunleather]

I don't make any claim to being an expert. I started shooting front-stuffers about 40 years ago. Had several reproduction pieces (TC Hawken, cap & ball revolvers, etc), then my attention shifted to original antique guns. Now shooting an original Pennsylvania half-stock percussion rifle and two Civil War issue revolvers (Colt 1860 and Remington New Army). I treat these pieces a bit gently, but I do use them regularly. There is nothing to compare with the satisfaction of eating a meal taken with a 150 year old rifle!

Some of the best information I have found has been in old NRA publications and Lyman manuals. Some of the most atrocious nonsense I have found has been in popular magazine articles. So much of what is published as "gospel" is so far off the mark that it can't pass the sniff test by an experienced hand.

[bigted]

see my addition from a grand experience today ... very compelling to find a group that is honest and friendly and has such valuable info to share and still listen to a pup with a small nugget of smarts on a very minor issue.

refreshing I say to find these fella's and at the same time shame on us all that read that junk published in rag's that's only purpose is to sell space for ad's in their nickel n dime nonsense toilet paper fodder. I am just a guilty for reading such nonsense myself and sometimes wonder why I get off the mark a bit ... LOL ... :coffeecom

[Boogieman]

Like Ironjaw I've been shooting ML over 30 years and I must agree there some strange opinions spread around as facts. But I must take issue with him over the 62cal barrel with a 600" ball and a .015" patch. In a rifle it would work fine, might even be a little loose for best results. In a smooth bore with a tight weave patch , better get a hammer. In my 20ga. any patch thicker than ,010" is way too tight. In a rifle the patch displaces into the grooves but in a smoothbore it has no place to go. Smoothbores don't need a tight patch ,just tight enough to keep the ball on the powder.Mine shoot best with a patch - ball fit that can be started with my thumb, no short starter.

[waarp8nt]

Been shooting muzzleloader for many years too. Started shooting with the old man when he could still pick me up with one hand.

I will have to admit, I recently asked on this forum how to properly load and shoot a smoothbore. Up until 6 months ago I never owned one. One thing is for darn sure you wouldn't see me giving advise on something out of ignorance or theory. Sometimes I wonder if these new writers have ever actually shot black powder...

[ironjaw]

what does the bore mike at?

[sghart3578]

It's not just muzzleloaders. I have stopped reading the largest gun related forum in my home state of California because the reloading forum is over run with newly minted NRA "certified" reloading instructors that dish out the most inane and misguided information, based on their 4 months of experience.

I am new to muzzleloaders, having just purchased a used Thompson Center Hawken in .50 cal as my first front loader. But I have learned one thing in my 36 years of reloading metallic cartridges. Look to the old masters and read everything printed today with a healthy dose of skepticism. Maybe I get that from my Missouri parents, I don't know. But I bought a few old books on line and that is my source of info, along with this forum.

[Squeeze]

they get a free rifle for review, and its the best rifle ever made. The next model comes out and they dont recieve their freebee in a timely manner, suddenly that last model was covered on defects, flaws and indescrepencies. And come on, that big 50 shot test,... at 50 yards range?? I have roundball guns that will clover 50 shots at 50 yards. Take a manufacturer claimed 2-300yard moa gun and brag what it can do at 50? Ray Charles could see the holes in that cover...

[Boogieman]

what does the bore mike at?
.620 '" have 2 Caywood trade guns both load the same .
My 75cal Brown Bess takes a .010" patch with a .735 ball. In my 54cal rifles i can load a .535" ball with a .022 patch, deep grooves make a difference

[Maven]

"seems one in peculiar (sic) has such an ego that even he can not get the simplest facts right"


ironjaw, Would that person happen to have an article in the July - August '15 issue of "Muzzleloader" magazine? If so, he said he got better results with a smaller ball and tighter patch than the reverse.

[ironjaw]

not sure who that is,quit reading blather some time back,

[snoopy]

I haven't been shooting bp for years, pretty much a newbie. However, I'm pretty good at spotting BS, that old sayin. I got kicked off a local forum recently, because admin insisted that the only way to load bp revolvers was to smear copious amounts of LARD over the balls. It had to be LARD because thats the way Sam Colt meant for it to be! Never did get to ask him how they carried their LARD in the desert, but oh well.

