EINE KLEINE SCHWARZPULVER SCHMUTS

A PERSON NMED Brian who has no last name wrote me the he cannot find anything in my Book regarding the practice of preforming the barrel at the beginning of a day's shooting or hunting.
I'm now too blind to read my material to see if he is correct.
If I didn't include it it might be because I cannot explain it/
I had noticed that my first shot of the day out of a clean barrel consistently landed an inch or two out of the point of aim but that all following shots were in the expected tight group, dead center.
The only difference between that first shot and the rest ws that it was the only one out of a shiner clean barrel and the following shots had a quick wipe before each was loaded.

Accordingly I eliminated that first clean barrel shot by dropping a half charge down the tube a firing it, ball and patches, down range which left the residue of the burned powder which I then gave a quick wipe and proceeded to my fir serious load.
The result was that all of the 5 following shots landed pretty much on the same spot with no misbehaving first real shot/

This is something that happened with my two rifles but I have no idea if that is a more universal effect. That might be why I may not have mentioned it.

This practice caused some comment and raised eyebrows at the range. I just said my rifles required a snack before serious work.
Just to be sure. I believe I will add the above to my book.

Dutch Schoultz

In my years of match shooting, the better shooters almost universally fired a first shot into the back stop at the beginning of the day.

Almost all the target shooters I know will fire a fouling shot before the match.

A little black powder dirt.

Most pistol shooters will shoot a practice target first.

RATS! I THOUGHT THAT WAS MY DISCOVERY.
I THOUGHT I HAD DISCOVERED FOLLOW THROUGH. BUT HERE AGAIN I LEANED THAT GOOD MARKSMEN HAD BEEN DOING IT FOR YEARS.

I DO BELIEVE THAT MY USING ONLY COMPRESSED MEASUREMENT OF PATCH CLOTH WAS MINE
MY SUGGESTION ABOUT PREFOULING THE BARREL WAS HIGHLY CITICIZED AS ANOTHER OF MY STUPID IDEAS.

DUTCH

zimmerstutzen said:

In my years of match shooting, the better shooters almost universally fired a first shot into the back stop at the beginning of the day.

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It just seems to me that the wee bit of BP residue from the fouling shot performs a purpose that lets all the following shots perform as hoped/

Your disassembling your rifle for cleaning is quite impressive.
I am sure my very quick at the end of the day at the range cleaning method makes your hair stand on end. but it served me well for a number of years and the barrels cleaned up sweet and clear with no rest or pitting.

If you'll remember, when I first brought the idea of the fouling shot I received tons of polite abuse about it. but now I see most are doing and probably don't know why.
I had a sudden squirt or orders I can't explain. As many in the first two days as almost as much as in all of June./
I keep trying to send these people to the Forum membership. Particularly those from Europe.

Dutch

Zonie said:

Dutch:
All of my muzzleloading rifles first shot's are a little off the point of aim. After that first shot has been made, the rest of the shots go where I want them.

I usually disassemble my guns when I clean them and with this in mind I figure that first shot moves the barrel back to the place it was when I sighted the guns in.

I guess if this "wild shot" happens to folks who don't take their rifles apart to clean them, then it might be due to the nice clean barrel like you suggest.

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[Jake.
About 30 years ago I got an order from some German for my System.

A month or so later I learned that the German subscriber was actually the Hege Company, the people in Germany who make the gorgeous pistols and rifles of great price. They wrote me that they tested my findings in their Laboratories and while they found it worked exactly right, they didn't believe I would ever get anyone in the general pubic to believe it.

I recently had a gentleman of. i think. Arizona who has been my stellar student, getting consistent one hole drops at 50 yards with several rifles. His only deviation was to use castor oil and alcohol instead of Ballistic and water in his dy patch preparation.

Excuse the typos of a relatively blind peson
Dutch


QUOTE="Kansas Jake, post: 1577880, member: 28777"]A little black powder dirt.[/QUOTE]

Dutch

I studied German in high school and college, but it has been so many years ago and used so little I have to look up words most of the time. I wish I would of had more opportunity to keep up on it. I think studying a foreign language is very helpful to one in developing a broader understanding of all kinds of things. Most interesting is that most languages have words which are not easily translated into another language.

