Got the smoothie back home

[Rebel]

Got my North Star West .62 smoothbore back home last night. Had a friend working on her installing a new Chambers White lightening vent liner while i was away for 2 weeks helping my dad move to Mich. from Az.. He also found out why i have been having flashes in the pan. Seems that when they installed the breech plug and then drilled the vent hole, they didn't remove the plug and notch it so it didn't cover the vent, they just left it in and it covered most of the vent hole. He notched it and polished it up good, so i should get a lot better igniton now. Any of you use White Lightening liners, and if so, what do you think of them. This will be the first one for me, so i don't really know what to expect as far as an improvement over a standard liner in ignition speed. Can't wait for the wind to drop below 30MPH and the rain and snow to stop long enough to get out and try her out.

 

Some people go larger, but I feel 1/16" hole is plenty. The hole that's in the White Lightening is smaller than that and can plug if you odn't poke it now and then. I'd run a 1/16" drill into it and be finished. A 1/16" hole spits a LOT more thna the stock hole, and for me, anyting bigger, is velocity thrown away . From what I can tell - they are miles ahead of any other liner made.
Daryl

 

[musketman]

If the vent hole was mostly blocked before, anything should be an improvment in ignition...

I don't use vent liners on any of my flinters, just a hole drilled into the side of the barrel, so I won't add an opinion to the liner of your choosing...

If you want to see if the system works with the new liner, just place a bit of powder in the barrel and prime it, open the window and stick the end of the barrel out and touch it off... (turn off your smoke alarms first...) :winking: :haha:

 

[Rebel]

did when i got her home, was to drill the vent hole out to 1/16". Hopefully tomorrow i will have a chance to try her out.

 

[Rebel]

out and tried her out. PROBLEM I had more flashes in the pan than before. Not sure what could be causing them. I put my vent pick in the vent hole(with the gun unloaded) and looked down the barrel with a flashlight. I can see the pick going right through the notch in the breechplug, so i know it should be getting powder to the liner, but once in a while after i would load and pick the vent, it would feel like there was no powder in the liner. I have the vent hole drilled out to 1/16" right now, may go to 5/64" if i need to. I took the lock apart today and polished the pan real good, the sides of the frizzen where it goes in the (bridle)? Not sure if that is the term for it, being new to flinters. I also polished the hole the frizzen screw goes through and the shaft of the screw. Oiled everything up afterwords. Put just a small cone around the vent hole. Don't know what else to do. Hopefully i will get a chance to try her out again tomorrow and see if any of this helped. Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[tg]

I had the same thing with a .62 trade gun, after notching/polishing the plug it worked well, but I found that tapping on the top of the barrel by the plug with the but of my hand helped settle the powder into the recess, and this was more important with 2f than 3f, I drill all my holes to 5/64 and have liked the results much better than the way they were originaly, I have not tried the Chambers liner but I am not into trying to reinvent the wheel to gain an edge over the performance of the originals.

 

[Deadeye]

Sounds like either your touch hole is in the wrong place or it needs to be opened more on the inside or you pan powder is in the wrong place. If powder in the pan is burning a 1/16" hole is big enough to fire the main charge.
I've enlarged some of mine to 5/64" to get them to fire quicker but 1/16 and even less is OK when everything else is right.

 

[Rebel]

liner installed was because the one that was in it when i got the gun had been cross threaded and ruined the 1/4" threads. So i had a friend drill and tap it to take the Chambers White lightening liner. He cut a larger notch in the breechplug and polished it so the powder would have an easier time getting to the liner. The vent hole is centered in the pan, and a line across the top of the pan goes through the center of the vent hole. I will try tapping the barrel near the lock next time and see if that helps settle the powder into the liner. Not trying to re-invent anything, just trying to get the old invention to work right.

 

[Rocky Johnson]

Cut your prime charge? Playing with my Chambers lock I found that it don't take much Powder in the pan to set it off. Just for kicks see how little you can use and still get ignition. Rocky /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[tg]

No flame pard I just think the whole liner thing is overdone from a historical standpoint, it has been developed almost to the modern ML mindset. anyhow....are you useing 3f or 2f? I have found the 3f to work well in a .62.

 

[Rebel]

using 3f for the main charge, and 4f for priming. I tried varying the amount of priming i used and it didn't seem to matter. I usually use about 3grs. of priming, as that is what my small priming flask throws with 1 push. Wish this blasted wind would let up so i could go out and shoot some more with it and see if anything i did helped any. Hard to concentrate on shooting with a 30-40 MPH wind blowing. Thanks for the advise guys.

 

[Zonie]

A little story about a vent liner:
I had just finished a new flinter and couldn't wait to get to the range to test it.
At the range, after loading the powder and ball I returned to the bench and primed the pan, brought her back to full cock and Click.Poof! Gave a few pounds with my hand to the side of the gun, reprimed...ClickPoof! As I recall it fired on the third time.
Reloaded, and repeated the firing with the same results.
Somewhat frustrated, I took it out on the target with my .45-70 Sharps and went home.
Only when I started cleaning it did I notice that I had forgotten to trim the vent liner so that it didn't protrude inside the barrel.
After trimming it back like I should have to begin with, everything worked fine. ClickPoBOOM!!

 

[Rebel]

of the first things i checked for. I can look down the barrel and see that the liner is flush, also by running a patch on a jag down, it doesn't hang up on anything sticking out. But thanks for the info. Am going to enlarge the notch in the breechplug some more so that powder can get to the vent easier. That should take care of the problem. If not, then i don't know what will.