Cheating with the trade musket

[Nobade]

I want to use my Northstar West trade musket for deer this year, but try as I might I never could get consistent accuracy with it. Evidently a repeatable head position is beyond me. So I fitted it with a rear sight, and now I can hold a roughly three inch group at 50 yards off the bench. Much better, and I have confidence in using it for hunting now. 75 grains of homemade powder, ticking patch, and a .600" ball get it done. Also was having too many flash in the pan without ignition, and decided the pan was too shallow. So I deepened it about twice what it was and now it's dead reliable. I guess the heat was going over the touch hole instead of into it, it's much more fun now with both mods.

[jonp]

You deepend the pan but did you enlarge the hole at all?

[Nobade]

No, actually went the other way. The vent was .070" and I made a new one at .068". It is now coned inside and out, so that may be helping a bit also.

[Beerd]

How tall is that rear sight? Picture?
..

[Nobade]

How tall is that rear sight? Picture?
..

I don't have a way to post pictures with this computer, but it's about 1/4 inch tall. Not very big.
It's this one.
https://www.trackofthewolf.com/Categories/PartDetail.aspx/880/1/RS-DRU-1

[sghart3578]

If it helps you take a deer cleanly and ethically then it's not cheating.


Steve in N CA

[mazo kid]

A friend of mine will routinely hit a gallon jug (off hand) at 100 yards with his Trade Gun. IIRC, he used the tang screw slot as his rear sight.

[waksupi]

You shouldn't have needed to deepen the pan. It sounds like you may have been priming with too much powder. I've shot a lot of them, and never had ignition problems.

[bedbugbilly]

Nobade - one thing you might try when you are where you can bench shoot is to put an over the powder card on top of the powder and under your patched ball. My brother has a NW trade gun with a .620 36" barrel and I have a Fusil de Chasse with a 42 inch .620 bore. I have molds for both .600 and .610 RB and have used both sizes in my Fusiil. My brother did a lot of experimenting with his NW trade gun and he found that when he used an over the powder card in combination with patched ball, his groups tightened up - don't ask me why but it worked with his smoothbore. I tried the same thing with my Fusil and I found it helped as well.

My biggest problem with my Fusil as well as with y brother's NW trade gun was being able to get a consistent sight picture each time. I did find that by positioning the slot in the tang screw to be parallel with the barrel did give me a bit of something to use to line up with. I don't blame you for adding a rear sight as it has to be a great help I would think - and it makes you wonder how many smoothbore trade guns had a rear sight added at sometime in their life.

I mainly used the .600 ball in my Fusil for when I was just shooting for fun/plinking with it as it was fairly easy to load in my barrel - I used pillow ticking as well - and I didn't feel the need to run a wet patch down between shots. When I hunted, I used the .610 ball as it gave me a tighter fit to the bore - still loaded easily with a starter and I could get a second shot loaded if necessary without wet patching between shots. Of course each bore is different from barrel to barrel. Both my brother's barrel and mine are Colrain barres in 20 gauge but his bore seems to be a tad tighter than mine.

All fun though and good luck to you in using it in your hunt!

[Maven]

Nobade, Smoothbores can be deadly accurate even without a rear sight, which I don't consider cheating. Here's a recent set of targets fired @ 50 yd.from my GRF 20ga. trade gun, using a patched RB, but varying powder charges. Btw, my gun has no rear sight and I've come to prefer it. Here's the link (scroll down to Maven):https://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=66916.0

[Nobade]

You shouldn't have needed to deepen the pan. It sounds like you may have been priming with too much powder. I've shot a lot of them, and never had ignition problems.

I really tried to make it work for about a year but most times I'd have about 50% flash in the pan. The vent hole is in the right place, cut by the line of the top of the pan, but the pan was so shallow that it was very close to the vent on that end. Deepening it made a huge difference, last time out yesterday I never had a failure to fire. I don't know if this lock was out of spec or what but I'm happy it works now. And it doesn't take much priming powder, just a little on the bottom.

[Hanshi]

Years ago when I ordered my .62 flint smoothbore I ordered it with a rear sight. I also get excellent 50 yd accuracy with patched ball. The bore is a bit tight and a .600" ball is the largest that will seat reasonably using a patch. It works great with shot putting the patterns center about 2" lower than the ball. And there's no cheat to it, just hitting what you shoot at.
https://i.ibb.co/Cn0phyc/DSC00453.jpg
https://i.ibb.co/jZZCMXN/PICT0586-2.jpg

[hc18flyer]

My best Whitetail buck came with my fusil @ 90 yards, but we shot every single weekend before, getting ready for that hunt. I wouldn't have taken the shot, without a solid rest! Been a long time ago, still smile when I look over at those antlers! It is very satisfying to get one with a smoothie, rear sight or not! GOOD LUCK!
PS- I need to get it back out and let my Grandson learn some 'flinter lessons'!