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Irene

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gizamo

45 Cal.
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A little sideways tale, about the gun.


I picked her up a while back. She is a early Dixie GunWorks .32 cal flintlock in a Tennessee Mountain gun. Made simple, iron mounted...


Turns out she is Iron Willed, too. Never have I had such trouble dialing in a rocklock. On a bench she did fine. Offhand a totally different POI. Regulate different ffg or fffg....different POI. Change the patch and another POI. each time I got closer off the bench something changed. At the end of my last shooting session, a week ago, I made some adjustments and then snapped a ramrod loading her. She bit me...


I drove home, seated the ball with a range rod.....and fired it it into a stump. I was mad as the gun had fought with me all day. Last I knew it was 2" low and 1 1/2" left at 25 yards. She didn't deserve it, but after a thorough scrubbing, I oiled the stock and buffed her out, before putting her away. I truly think she was Wildcat mad about never being shot for all those years.


That Sunday we were socked in by the Hurricane Irene. Monday was the day I started in with MRSA from a small wound. Ended up hospitalized, and could have lost my right leg.

Anyrate I was finally released and and told to go home and relax. Wife had me all propped up and made me promise to get some rest,...don't overdo it, don't go anywhere... So, dutifully I agreed. Sigh.

Then she went to work. :hmm:

She forgot about the backyard range. Grabbed my .32 limb bacon gun and blasted off six shots at 25 yards, fast as I could. Offhand.

Best Medicine in the World. :)



IMAG0624.jpg


Back to the easy chair for the rest of that day.....

But man, I was feeling better. :wink:

As the pics show, she purred like a kitten.




Gonna call her Irene.... Lots of pent up energy, this one.


IMAG0670.jpg


Yesterday...

6 for 6 offhand at a measured 105 yards :thumbsup:
 
Dang! msra is serious stuff. You take care of yourself.

Beauty rifle and beauty shootin'.

:hatsoff:
 
Its very rare for those pea shooters to remain that accurate out at 100 yards, whether using a rest or not. The small weight of the ball and poor B/C simply causes the ball to lose so much velocity over that distance, that any kind of breeze will open up the group a LOT!

As to why your gun doesn't shoot smaller groups at the shorter ranges where its the most useful, there can be dozens of reasons. Operator error is always a prime suspect, but you can test that out by having another good shooter load and shoot your gun, and see how well it works for him.

Remember that the stock HANGS from the barrel, it doesn't SUPPORT the barrel like modern gunstocks do. That means, you have to check the barrel HANGERS and the pins and pin holes to see if the maker left elongated holes in the hangers to allow for expansion and contraction of the wood during different seasons of the year.

The same goes for how well the tang and rear of the barrel are inletted into the stock.

The rest of the causes have to do with the lock itself, along with the trigger mechanism.

From the target you show I don't see where any problem comes from the loading components you are using, but it would be standard practice to run your best grouping load over a chronograph to see how consistent the Standard Deviation of Velocity for that load, compared to others. Sometimes a change in the powder charge of as little as 3-5 grains can dramatically tighten groups. I have seen the same dramatic changes by changing my patch lube, too.

Oh, if you simply record your hits as they are made, on a separate piece of paper or target, and number them, you can often learn about " Operator error" on your own. I changed both my cleaning and loading procedures using this method, before I had a chronograph, and greatly shrunk the size of my groups doing so. When I finally bought my chronograph, and fires some shots over it, I was delighted to see that my SDV was very low for that load of components.
 
MLs are at least as picky as suppository guns when it comes to loads and the way they are fired. A good analogy for life, when you think about it.
 
Operator Error, Huh?

Paul,

Go take any of your rifles and shoot a better 6 shot group at 25 yards in Three minutes ten seconds using a shot timer.

I will wait for you to post the results....
 
I don't do pictures, so take a breathe. :grin:

I am not saying that your fast group at 25 yds is bad. It should be better.

I personally see nothing safe, nor virtuous, in shooting that many balls in that short an amount of time at any distance. We can politely disagree about this, I am sure. :( :hmm:

In my hayday, when I was doing trick shots for my club, I shot much smaller groups than this, altho I never would have attempted to shoot my shots that fast. I had club members who shot .32 caliber rifles should could and did shoot one hole groups at 25 yds off-hand all the time. It was nothing to see them hit bottle caps shooting off-hand at 25 yds with their rifles. I was shooting a .45 then, and hitting the same caps. I once shot a 50 yard target, off-hand, on a Cold January 1, in front of witnesses that scored 47-2X, with the last shot called out which hit the 7 ring of a standard rifle target. The first four shots were all 10s, with the first two 10x's. The North wind picked up as I was shooting, so my shots were stringing to my right as I faced the target. I can assure you that those first 4 shots hit in a smaller group( about 1.5 inches, center to center) than what you shot with your .32 here at 25 yds.

Even adding the thrown 5th shot the entire group, at 50 yds., was less than 3 inches, center to center. Even if I wanted to shoot fast, it was too Blang COLD that day to try to do anything fast. Air temperature got up into the mid 20s, but the windchill was below zero. That thrown shot was operator error, and I knew I threw the shot just as soon as the sear released the tumbler.

Everything you do matters when you are off-hand shooting. Yes, operator error is the primary reason that groups open up at this short range. Sorry if that ruffles your feathers. :shocked2: :(
 
I would still like to know what load you were using to get that performance at 100 yds with a .32 ?
 
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