Accuracy affected by dirty breech plug?

[Grenadier1758]

What the dirty breech will do is make the timing of ignition of the main charge inconsistent. When firing is inconsistent, holding the firearm on target is inconsistent and when things are inconsistent, then accuracy is gone. Good follow through can mitigate the timing issues. Understanding the construction of your rifle and understanding of the procedures to keep your rifle shooting consistently make the time on the range far more enjoyable.

I have shot Reenactor grade powder to launch a 0.715" paper wrapped ball in my Brown Bess. Accuracy is generally minute of backstop. The Bess gets a fouled barrel pretty quickly, but nothing that a ball of damp tow on on a string run up and down the barrel can't cure. Shooting expenses may be cheap, but the repayment in fun at the event is well enjoyed.

 

[Zonie]

Having never used reenacting powder and never heard of reenacting caps I certainly wouldn't argue with that, and feel like you are correct.

OTOH, ive shot with all the other powders i previously listed and while Swiss is accepted as the gold standard (black standard? ) I didn't think after shooting two pounds of it that there was a discernible difference between scheutzen, or Graf's. Granted, I'm not an extraordinary shooter but even for a duffer like me it should have been noticeable.

The "reenactor caps" are Musket size caps that have a weaker or smaller amount of fulminate in them.
It seems a lot of reenactors were upset with the full power Musket caps because they tended to blow apart when they were fired, sending bits and pieces of themselves in all directions, often hitting the shooter or people standing near to him. To solve this "problem", CCI created a "4 wing" reenactor cap. The idea behind the 4 wings is the cap would open up without fragmenting. Since CCI started making these weak caps, I think they stopped making their full power caps. At least, they are very hard to find.
While this idea helped the reenactors with their fragmenting cap problem it ended up in creating a weak cap that could cause mis-fires. Something that target shooters and hunters really don't like at all.

About the only company I know of that is still making full power Musket caps is RWS (Dynamite/Nobel).

I have never heard of any company making weak #10 or #11 reenactor caps. I don't think they exist.

 

[mooman76]

I'd more so call it wrong tool for the wrong job. Those are made to shoot blank, no projectile. Never done it before so don't know if it would make much difference.