Much tighter group.

Kent Black Powder League card for round 5 gave one of the tightest groups I have ever shot. It was also fairly well placed on the target. It seems that with practise, I have finally sorted out a consistant sight picture. The group is almost horizontally central on the card, having drifted the foresight slightly to the left after the last shoot.

Round 5 - 87.1 ex 100

The low shots were due to me holding on aim too long and then starting to get tired. I need to either shoot within a few seconds of coming up on aim, or drop the arm, rest and then re-aim.

The main set-up changes from the last session were in the lube and percussion caps used. I took recipe 13 and made it thinner: recipe '14' was 6:1 Olive oil:Tallow. This did seem to cleaner easier between shots, but the patch was getting dirty fairly quickly and you could see 'flakes' rather than soot. I suspect it is the hydrocarbon in the olive oil burning off. I also changed the percussion caps from CCI number 11's, to Remington number 11's. No difference seen between them.

Set-up used

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Mortimer pistol in .36
0.015 patch [from JT Tanner]
6:1 olive oil:tallow lube [homemade - recipe 14]
0.350 lead balls [from Hornady]
9 grains Swiss Number 1 [from Starley]
Number 11 percussion caps [from Remington]

I did notice that the thinner patch lube meant that when I seated the ball in the end of the barrel with the mallet, it tended to splatter olive oil, making everything greasy to handle. I might add a small shaving of beeswax to thicken up the lube slightly.

Stats

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Detail score: 87.1

Running average: 80.34

Barrel count: 327

Cards: 25

On the plus side, I did find an easier way to store the lubed patches that made handling them on the firing point easier - I now use an empty air-pellet tin. It's an ideal size for about 100 lubed patches.