[waksupi]

"seems one in peculiar (sic) has such an ego that even he can not get the simplest facts right"


ironjaw, Would that person happen to have an article in the July - August '15 issue of "Muzzleloader" magazine? If so, he said he got better results with a smaller ball and tighter patch than the reverse.


I'm pretty sure that isn't who he is referring to. I know who Ironjaw is, and think he has the guy's number pretty well.

[Maven]

"I'm pretty sure that isn't who he is referring to."

I'm glad to learn that MB isn't the person Ironjaw was referring to. I've watched a few of MB's videos, and read the article mentioned in an earlier post, and he seems like a nice, unassuming guy. In short, I'd be very disappointed if he turned out to be an egotistical blowhard.

[johnson1942]

as their are a lot of guitar and banjo pickers who are just living room pickers and they are better that the pro's their are a lot of amature not known shooters who are way better with knowledge and real shooting than the guys who write for magazines. i never read those magazines and do my own research and testing as most of you are doing. they have a inroad with the magazines and its a money thing and your not going to break into it. they protect their income. when and if i ever read some of those articles i find they provide a real time of fun laughting at them. as with the fishing shows, most are joyless fishing shows and not the kind of fishing you and i do. i remember one famous fishing tv expert was opely knocking the chippawa on leech lake for ntting walleyes so he couldnt catch giant ones. its their land, their resevation and they cant fish that beautiful lake so he can catch 10 pounders instead of 5 poundaers. never watched him again. may even move to that lake some day. the white tail up their are huge, and the bear hunting is very good. ask questions here on this web site and figure out what is real and what isnt and you will be better than the paid pro/s.

[John Taylor]

My first store bought muzzle loader was a 58 cal. huntsman. I asked the store owner what charge to use and he said 100 grains of 2 F, so that's what I used. After a few shots I thought I had made a mistake in buying the rifle because it was pure punishment to shoot it with the 460 grain Mini's. Even my older brother told me it kicked to much for him. After a while I found some info on the 58 and discovered the military load was 60 grains, what a difference. It's always a good idea to get several sources of info before diving into anything.
My 62 uses a .610 ball but then it's also rifled.

[BrassMagnet]

Many years ago, I gave up on reading Guns and Ammo. I have saved all of my gun magazines since 1970. I saw an article with an error. I had seen that error before! I dug up the previous issue with the same error in it. Then I followed as later issues had the identical letters reporting the error at the same interval. My memory may be fading because I quit reading them many years ago, but I seem to remember the same page numbers were used for the article and the subsequent letters. Only the advertising on those pages changed.

Unlike G&A, I like Handloader and Rifle. When they have an article on reloading, I can believe the author has actually used a RockChucker and knows what he is talking about!

I don't know every thing, but I do know enough to be terrified of magazine loading data unless it can also be found in a regular bound loading manual!

[irishtoo]

trying to figure out how to write this. i subscribe to 2 magazines, backwoods men and muzzleloader. my hobbies are hunting and shooting at the local range. i have built 5 flintlocks now and have taken deer with them. i read this and other forums. i read much more than i write. i take the information and adapt it to my own needs, experience and skill level. i stopped reading most outdoor magazines. at the time i was a unemployed steelworker with a wife and baby putting myself (and wife) thru school on the old gi bill. the reviews in those magazines were for items costing hundreds or thousands of dollars!!. not something most blue collar workers were ever going to buy. i hear or read things that i know are simply wrong or silly. unfortunately the world of outdoor sports, (hunting fishing camping etc) is filled with self styled "experts". my advise, when asked, is to read, listen, use common sense, and do what works for you. irishtoo

[dlbarr]

My interest in muzzle loaders, or any other style of firearm, is easily satisfied by forums like this and articles found for free online. I subscribed to ML mag for quite awhile but discontinued a couple years back mainly because I have no real interest in "living history", which is what the majority of that periodical had become (IMO). It's a fine magazine and the fact that new ownership put some money into producing a color magazine rather than just B&W, makes it even better. But it just seemed to have less & less of what I was looking for which was hunting & shooting features.

The only magazine I subscribe to now is the Single Shot Exchange. It has useful articles of interest to me. To each his own...