Many Klatch
69 Cal.
- Joined
- May 19, 2006
- Messages
- 3,498
- Reaction score
- 265
I was at a range yesterday with a bunch of friends shooting muzzleloaders. We had a couple of new guys with us and we were all having a good time. One of the guys had a nice custom made .32 caplock that should have been a real shooter. The problem was that the gun would NOT go off. With two of us helping him, of course we did eventually get it to go off and he would reload and the same thing would happen. We removed the nipple and poured in more of his 3F Pyrodex into the drum, we replaced the nipple and he still had very poor results. Even when it did go off it was with a "Pop" instead of a BANG.
After our final success in getting the gun to go off I had him load with my Goex 3F Holy Black instead of his 3F Pyrodex. The gun went off with a real bang and there was not a bit of hesitation.
In further conversation with him he said that his powder might have gotten damp as it was a bit clumpy. I told him that the best thing he could do with that batch of Pyrodex was to pour it onto the flowers. He really enjoyed shooting his rifle once we discovered that it liked real black powder.
He said that the can of powder was only about a year old. Can Pyrodex go bad that fast? I had no idea that Pyrodex would get to the point where it wouldn't even go off with a cap and 25 grains of Pyrodex would barely push a ball to the 25 yard line.
After our final success in getting the gun to go off I had him load with my Goex 3F Holy Black instead of his 3F Pyrodex. The gun went off with a real bang and there was not a bit of hesitation.
In further conversation with him he said that his powder might have gotten damp as it was a bit clumpy. I told him that the best thing he could do with that batch of Pyrodex was to pour it onto the flowers. He really enjoyed shooting his rifle once we discovered that it liked real black powder.
He said that the can of powder was only about a year old. Can Pyrodex go bad that fast? I had no idea that Pyrodex would get to the point where it wouldn't even go off with a cap and 25 grains of Pyrodex would barely push a ball to the 25 yard line.