Loading anxiety.

C6, Smokestack is new to traditional muzzle loading and he may not know what M. A. P. is. For the benefit of clarity MAP is a mixture of equal parts of Murphy's Oil Soap, Rubbing Alcohol and Hydrogen Peroxide. Its an effective cleaner that is sometimes used as a patch lubricant or as the dampening agent for wiping between shots. For cleaning though, all one needs is water with a few drops of a degreasing dish soap (Dawn if you need a brand name).

Smokestack, read through all 94 pages of Dutch Schoultz's Black Powder Rifle Accuracy System (http://blackpowderrifleaccuracy.com/) and most of your worries about shooting traditional black powder muzzle loading rifles will be laid to rest.

Grenadier1758 said:

C6, Smokestack is new to traditional muzzle loading and he may not know what M. A. P. is.

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Can't explain everything in one post.

Swabbing! The answer to the question not asked!
He'll be back panicking about misfires next!
Why make it complicated?
How many have used Shoultz's methods and had issues?
Why is it so complicated?
Did the pioneers and mountain men fuss so?
Why pretend you are in battle? Your not!
No one is shooting at you! Go find a war and take your muzzleloader with you if you want the full experience, why, you'll soon loose that swabbing apparatus .
Smoke stack.....just shoot the bloody thing and employ common sense my friend. You can always have a wee fire extinguisher with you

I spit patch between every shot with all my muzzle loaders and frankly never gave a thought to a powder flash while pouring it in. Never heard of it before, never thought of it. Spit patching is just part of my loading regimen. I've been shooting muzzle loaders off and on since the late 80's.

Grenadier1758 said:

C6, Smokestack is new to traditional muzzle loading and he may not know what M. A. P. is. For the benefit of clarity MAP is a mixture of equal parts of Murphy's Oil Soap, Rubbing Alcohol and Hydrogen Peroxide. Its an effective cleaner that is sometimes used as a patch lubricant or as the dampening agent for wiping between shots. For cleaning though, all one needs is water with a few drops of a degreasing dish soap (Dawn if you need a brand name).

Smokestack, read through all 94 pages of Dutch Schoultz's Black Powder Rifle Accuracy System (http://blackpowderrifleaccuracy.com/) and most of your worries about shooting traditional black powder muzzle loading rifles will be laid to rest.

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OP, don’t feel like you need to concoct any of these poisonous and expensive recipes to have success. One’s own spit will work every bit as well as a patch lube and warm water will work every bit as well for cleaning. Lots of guys here “swear by” a million and one recipes and it seem the more exotic or complicated, the better.

Keeping it simple is a great step towards enjoying the hobby and not worrying to much about every little thing. Believe me, I’m guilty of that as much as anyone but am learning every day their is much beauty in simplicity and keeping things streamlined.

Smokestack said:

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I've been making sure to keep the rifle pointed at a safe direction, fingers clear, all that kind of stuff. Just worried about getting a faceful of smoke and more. Being a centerfire shooter for most of my life, it's a bit of foreign territory to get used to having the business end of a firearm within my extremities, haha. It's something I should be able to overcome, just needed some input to make sure there isn't some particular step that I may be missing.

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I’m assuming you wear safety glasses? Then, as you appear to be doing everything else right. Just concentrate on what you are doing, and stick to the drill.

Britsmoothy said:

Swabbing! The answer to the question not asked!
He'll be back panicking about misfires next!
Why make it complicated?
How many have used Shoultz's methods and had issues?
Why is it so complicated?
Did the pioneers and mountain men fuss so?
Why pretend you are in battle? Your not!
No one is shooting at you! Go find a war and take your muzzleloader with you if you want the full experience, why, you'll soon loose that swabbing apparatus .
Smoke stack.....just shoot the bloody thing and employ common sense my friend. You can always have a wee fire extinguisher with you

Click to expand...

Bravo!

Smokestack said:

Feel free to point and laugh here, but I'm hoping to get some input regarding an issue I have with shooting muzzleloaders.

I've got a bad habit of expecting the worst with things, and i've heard a horror story too many of muskets going off from an ember in the chamber while loading. I usually space my shots out five or so minutes apart but sometimes I wonder if I'm just taking it a little too far.

I know a lot of you folks here have been shooting the things for years without issue, I'm curious as to what your methods are as to load and shoot your muzzleloaders safely.

Click to expand...

You'd have a coronary on our line in a competition. All of our team matches are speed shoots on the line with no wiping between shots and we load on the firing line but... we shoot minies. They're a completely different animal from PRB

The minie was designed to avoid the entire wiping thing and to increase a rate of fire. If you keep a spent cap on the gun, no oxygen can be present to support an ember. If you remove the cap, and run a patch into the bore, you can not only create an ember, you can also introduce the possibility of creating one. The onrush of fresh air can create an ember from a hot spot. Of course mechanical condition and maintenance all play a part.

