Forgive me Father...

For I have sinned..

Thou shalt keepeth thy brain engaged when handling firearms!

Amen!

A ball thou startest shalt thou unto the powder
rammeth!

Amen!

oops.... :shocked2:

I was talking to a friend and got distracted and
"Fblooof!" Well that sounded funny! I short started but neglected to ram the ball home!! The barrel was fouled horribly. I got lucky. No ring, and once I swabbed, ol' Mortimer shot to the usual tack driving point of aim. "Whew!"

What's bugging me was that I was careless.

Since I was a little kid I've been taught to focus on what I'm doing when handling a weapon.
If that had been a 120 grain hunting charge instead of a 55 grain target load.. :shocked2: :shocked2:

It might do us all a good turn to think about
the degree of honest concentration and safety conciousness our hobby requires of us.

Thank you for the safety reminder, John - it's always a good refresher course in muzzleloader safety to hear the truth that "stuff" does happen - especially good to hear about it when no one was hurt - very glad you weren't!

:v All right my son make a good act of contrition and for your penance say 6- Our Fathers and 6-Hail Marys. Go in peace to serve the Lord. :shocked2:

yep...

The best rule I can think of is:

No talking during loading. :nono:

If I'm interupted I'll stop and:

Check to see if I put in powder

Started the Ball

Rammed it home.

Returned rammer to stock

These 4 things have save my A** more than once on the range when interupted over the last few years.

(They are the reasons I haven't dry balled in years.. or only short started, or shot my ramrod down range. :redface: )

I'm not admiting to anything that predates my adopting of these personal rules... :redface:

:winking:

I have learned to leave the short starter in the barrel till I drive the ball down with the range rod. and I leave the range rod in the barrel till I get ready to shoot. My range rod is marked so I know if all in the gun. ( Powder and ball )

I do this because I am shooting the bull most of the time with the other men and it easy to forget.
be safe and good shooting. :yakyak:

I don't use a short starter. I match my ball to patch so I don't need one. Sure, I probably give up a tiny bit of accuracy by doing that but the less steps I have to go thru to load the better.

Davy, don't be so hard on yerself, It's not if yer gonna dryball, it's when are ya going to dryball. The only people on this forum the can say they haven't done it, haven't shot enough yet, or are liars. Bill

You don't even have to be shooting to dry ball. The other week I had bought some balls that were .005 over the size I had been using and wanted to see how they fit with some strips of patching I had been using..I used a strip of patching and since my rifle barrel is coned I used my short starter to get the ball and patch engaged in the rifling..it didn't seem to tight a fit, until I tried to pull it out. Uh huh, the partching tore right at the muzzle. No choice but to drive the ball down to the breech and pull it. Since then I have bought one of those CO2 ball extractors. Just in case...

Forgive me Father...

Click to expand...

I ain't your Fath . . . Wait a minute. Is your Mom a blonde named "Gwen".

Nothing like that feeling you get when you realize you just committed a disasterous act; and then realize you survived it unscathed. Like when you hear a "BANG" and see the chuck key that was chained to the drill press so no one would steal it is sticking out of the shop wall instead of your forehead after you pressed the "ON" button with the key still in the chuck. I did that once.

We call them negligent discharges. We are all in one of two catagories; them that will or them that have. I have. I missed that waterheater though. :grin:

Hi Guys,

I have seen a couple of mishaps with matchlock guns. Nobody was injured. The mishaps occured when the shooter had just opened the lid of the flashpan and was taking aim. A spark came off the match and ignited the priming charge. :redface: It was rather disconcerning to hear the ball crashing through the limbs of the trees behind the target berm. One has to be alert at all times and not preoccupied or distracted. :nono:

Hey!

If you have been dryballing you had better see a urologist :rotf: :rotf:

Here's what I do to keep from dryballing;
I have a funnel type powder measure. After pouring the powder down the barrel, I LEAVE the measure on the muzzle and remove it only as I'm inserting the patch and ball.

After short starting the ball. I LEAVE the short starter in there, till I'm ready to use my range rod. The big black handle on my range rod blocks my view of the front sight, preventing me from shooting it down range!

This method has worked perfectly for me the last 6 years. NO MISTAKES... Don't ask me how the first 2 years before that time went... :redface:

I also short start the other day, I pushed the conical in with the short starter, got distracted by my kid and did not push it down to the powder, hit the ground about 10m before the target. :shocked2: I also double load the other dayin my .50 Ivestarm ,75g FFFG with 350g conical then with 60g FFFG with PRB. :redface: No that was a kicker to the shoulder and very embarrasing!

Pasquenel said:

:v All right my son make a good act of contrition and for your penance say 6- Our Fathers and 6-Hail Marys. Go in peace to serve the Lord. :shocked2:

Click to expand...

Don't feel too bad. I had a friend loaded the ramrod first... then he couldn't load anything else till he got it out. He used a ball to pull it out, so everything went well.

For Penance he had to do 2 Our Father's and 3 Bloody Marys.

Gunsmiths are not exempt from having problems that could be hurtfull. I had a little 25 cal. auto come in once with a feeding problem. Not having any dummy rounds a live round was used to test feeding. After playing with it for quite a while and not getting it to feed it finaly picked up a round from the mag, but the hammer dropped also. The bullet went into the floor between my feet. The hammer never dropped before or after, just when it picked up a live round that one time. A wake-up call for me.

Let he without sin cast the first ball!!

We had our first club shoot of the year this weekend as the range safety officer lifted the burn ban. For the first time in over 25 years of shooting black powder rifles I managed to waste a perfectly sighted shot. I had the power in first, just forgot the ball. Recoil was very mild. The laughs of the other shooters were rather loud.

Our father,
which art in thimbles,
ramrod be thy name.
Seat us this ball
full distance till
it rests in the breech
over powder.
Lead us not in to short stroke,
but deliver us from danger
for thine is the pushing
and the tapping and the seating forever.

Amen