My first flinter is in!

Looks like a great blended primitive-season hunting rifle -- enjoy and be safe.

Your Traditions is in the same class as my Deerstalker. It's cheap, it's short & it has a rubber buttpad. People will point and laugh until they see how well it shoots.

If you didn't scrub out the bore before firing the first time, you're likely still gonna need to work on getting out all the baked-in preservative grease applied at the factory. Carb cleaner & plenty of patches are the keyto removing the brown residue.

My .54 cal. Lefty Flint Deerstalker shot well enough that I put the Lyman globe front sight & Lyman peep rear on it & use it to plink grapefruit at 100 yards. The open sights worked OK, but I get better explosions on grapefruit, frozen water balloons & frozen quart jugs of water when I hit them consistently dead center.

I started out using a tallow + beeswax lube for all my RB patches, but lately have switched over to a 1:5 castor oil:denatured alcohol mix. Soak the patches in the mix and allow the DA to evaporate. They load easily, fouling is minimized, and clean up is a snap. It's my go-to for all patches and also smoothbore fiber wads.

Ah, I ran some carb cleaner through but didn't have a jag at the time so the patches weren't pressed hard against the bore. I'll try that next.

I have to admit, the rifle seems to have thought put into it. The rear sight is adjustable, the lock has an adjustment screw in it, and the breech plug is separate from the tang. While I'd like to get away from the fibre optic sights just for appearences sake, they are great for someone hunting with them.

My next task is to figure out a good way to clean between shots. Without the heavy rod I would have been stuck with a ball halfway down the barrel.

I have a Deerstalker in 32. It is a fun little rifle.

Get a couple of rod blanks from Track of the Wolf. Either Ramin or Hickory will work well, especially for the shorter barrels. You can get brass ends threaded for either 8/32" or 10/32". I have several rods with one of each on each end, since I have jags & ball pullers & brushes with both threads. Always remember to cross pin the rod ends before use.

Make up some of the Castor Oil patch lube & you won't have to worry about swabbing for several shots.

Some folks use water, or alcohol, or even windex to swab between shots, but I've made up a little squeeze bottle with 1 part GoJo hand cleaner to 4 parts water, then a drop or 2 of liquid dishsoap.

I owned and hunted with a Traditions Deerhunter for more than 20 years and can verify that they are accurate, inexpensive and reliable. Mine was a percussion and it accounted for more deer than I can remember. They are good, solid and reliable rifles for the hunting fields.

I'm readying Eric Bye's "Flintlocks" and chuckled at the people who put the ball in before the powder. Who would be so stupid?

Out on the range today...

Interestingly, the Traditions Deerwhatever has a removable touch hole liner. I hadn't gotten the ball too far down the spout when I realized what was going on. So I pulled the lock, pulled the touch hole liner, and put about half a charge down backwards. It's now a breechloader, I suppose. Put things back together, set the ball the rest of the way, and shielded my head in case it got bad.

All body parts still intact I spent the rest of the drizzly cold day working on my loading routine. This is with a bench handy.

• Frizzen open, wipe pan
• Stand/place rifle
• Damp swab
• Dry Jag
• Load powder measure
• Set measure on top of ammo container
• Pour measure and leave in spout while I get the ball and patch
• Open measure and ensure it's empty
• leave open measure on top of ammo supply
• Load ball; short, long, ramrod
• Open vent hole access with pick
• Half full pan, tap, lean towards touch hole
• frizzen down

I had planned on seeing what the bench groups were at 30 yards. With the wet weather and the dry ball on round #3 I just worked on the processes. Eventually realized the adjustable sights on the old girl were shooting way left so I adjusted a little. Still, mostly focused on loading process.

Sounds like you done good with your dry ball.

Loading a small powder charge behind the ball and firing it has been used for over 200 years to solve the same problem.

New tactic. After pouring the powder down the spout, stick the powder measure upside down on top of the powder flask spout. Prevents a random spark from landing in the powder carrier. My loading practice assumes a bench right now.

I use a smaller brass powder flask and leave the plastic powder bottle on the sitting bench behind the shooting bench. Refills are easy, it's only about six feet.

leam said:

I'm readying Eric Bye's "Flintlocks" and chuckled at the people who put the ball in before the powder. Who would be so stupid?
...

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Me. I done it too. :metoo:

There are two kinds of flintlock shooters in the world - those who have dry-balled, and those who are going to dry-ball. Not a question of if, it's just a question of when. :haha:

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:
Dan

There are three kinds of flintlock shooters, to include those who probably didn't learn the first time...

twisted_1in66 said:

There are two kinds of flintlock shooters in the world - those who have dry-balled, and those who are going to dry-ball. Not a question of if, it's just a question of when. :haha:

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:
Dan

Click to expand...

Talking and loading gets me confused and invariably loads to a dry-ball or double stacked load. :nono: :redface:
Paul

After you find the charge that best suits your rifle. Seat the ball on top of the powder charge and then mark the ram rod at the end of the barrel. This way after you burn through 3 er 4 primes with no kaboom and ur buddy asked if you even have any powder in it you have a way to check. You better learn to laugh at yourself. Makes life easier. :grin:

flintshooters come in several catagories:

those who have yet to dry ball (called noobies).

those who have dryballed and will admit to having done so, albeit with some degree of embarrassment.

those who lie about it.

(I have not encountered any of the third group, but logic dictates that they are out there somewhere, although hopefully small in number)

And then there are a few of those intrepid souls who have actually sent the loading rod down range!
I've probably dry balled enough over the last fifty years to qualify for one rod shot though although I have not actually done so yet! :rotf:

twisted_1in66 said:

There are two kinds of flintlock shooters in the world - those who have dry-balled, and those who are going to dry-ball. Not a question of if, it's just a question of when. :haha:

Twisted_1in66 :thumbsup:
Dan

Click to expand...

Before last week I would have said not me :surrender:

I've ordered Dutch's training material and am reading some of his on-line stuff. The plan is to ring in the new year with a boom or ten.

How thick should the leather holding the flint be?

conventional wisdom holds that the leather should be as thin as will mold to the irregularities of the flint and still hold it secure in the jaws of the cock ... my own experience hold this out ... you don't want it so thin (of course) that the flint isn't supported and starts to slip around.

Right now I'm using what look to be manufactured flints. Unless rock comes in a true parallelogram. The leather I have seems thick, so I'll get something thinner.

I have a lot to learn this year.