In my 40+ years of shooting muzzleloaders and thousands of rounds both blank and live, I've had just two cookoffs. One in a reenactment with a borrowed musket. Come to find out, it hadn't been cleaned internally in a long time. The other was during a testing session where the cap WAS removed and a new charge introduced on an unfamiliar gun.

Just in case you think I'm off base with leaving the cap on the nipple, look at the procedure for loading a cannon. There is a thing called a thumbstall that must be kept on the vent to close the vent during the entire loading process until the point of "prick and prime". The principle applies to cannon and muskets.

There are always horror stories both in muzzleloading and in the other types of guns. Life is always a balancing act of risks. Choose your comfort level and get on with living.

Britsmoothy said:

Swabbing! The answer to the question not asked!
He'll be back panicking about misfires next!

Click to expand...

Swabbing cured my misfires.
I guess anything done incorrectly will lead to difficulties. (learned that one the hard way).
Approach fear armed with knowledge and respect, and you will slay it every time.

SDSmlf said:

Have been around muzzleloaders since I was a kid in the mid to late 1960s, and honestly have never seen one cook off while loading, but I have seen a lot of other dangerous and silly things. As our British friend suggested, don’t load from your horn or powder flask, plus don’t put your face directly over the bore as you load.

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Many folks in the 18th and19th centuries had powder’tatoos’ on hands and face from this issue. We probably won’t because we probably won’t find ourselves staring at the raged, bloody end of our lives as we reload as they did. As said before, never load from the flask, tip the tube away, keep pinkies away from muzzle, it’ll never happen.

dave951 said:

If you keep a spent cap on the gun, no oxygen can be present to support an ember. If you remove the cap, and run a patch into the bore, you can not only create an ember, you can also introduce the possibility of creating one. The onrush of fresh air can create an ember from a hot spot. Of course mechanical condition and maintenance all play a part.

Click to expand...

I disagree with that line of thinking. An ember can exist in a low oxygen environment, the cap is irrelevant because the muzzle is wide open, and air rushes into the barrel after the ball exits. Gunpowder contains its own oxidising agent (saltpetre). ... Oxygen is NOT required for the combustion of gunpowder.

An ember is formed when a fire has only partially burnt a piece of fuel, and there is still usable chemical energy in that piece of fuel. This happens because the usable chemical energy is so deep into the center that air (specifically oxygen) does not reach it, therefore not causing combustion (carbon-based fuel + O2 → CO2 + H2O + C + other chemicals involved). It continues to stay hot and does not lose its thermal energy quickly because combustion is still happening at a low level.

Now, I'm not overly concerned about an ember, because high quality modern powder burns very well and I start with a freshly cleaned barrel. I also blow down the barrel after the shot and I swab for cleaning, accuracy and ease of loading. When speed shooting I use a looser projectile to make loading easier and I always make sure I never place my head, body, or whole hand over the muzzle, only the finger tips.

Now if I was shooting some crudely manufactured, improperly stored, damp or really old powder, or if I lived in the 18th or 19th centuries, or if I didn't clean my gun before shooting, then I would worry about the possibility of an ember.

Carbon 6 said:

Swabbing cured my misfires.
I guess anything done incorrectly will lead to difficulties. (learned that one the hard way).
Approach fear armed with knowledge and respect, and you will slay it every time.

Click to expand...

Or did it treat the symptom but not the cause?
Considering most don't have a miss fire from not swabbing you may need to look elsewhere.... possibly.

In forty years of shooting muzzleloaders, I have shot thousands of rounds. Per year. Only once, when shooting in a rapid fire musket match in the N-SSA, on my fifteenth shot on a hot summer day, I had a cook-off. As I dumped the next charge from my plastic tube, smoke appeared and then a loud POP. I singed the middle of my palm. No real injury that I could not duplicate with a hot iron skillet on a camp fire. I actually had a worse burn from handling the barrel during that competition, with a blister on my thumb from contacting the barrel between loads.

Now that I shoot flintlocks most of the time, I have never seen anyone load/shoot/load fast enough to generate a cook-off. I also mostly shoot matches, so I damp swab/dry swab between all shots to keep the barrel condition consistent. No danger of any sparks there.

Be calm, watch your front sight, and forget about the embers.

ADK Bigfoot

It is a matter of experience. I was sixteen when I got my first gun and my instructions was what the gun store told me to do with a can of powder and a measure and precut patches. The seller was about 60 and used ml as a kid. He joked that he couldn’t understand why any body bought these guns. He was so happy to get rid of his when he could afford it.
But he did give me solid instructions.
I was excited an scared at the same time. It took a few outings before I became comfortable. And my mom was nervous about it some time longer.
Of course after the first shot I was hooked.
It helps a lot if a new shooter can find a club or a mentor.
You tube has some good sites, but also some sucky ones. I would recommend any new shooter to go to Duelist 54 or Stillwater Woodcraft sites on good loading and shooting info.
Better an over cautious new shooter then a guy who is sloppy.