MEINE MUTTER, A SECOND GENERATION American was raised speaking only German, yet at 18 taught in the one room school house in or near a small town in Wisconsin.
My grandmother whose main hobby in life was raising hell with my mother did all he vicious damage in the German language,
I never learned any germany in school but picked up phases here and there.
I got the schwarzpulver from the letter from the Hege ML Germn manufacturers,















i tried recently to lear some German via the internet program produced by the Carnegie Mellon University were the spelled out German words were immediately pronounced by a male or female voice.
Unfortunately all the male pronunciations sounded pretty much the same and that was a sound close to ruff. Either It was wrong or my hearing isausgespielt/

The German word that does not easily translate is
schadenfreude
which refers to the joy of seeing someone else suffer. I suppose it's not odd that the Germans would need such a word.

Dutch

Kansas Jake said:

Dutch

I studied German in high school and college, but it has been so many years ago and used so little I have to look up words most of the time. I wish I would of had more opportunity to keep up on it. I think studying a foreign language is very helpful to one in developing a broader understanding of all kinds of things. Most interesting is that most languages have words which are not easily translated into another language.

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WHEN I WENT OUT TO A LOCAL RANGE BACK IN THE '70\S THERE was NO ONE shooting muzzle loaders. Mostly .22's handsome .30 center fires..
I had no idea of what I was about and no instructions or advice although I had read everything I could find on the subject including The Muzzleloading Caplock Rifle which was very interesting but a bit weak on how together accuracy out of my .45 Hawken style Kit built rifle.
being ignorant of just about everything, I fired shot after shot with the resulting big circular groups, Although not really a group. It was more of a congregation.
I did the hot soapy water cleaning method and that was about it.
Then one day a fellow showed up in the costume of Daniel Boone with the wonder of all wonders' flintlock long rifle. He was getting rather consistent tight groups shooting off hand.

This told me for the first time what these ML's were capable of doing and I began to study the whole procedure bit by bit.
Applying logic to the process I figured that the reason it became progressively more difficult to load shot after shot that the effective size of the bore was getting progressively smaller in size as the residue
baked on. layer after layer.
My next discovery was that the purpose of the shooting patch was to create a seal, like a piston ring. to keep all the power behind the patched ball and not partially blasting by the projectile.
The big surprise to me was learning that there was such a thing as TOO SLICK a patch lube which sent the patched ball a good distance down range before the powder had done its thing.
On and on I discovered things on my own. till finallyI was getting half inch groups. bench rest of course. consistently. Shot after shot. Day after day.
I was still getting no advice from anyone. I independently discovered the value of FOLLOW THROUGH while coaching other non ML riflemen and the art of preforming your barrel at the beginning of a day's shooting.
When you get such accuracy, the whole sport become a bit boring so at that point I began to coach the few Muzzle loaders who began to appear at that range and have always enjoyed converting someone's misbehaving rifle into an accurate wonder..I was surprised to learn that follow through and pre fouling were time honored practices long before I came up with them.
Now my vision is such that I can no longer do any shooting and my days at the range and the wonderful odor of black powder smoke is gone from me forever.
I still have the vicarious feeling of joy when subscribers write me to exclaim over the progress they are making
It's a great sport and I hate to see all the efforts being made to end it.

Dutch Schoultz

Dr5x said:

A PERSON NMED Brian who has no last name wrote me the he cannot find anything in my Book regarding the practice of preforming the barrel at the beginning of a day's shooting or hunting.
I'm now too blind to read my material to see if he is correct.
If I didn't include it it might be because I cannot explain it/
I had noticed that my first shot of the day out of a clean barrel consistently landed an inch or two out of the point of aim but that all following shots were in the expected tight group, dead center.
The only difference between that first shot and the rest ws that it was the only one out of a shiner clean barrel and the following shots had a quick wipe before each was loaded.

Accordingly I eliminated that first clean barrel shot by dropping a half charge down the tube a firing it, ball and patches, down range which left the residue of the burned powder which I then gave a quick wipe and proceeded to my fir serious load.
The result was that all of the 5 following shots landed pretty much on the same spot with no misbehaving first real shot/

This is something that happened with my two rifles but I have no idea if that is a more universal effect. That might be why I may not have mentioned it.

This practice caused some comment and raised eyebrows at the range. I just said my rifles required a snack before serious work.
Just to be sure. I believe I will add the above to my book.

Dutch Schoultz

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