flintlock ignition trouble what do you think please help.

[adkmountainken]

i have been having bad ignition problems with my .54 Hawken and at first i thought it was a bit of bad lock placement and a member on here did some fantastic work to correct it. went to the range today first 2 shots flawless then could not get ignition for the life of me! touch the flash hole with pick and can feel dry powder right where it should be flash hole is clear. priming with FFFF pan powder getting great ignition lot of fire. i am no flintlock expert BUT have shot a LOT. after looking over and over as well as before the continuing problem here i feel the vent liner and touch hole is just a tad to high and off center to the right. i have had worse then this with no problem BUT it is all i can come up with. barrel and breech were THOROUGHLY cleaned and dried, GREAT spark and flash, i am at a loss including pic's here. any ideas? forum member is now coning the vent liner for me and will try again. i think main priming charge maybe hitting slightly to the right of touchhole.

 

[poker]

I cant believe thats not touching your load off

 

[64Springer]

Real BP in bore and pan?

 

[adkmountainken]

Real BP in bore and pan?

yes its all i use GOEX FF for the .54 and Goex FFFF priming

 

[rick1964]

Ken is that a white lightning liner ? Looks like it is. Drilled out hole to a1/16. How much in front of the breech face is it? How long have you been shooting this gun? As is this new gun or something you been shooting for awhile without troubles

 

[Bushfire]

It's likely an obstruction, whether in design or physical related.

Is the bore definitely clean? Is it a patent/chambered breech? Could be somewhat gummed up so after a few shots the charge isn't making it to the breech properly?

 

[ormond tony]

This may sound crazy but, have you checked for double balling? Maybe not enough powder getting down to vent hole? do you have ramrod to check if there's anything in the bottom of the bore (a line on stick to show loaded or not)? I am not sure if you are getting a 'spark' or not. You say you're not getting ignition? Is it sparking in the pan and, apparently, not in the bore? ?????

 

[Brokennock]

i have been having bad ignition problems with my .54 Hawken and at first i thought it was a bit of bad lock placement and a member on here did some fantastic work to correct it. went to the range today first 2 shots flawless then could not get ignition for the life of me! touch the flash hole with pick and can feel dry powder right where it should be flash hole is clear. priming with FFFF pan powder getting great ignition lot of fire. i am no flintlock expert BUT have shot a LOT. after looking over and over as well as before the continuing problem here i feel the vent liner and touch hole is just a tad to high and off center to the right. i have had worse then this with no problem BUT it is all i can come up with. barrel and breech were THOROUGHLY cleaned and dried, GREAT spark and flash, i am at a loss including pic's here. any ideas? forum member is now coning the vent liner for me and will try again. i think main priming charge maybe hitting slightly to the right of touchhole.

Hmmmmm
I agree that the flash hole in your liner is off center from the pan, but I really have a hard time thinking it would be that much of a problem.

Are you cleaning the pan in between shots?
I'm wondering if you are losing heat to crud on the pan amd base of the frizzen..... still seems like an unlikely reason for the problem.

Edit to add based on a question posed while I was writing the above:
My Early Virginia smoothrifle has a similar liner placed fairly close to the breachface. I never had the issues you are experiencing, but would occasionally get a flash in the pan. Based on a historical description of someone loading and firing a flintlock I started placing a wire pick/prick in the flash hole while loading, not removing it until I prime. Never had another flash of the pan after that. One caveat to that though, I load that gun with 3f, my other flinter, without a liner, gets loaded mostly with 2f and will occasionally fail to fire when I use this method. I am not sure of the difference is the lack of the liner or the larger granulation of powder.
Might be worth a try though.

 

[Brokennock]

How much in front of the breech face is it?

That's a really good question.
Too close seems to be an issue for some people amd too far can be as well.

 

[erhunter]

If that rifle has a patent breach maybe the vent liner is protruding into the patent breach and causing misfires. I have a Lyman rebored to 54 and my old touch hole liner was going half way into my patent breach and causing problems. Made it flush with the inside of barrel now it works fine.

 

[Phil Coffins]

I believe that the flash hole position is fine, since you got it to fire on the first two shots then fouling must be the issue. Do you wipe between shots? If not do you use a full pan of prime or just a little bit, My limited experience leads me to prefer a modest amount of prime. When the prime ignites the heat is going everywhere so slightly off center isn’t an issue.
Or it’s because the lock is on the wrong side!

 

[waksupi]

The vent placement is no problem. When you say you cleaned the barrel well, did you actually use a breech face scraper? Build up on the face of the plug is usually the culprit. If you have a patent breech, you will need a bore scope to see what you are dealing with, and make a scraper that will fit it.
The possible dry ball situation another poster made, should be checked on.
Another thing, lightly bump the butt on the ground, or slap the side of the rifle a few times to settle the powder to the breech face and vent.

 

[pacanis]

Once you get that shot off I'd pour hot water down the muzzle and see if it comes out the touch hole.
My guess is something is gunking it up. I recently had that problem in a new 32 where I only swabbed clean the bore. I should have flushed it to push everything through.