From Thomas Page, 1767, in The Art of Shooting Flying:

"Aimwell: ...should a short gun go off by accident whilst you are loading it, you are more exposed to danger, as you will more naturally lean over the muzzle; which, however, in short or longer guns ought always to be avoided. What has happened once may happen again. A gentlemen, whom I knew very well, was out by himself ashooting, and just as he had loaded his gun (though he knew of no defect in the lock, ‘till it was afterward examined) it went off, and scalped him so as to leave the forehead bare to the skull. We may suppose he laid for some time senseless. As soon as he recovered a little, he saw his hat shot to pieces, and himself bloody: perceiving what had happened, he tied a handkerchief about his head and walk’d home, and is now perfectly recovered.
Friendly: A narrow escape with life indeed! and I am greatly obliged for this caution. Indeed the frequent misfortunes which happen from guns, shew we cannot be too careful in the use of them: and I must agree with you, that we are not so much exposed to such an accident as this from a long gun as from a short one."

Spence

Britsmoothy said:

Or did it treat the symptom but not the cause?
Considering most don't have a miss fire from not swabbing you may need to look elsewhere.... possibly.

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It was a secondary benefit, not a primary one.
I also knew the cause(s), but swabbing for me offered additional benefits.
I'm not suggesting that you should take up swabbing.
Swabbing works very well for me and what I want to accomplish, it also eliminates any possibility of embers.
That is all.

Carbon 6 said:

I disagree with that line of thinking. An ember can exist in a low oxygen environment, the cap is irrelevant because the muzzle is wide open, and air rushes into the barrel after the ball exits. Gunpowder contains its own oxidising agent (saltpetre). ... Oxygen is NOT required for the combustion of gunpowder.

An ember is formed when a fire has only partially burnt a piece of fuel, and there is still usable chemical energy in that piece of fuel. This happens because the usable chemical energy is so deep into the center that air (specifically oxygen) does not reach it, therefore not causing combustion (carbon-based fuel + O2 → CO2 + H2O + C + other chemicals involved). It continues to stay hot and does not lose its thermal energy quickly because combustion is still happening at a low level.

Now, I'm not overly concerned about an ember, because high quality modern powder burns very well and I start with a freshly cleaned barrel. I also blow down the barrel after the shot and I swab for cleaning, accuracy and ease of loading. When speed shooting I use a looser projectile to make loading easier and I always make sure I never place my head, body, or whole hand over the muzzle, only the finger tips.

Now if I was shooting some crudely manufactured, improperly stored, damp or really old powder, or if I lived in the 18th or 19th centuries, or if I didn't clean my gun before shooting, then I would worry about the possibility of an ember.

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Uhmm ok, please explain the use of a thumbstall and why soldiers were drilled to leave the cap on the musket when reloading minies. Maybe they knew something then we've almost forgotten?

Britsmoothy said:

Or did it treat the symptom but not the cause?
Considering most don't have a miss fire from not swabbing you may need to look elsewhere.... possibly.

Click to expand...

This is true. A gun should not be producing a misfire simply by not enswabbing it between shots.

dave951 said:

Uhmm ok, please explain the use of a thumbstall and why soldiers were drilled to leave the cap on the musket when reloading minies. Maybe they knew something then we've almost forgotten?

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I’m put in mind of how to treat a rattlesnake bite. Drink a lot of whisky, rub a chaw of wet tobacco over the site, even cut the site and suck out the poison.
Infact I remember snakebite kits sold with a scalpel and little suction cups.
Most of the time a snake won’t inject enough poison to kill.
Whisky, tobacco juice and sucking on the site doesn't help. But, a person bit who tries one of the cures and survived may swear by it.
In near fifty years I’ve never had a charge cook off.
Should you leave a cap on and not get a cook off it proves that it works... right?
I blow down a barrel. I’ve never blown my head off
A four foot barrel is more accurate then a two and a half foot, a bell on your blunderbuss spreads shot faster, licking the front sight makes it shoot more accurate, a coffin nail or Christian symbol on your gun will stop it from being hexed ( I have a French silver cross on my TFC and it’s never been hexed) should your gun get hexed you can wash it off in clear flowing water by the light of a full pain.
Load your gun with a cap on, or a feather in your touch hole and you don’t get a cook off that proves it works. Right?

After some 55 years of muzzleloading I have yet to either see or experience a "cook off" while reloading (knock on wood). I blow down the bore to check if the vent is clear and to soften the fouling. I'm a slowpoke by nature and have never tried to speed load. The use of powder measures for loading and priming are musts.