• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades
  • Friends, our 2nd Amendment rights are always under attack and the NRA has been a constant for decades in helping fight that fight.

    We have partnered with the NRA to offer you a discount on membership and Muzzleloading Forum gets a small percentage too of each membership, so you are supporting both the NRA and us.

    Use this link to sign up please; https://membership.nra.org/recruiters/join/XR045103

Search results

the hawken shop
shop deals on amazon
Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
  1. M

    Frizzen Hardening

    I apparently am the one as this has worked on at least 30 rifles. I am quickly beginning to remember why I have been registered here since 04 and quit posting 5 years ago. I'll leave it to you omnipotent ones. I clearly don't know anything so I'll leave this to the God's such as yourself. I will...
  2. M

    Frizzen Hardening

    No, I am referring to the spring. I took this from an article in Muzzleoader magazine back in the 80's and have used it on all my flinters. It does in my experience make the springs "softer" it specifically stated that if it went to blue to reheat and quench and start over. I have the springs on...
  3. M

    Frizzen hardening

    I wouldn't call it exactly an excersise in futility. For whatever reason it did actually work. The goal was to take a non sparking frizzen and make it spark which he did so whatever processes were going on he reached the desired end result and rather quickly. :wink:
  4. M

    Frizzen Hardening

    You may have too stiff of a frizzen spring. Especially if it's chewing up flints and frizzen face. I reheat all my frizzen springs. Heat to red then quench and then re-polish the spring and gently heat until it becomes a "straw" color. It will still spring but wont be as stiff. You can take your...
  5. M

    Frizzen hardening

    This may sound odd but I've seen it work. I watched Cotton Volrath harden a frizzen once by heating up the frizzen face with an oxy acetylene torch until it was cherry red then turned the oxygen off and just let the black sooty acetylene build up on the frizzen face. He turned it off after a...
  6. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    Thanks. I kind of chickened out on my original 31 inch plan though. It's a pretty normal 36-1/4 inch barrel now. Not even what you could consider carbine length. I like it a lot better though. And I really should practice my sight soldering skills on that barrel section. :wink:
  7. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    Mine was a gift so It came with the 40 or 41 inch barrel, whatever it had. I would have bought the shorter one had I purchased it myself but you don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I also wanted a different look. I left the wood all the way to the muzzle and want it to look kind like a trade...
  8. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    That is Sweet! I have to admit I compromised this morning. I took mine down to 36 inches. It may go to 34 I haven't decided yet but the deed is done. I'll play taps and bury the sawed off section in my yard with full military honors for future archeologists to find like on Rogers Island.
  9. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    LMAO!!!! :rotf:
  10. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    I don't believe its a transitional thing. I've been carrying 42 inch long rifles for about 30 years now. I am beginning to see why so many old original muskets have been cut down though. They are just handier. As far as value I see Bess trade guns every so often at rendezvous and online and...
  11. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    LOL! I have instructions to be buried with that particular gun actually. Seriously :) She will live quite comfortably off the rest of my collection :wink:
  12. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    Thanks Dan! You may have just given me that extra push I needed from my long winded post above :wink:
  13. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    Resale could be an issue if I was to sell it but I rarely sell anything I like, I have guns I have owned for 40 years. The wife bought this one for me and that alone prohibits any future sale :) I did run it by her this morning and she gave me an OK to modify it saying "it's your gun" I'm not...
  14. M

    Cookson fowler

    It sounds like you did what I do to virtually every gun I buy no matter who manufactures it. I don't have a single gun whether it be flint or cartridge that I have not modified to suit me. I refinish EVERYTHING. I have obsessive compulsive disorder over it or something. I have looked at the MVT...
  15. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    I seem to recall them findng sawed off barrel sections at Michilimacinac as well. And yes that big rectangular front sight does leave a little to be desired. I am also considering tuning up the lock springs, and polishing the sears, re-hardening the frizzen and installing a touch hole liner as...
  16. M

    Chopping down a Bess.

    I have a Pedersoli Bess. It's a little awkward in the dense pacific northwest forest that I hunt in. I'm considering chopping the barrel off just behind the first "trumpet shaped" ramrod pipe which would reduce the barrel 10-1/2 inches and make the barrel 31-1/2 inches overall. Would I lose...
  17. M

    Lots of good lead

    That's funny! I bought a Pedersoli Sharps and was trying to figure out how to hide it when the idea struck me to just hide it in plain sight. I put it on the wall with a bunch of other guns in the living room and it sat there for 2 weeks. One evening while watching a movie wife suddenly focuses...
  18. M

    Quite possibly the worst movie of all time

    I'm sure he's a fine actor. What bothered me was Jesse was 35 in 1882 when the movie takes place and Frank would have been only 39 years old, Not in his 60's. I still watch this movie for the atmosphere occasionally but I am a stickler for historical accuracy at times. Sometimes you just gotta...
  19. M

    Quite possibly the worst movie of all time

    I didn't think that movie was the worst although it certainly wasn't the best. The actor who playes Jesse's brother looks to be about 60 and Jesse's real brother was only around 2-3 years older than he was. Dick Liddel carrying a brass framed Navy Colt replica way into the 1880's? Not happening...
  20. M

    Quite possibly the worst movie of all time

    That was my biggest problem with that movie besides my personal opinion of Kevin Costner as an over rated actor. Dances with Wolves was a total fairy tale. The fur brigades had had been in the mountains since the 1820's and Hudson's Bay had trading posts in Montana and the Pacific Northwest as...
Back
Top