- Joined
- Jun 23, 2007
- Messages
- 76
- Reaction score
- 8
I recently bought a .54 TC Hawken at a garage sale. It had been left loaded with a full charge for a number of years. I pulled the ball and powder, and surprisingly the powder still looked dry, and I was tempted to just flush out the barrel and call it good. However, curious minds wanted to know if the long term storage while loaded had caused any corrosion in the breech, so I pulled he breech plug. Everything was good, but one thing I noticed in the breech plug itself was the 1/8" diam by 1/2" long flash channel leading from the snail to the back of the cavity in the front of the breech plug. The cavity itself is about 3/8" deep and the same in diameter. I had a friend that did not clean his TC barrel properly one year, and that cost him an elk when his rifle did not fire after multiple caps because that channel was plugged. Would it be prudent to deepen that cavity so the back of the powder charge was closer to the snail and nipple to insure better ignition? I have a Spanish reproduction sidelock percussion gun that had a 1/16" channel like that which got lousy ignition - lots of hangfires, or no bang at all - until I drilled out the cavity deeper to bring the powder charge back closer to the ignition source. Now it fires every time. The TC has pretty good ignition now, but can it be better or am I going to cause potential problems? It looks like I will be leaving plenty of steel around the breech area.