• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades
  • Friends, our 2nd Amendment rights are always under attack and the NRA has been a constant for decades in helping fight that fight.

    We have partnered with the NRA to offer you a discount on membership and Muzzleloading Forum gets a small percentage too of each membership, so you are supporting both the NRA and us.

    Use this link to sign up please; https://membership.nra.org/recruiters/join/XR045103

What Muzzleloading Stuff Did You Do Today?

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Harbor Freight, double canister, with a small piece of pencil graphite with the balls. Hope they shoot as good as they look.
I just got one of those tumblers from HF…. Loaded up about a pound and a half of .40 cal RB in each side and let’er rip for a few hours. They came out one side looking beautiful, but apparently someone had returned the tumbler after using it (looked perfect coming out of the box) and there was abrasive residue in the other canister. Balls from that side all had a coating of grit and were flat black. I figured I’d throw them in my brass tumbler to clean off that powder and ran them in that for a little while. That didn’t work out so well. Now they have a coating of polishing grit and walnut dust and an interesting red color. Gonna have to melt them down and start over.

Needless to say, the offending canister got a good bath.

The batch on the right are what they look like after tumbling with no media in the canister. They turn a glossy black.

The size stays the same but the sprue area smoothes out nicely.

IMG_4514.jpeg
 
Last edited:
So finally found a Spiller & Burr, unfired from 1998 from board member parrot head, thanks! The pistol is in mint condition but the hammer pull was quite heavy. Read about hour glassing the spring so broke out the old Sears grinder and gave it a slight taper making sure the metal staid cool. The mod reduced the trigger pull to a normal one. Next came the front post replacement. It was so small that my pliers couldn’t grab it to be pulled out. I filed a small flat spot on the post and drilled it out in my drill press. The picture shows the sight pulled out on the drill bit. These pistols will shoot a foot high at 25 yards so a new post was fashioned from 1/8” brass rod turned down using a file and a drill press till I got the desired diameter size (around .119”). From what I have seen on others doing this the post should be about 1/4” high. The post can be carefully pressed back in by pounding it into the pocket.
I also added a light muzzle crown.


View attachment 257524View attachment 257525View attachment 257526View attachment 257527View attachment 257528
I WORKED ON MY SPILLER TOO! Worked out the kinks with the internal mechanics and moved on to carving some new grips
20231029_112100.jpg
 
Friend brought his .54 woods runner to sight. He could not see the target since he broke his glasses so I had to shoot it. I was impressed and shot a 1" group at 50 yards. A little low and left so I figured his sight adjustments and wrote them for him. Kibler has a fine, fine product.
 
Cool. Does yours have a heavy hammer pull? The hour glassing helped lighten the pull.
Oh you know it does... I was just happy to get the action consistently functioning properly. And I consider myself mostly a woodworker so I anxiously moved on to the grips after that. I haven't even started addressing the hammer spring. I mean, it's a pretty blunt model to begin with to say the least. But I'm working off an old parts kits made in Michigan in the 80's (just a bag of plays in the original box too. $18 at an estate sale I saw actually driving to an outdoor range for some pew pew). . I'm still have to finish:
- bevel the ramp/load port as well as the side frame
- crown the barrel
- re-blue the cylinder and barrel
- resurface the brass
- etch or engrave
- make a cross-draw holster and presentation box
...
...THEN I will definitely take your advice on that hammer weight. Was it a difficult process?
 
Made up a new batch of softer lube more suitable for cold weather use. Loaded same into syringes for use with cap 'n ball revolvers. Also dip-lubed a bunch of Minie balls with that same lube mix for assembly into 1861 paper cartridges.
 
polished the entry pipe and forward pipes. inlet the entry pipe. i like these iron pipes from TOTW. very little file work and lite sanding, followed by polishing wheel with rouge.
this morning my walker pistol called out that i had ignored it long enough, so i took it out to shoot the postal match target. had forgotten how much fun it is. my mold throws a .451 ball and it doesn't shave much if any ring, but still pretty accurate. seems i have a .454 mold somewhere. guess its ahuntin i go!
 
New action camera showed up in the mail yesterday.
Been filming in the rain at the N-SSA & Pioneer Flats shooting events recently &
my regular Canon cameras doesn't like rain.
So......a waterproof DJI Action 3 camera showed up.
Can't wait to get it out tomorrow & film some BP shooting....

View attachment 264416
Boy, oh boy, Mark; that there‘s some Hign Falutin’ techno-ologie stuff!
 
Well I spent some time measuring the three different flint locks I have to get the right size flints for each one. The tc improved lock on my pa hunter uses the longest; and could go to 7/8 long; but 3/4 still was ok. The lyman deerstalker was next which measured .850 from jaw bolt to frizzen face; the rmc fast twist rifle has a late english l&r lock and it fit best to a 3/4 x 3/4 or 6s by track of the wolf sizes and not any longer or the frizzen kicks up enough to leak powder. I really was surprised the l/r best fit was that short.

Leather thickness matters as well so I keep some of varied thickness; some notched and some not.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top