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

Scoring graph

Here's a graph of my scores to date:

The best result to date is card 16 with a 90.1 scored. The average is currently hovering around the 80 mark. Hopefully scores will continue to improve with practise, which is why I am doing some 10m target air-pistol shooting at home.

Practise session

Although rather cold on the outdoor range, shot card number 21 with the Mortimer. Used the old lube 12 setup [2:1 Olive oil:Tallow] and noticed the patches had stiffened up in the cold temperatures. Found that the ball had rolled off of the patch several times when reaching for the short-starter. 

Card 21

Although the elevation grouping was OK, I pushed most of the shots high left, mainly through inattention on my part. Ended up with a single 10 and a score of 77 with no X's.

Stats

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Running average: 80.69

Detail score 77.0

Barrel count: 275

Cards: 21

 

 

Lube recipe 13 might be OK

After three weeks waiting, I have just checked the state of lube recipe 13 [Tallow:Olive Oil - 1:4]. It has stayed as a thick liquid rather than setting hard as lube recipe 12 did [Tallow:Olive Oil - 1:2].

Lube recipe 13

The next step is to lube up some fresh patches with this mix, I'll also relube the recipe 12 patches [waste not-want not]. As it looks like there should be no issues with seating the ball on the patch at the end of the barrel, the only other checks are how the barrel swabs between shots, and how easy it is to clean at the end of the day's shoot, using just hot water and a drop of liquid soap.

If all goes well I will not have to create other recipes with the Beeswax, Lanolin, Neat's Foot Oil, Olive Oil, Tallow, Ballistol etc that I still have!

Revised lube

My original lube [12]; Tallow:Olive Oil in a 1:2 ratio, that I used last shoot, had some problems with the stiffness of the lubed patches and the difficulty separating them.

Lube 12

I've now amended the lube recipe to create lube [13]; Tallow:Olive Oil in a 1:4 ratio. After 20 seconds nuking in the microwave, the old lube was melted and the additional Olive Oil was added.

Lube 13

Although liquid after the nuking, we'll see how it looks after 24 hours of cooling down. I have also lubed up some new 0.015 Jeff Taylor patches with the new recipe, and also relubed those lube 12 patches left over from the last shoot.

The other reason for further developing this recipe was due to the ease of cleaning that I found after the last shoot. Using just hot water and a patch on a nylon brush, the soot from the barrel was gone within seconds. No hard scrubbing needed!

Different lube used

For today's trip to the range, I used lube mixture 12 - Tallow:Olive Oil in ratio 1:2. This mixture sets to a fairly soft solid, but stiffens up on the patches. I found I could not seat the ball in the top of the muzzle without the lubed patch pushing it back out. Also noticed that the patches were hard to separate from each other. On the other hand, cleaning afterwards was VERY fast with hardly any soot to come out of the bottom of the barrel. Recommended lube mix!

Highest 10 count

Although only shooting an 87.0 I did shoot my best ever 10 count with 3 scoring shots. The two fliers in the white were due to me snatching the trigger after being on aim for too long.

The group is slight too low again but I think this is correctable with lots of practise. The rest of the setup for this card was 9gns Swiss No.1, 0.015 JT patches and Hornady .350 balls.

Stats

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Running average: 80.88
Detail score 87.0

Barrel count: 262

Cards: 20

New lubes

Off to the range in a few hours to try out some new patch lube recipes:

[12] a thinner recipe than previously tried; Tallow:Olive Oil in a 1:2 ratio. The previous version had the ratio reversed and the patches were really too stiff to use after a week.

[9] using a Beeswax:Olive Oil mix in a 1:2 ratio. The beeswax thickens up the olive oil such that the mixture solidifies after cooling. Depending on results, I may loosens up this recipe by using a lower ratio of beeswax to olive oil, perhaps 1:5.

[6] a multimix recipe of Beeswax:Lanolin:Neatsfoot Oil in a 2:1:2 ratio. This is basically the above recipe [9] with the addition of Lanolin. Again this mixture solidifies after cooling and I may try a thinner version with more oil added.

We'll see how it goes!