Sidney Smith
58 Cal.
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2019
- Messages
- 2,134
- Reaction score
- 2,220
Been shooting muzzle loaders for at least 25 or 27 years now. Never snapped a ramrod, until yesterday. Yesterday was the opener of our rifle deer season. I was loading the rifle at my truck before heading into the woods. I always do this to avoid undue noise and movement at my stand. Had seated the ball, then put my nylon palm saver over the rod, and pushed down to insure the ball was fully seated on the powder, when it happened, SNAP, the last 2 1/2 inches or so of the rod broke. I didn't realize then but it scraped my ring finger and slightly cut it. No big issue there though. Fortunately I had just enough rod sticking out that I was able to remove it. But it came out tight if something had slightly jammed it in the bore. I thought at first the ball had pulled off the powder, so I shoved the rod home. Mistake. Now I couldn't pull it out at all. So, to the tool box I went and had to use a pair of needle nose pliers to grip the stub of wood sticking out. With a slight twist, I got the rod out and proceeded to hunt with the gun. Didn't get a shot at a deer but was concerned something was down in the bore (as in a piece of the broken rod). So when I got home, I took a light and shined it down the bore(yes I know not a good idea to look down a loaded bore, but I had to know). Sure enough a sliver of the rod was in there sitting on the ball. It wouldn't just dump out, so I pulled the ball and hoped it wouldn't get stuck. Luckily the screw of the puller split the piece of wood, thus allowing most of it to fall out when I had the muzzle pointed at the floor. I pulled the ball anyway and the rest of the slivers of wood came out with it. Re installed a fresh ball, and patch, and the gun is ready to hunt with tomorrow. Only issue now is I have to use my range rod as the primary ram rod until I can make a new rod(have new parts on order). The range rod has a ball on one end so it can't be placed in ramrod pipes on the gun. Lesson learned. Next time and from now on, the range rod is going in the truck on my hunts Had I had it with me yesterday I could have simply pulled the ball right there and reloaded and would not have had to worry.
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