 

[Rawhide67]

I'm going to chime in for Ken, since he's away from the computer and I cleaned the gun before he fired it. I can feel no protrusion into the barrel channel that might be interference from a too long touch hole liner. He picks the vent hole before each shot. Today wasn't dry balled, I helped him pull the load. As for breech face scraper, no, the breech face might be coned or dished, based on what it did to the bristles on my new brush. But, after cleaning, you could shine a flashlight down the barrel and clearly see the light in the vent hole. As for cleaning between shots, I'm not sure, I think he does swab the bore between shots. But, it does not seem that the gun should foul that quickly to be useless.

 

[TDM]

As said above your vent hole location is not the problem. Don’t know how much 4F you’re using, could be to much. I agree that it’s most likely a breech issue. If you have access to a bore scope I’d take a look at it.

 

[TDM]

I'm going to chime in for Ken, since he's away from the computer and I cleaned the gun before he fired it. I can feel no protrusion into the barrel channel that might be interference from a too long touch hole liner. He picks the vent hole before each shot. Today wasn't dry balled, I helped him pull the load. As for breech face scraper, no, the breech face might be coned or dished, based on what it did to the bristles on my new brush. But, after cleaning, you could shine a flashlight down the barrel and clearly see the light in the vent hole. As for cleaning between shots, I'm not sure, I think he does swab the bore between shots. But, it does not seem that the gun should foul that quickly to be useless.

I was typing my reply when you posted, so you answered part of my suggestion. With the breech clear, I’d run an alcohol patch, then a dry patch before loading and see how that does. Experiment with using less prime too.

 

[Grenadier1758]

@adkmountainken has a rifle with a chambered breech. I see a line between the breech plug with the chambered (patent) breech. His rifle fired for two shots, and now he has flashes in the pan. Yes, fouling can build up that quickly with the fouling from real black powder and the bore is being wiped with a tight fitting wet patch. My guess is that there is fouling blocking the flame from the pan getting to the powder. That chamber needs to be cleaned. Use a 30 caliber brush and a damp patch to clean out the breech. Use a dental flossing brush to clean out the touch hole. Slightly enlarging the touch hole entrance with an external chamfer will help direct flame to the powder. So will opening the touch hole to 1/16".

If admountainken is wiping between shots with a wet patch, that may be what has pushed fouling into the chambered breech. Ken may need to change his loading procedure to what is sometimes referred to as a no wipe procedure. Well, the barrel is still being wiped, but it is in one step and one run of the loading rod. One can start a wad over the powder charge and use a wet patch around the ball to wipe the fouling down the barrel with the loading of the ball. Or he can use a damp patch on starting the patched ball and a wet patch on the loading jag to pull fouling deep in the grooves out.

What I do is use an alcohol or mix of water soluble oil on a wiping patch. My rage rod has a slightly under sized jag so the damp patch rides over the fouling on the way to the breech and bunches up to pull the fouling out. I then look at the target with my spotting scope and let the bore dry a bit. The warm barrel dries quickly and loading can continue and I know after doing this a lot, that I haven't pushed fouling into the breech and flash hole. I do pick the touch hole before priming the pan.

There are solutions to admountainken's failure to fire. He needs to see what works best.

 

[BruceHH]

First, is this a White Lightin Liner or a close copy? If so, I can give you a good answer to the problem. Some of those (or copies) have the spark channel from the outside to the inside of the cone that is way too deep (long). I had the same problem on some of my custom builds and I knew everything was built right. It took a little trouble shooting to discover the issue. Take the liner out and when you put the next one in, deepen that liner cone from the inside. I measured some of the liners I had and found that channel to be almost three times the depth it should have been. I found that somewhere around .035 is about the maximum depth the channel should be.

It is not a design or manufactoring problem with those type of liners. The problem comes from the installation, when you put in the chamfer to allow the liner face to set down into the barrel flat. If you put in too much of a chamfer, the liner goes in deeper which in turn makes your spark channel longer. I would just put a "very small" chamfer in, then screw in the liner tight and then cut off the lug. You want to have to file off quite a bit of the face of the liner.

Another option is to go to the Allen Wrench Head liner that is sold by RMC. I hate the looks - but it works. I don't like the flash hole size (too big) - but it works.

 

[pacanis]

My rage rod has a slightly under sized jag so the damp patch rides over the fouling on the way to the breech and bunches up to pull the fouling out.

How does this work? I was just going to give this a try, but did not read to use an undersized jag until now.
But wouldn't the PRB run any fouling down ahead of the ramrod anyway? If it's a snug fit anyway.

I was also wondering about not swabbing the breech area doing it this way.
I use an alcohol pad. So that plus a warm barrel should dry things out before I reload.
But does only swabbing above the ball cause any problems?

thanks

 

[Grenadier1758]

@pacanis, I use a barely dampened patch around my patched ball. It will push some fouling down the barrel as the ball is loaded. The patch on the jag is wet and does a better job of applying solvent (mainly water in the case of water soluble oil and water or rubbing alcohol) to soften the fouling. As the loading rod is removed, the patch bunches up tighter in the softened fouling and gathers it on the patch as the jag and patch are removed.

One of the other successful means to condition the barrel between shots it to only wipe the bore to where the ball would be placed. This comes close to cleaning the hard crust ring where the ball is positioned.