A poor day's shooting

Started off the day planning to shoot 2 cards, but ended up shooting 3 cards, rather badly. Card 2 of the Kent Black Powder summer season league was a 82 ex 100.

Round 2 - 82 ex 100



The entire group was about an inch to the left. Swabbing between shots, the patches were quite dirty. The shooting setup used was:

Mortimer pistol in .36

0.015 patch [from JT Tanner]

2:1 olive oil:tallow lube [homemade]

0.350 lead balls [from Hornady]

9 grains Swiss Number 1 [from Starley]

Number 11 percussion caps {from CCI]

For the second card [round 3], I switched to Ox-Yoke pre-lubed patches. Again the entire group was to the left. This time it was nearer 2 inches, and also about an inch high. The card scored as a 77 ex 100.

At this point I SHOULD have stopped as I was getting tired eyes and a sore lower back. Due to time constraints and range availability, I pushed on and did a third card. This round 4 card scored a very disappointing 68 ex 100. The group was even further left and even higher.

Using the same setup as the previous card, I found problems with the loading this time around. With the long rammer, I found it wasn't seating the ball as far down the barrel as it should have done. It needed several more 'rams' to get to seated correctly.

Half way through the card, stopped to clean out the barrel with WD-40, a nylon brush and several cleaning swaps. OK afterwards for several shots, but then the same issues again.

After the session, found that during the cleaning, the nipple felt 'stickier', the barrel by the nipple was dirtier than usual, and the residue from the bottom of the barrel was 'flaky pieces' rather than the usual fine soot.

Next time out I'll do the following:

# shoot a maximum of two cards in any single session

# try Remington number 11 percussion caps instead of CCI

# try Dynamit Nobel 1075 percussion caps instead of CCI

# use the aqueous creme and water mix patch lubricant

Stats
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Running average: 80.06

Detail score 82.0 + 77.0 + 68.0
Barrel count: 314

Cards: 24