Why are my two rifles so different?

Pictured here are my two rifles. One of them: A Jukar .45 plains rifle, about 40 years old. Not one misfire yet after putting about 120 rounds through it, fires consistantly even without swabbing out (on one occasion) and is very accurate. The other one - .45 cal Investarm Hawken rifle. Virtually new. After 3 rounds I get misfires. Sometimes even the caps don't go off. At some point during the shoot I have to remove the nipple and clean the flash channel with a pipecleaner and put a small amount of powder in the nipple hole just to get rid of the misfired round. The accuracy is not great, although this could be me anticipating a misfire. On the whole, I do not enjoy shooting with it as I am expecting a misfire every time I squeeze the trigger. What is happening here? Whilst the comment 'The Jukar is a good rifle and the Investarm is rubbish' might be true, is there something I am doing wrong here? I clean both rifles thoroughly after shooting, swab out after 4 rounds and use identical loads and bullets.

My suspicion is the Hawken's breech plug is one of those with a smaller diameter chamber than the bore. When it gets cleaned, the swab pushed debris into that chamber

One other thing not often looked into is the geometry of hammer to nipple. A misfire could well be the result of the hammer not fully impacting the to of the nipple or hitting at an angle. Check that first. Next, use only real black powder.

One was built Friday afternoon at 4:45 pm.

Sir Boniface Harrison said:

Pictured here are my two rifles. One of them: A Jukar .45 plains rifle, about 40 years old. Not one misfire yet after putting about 120 rounds through it, fires consistantly even without swabbing out (on one occasion) and is very accurate. The other one - .45 cal Investarm Hawken rifle. Virtually new. After 3 rounds I get misfires. Sometimes even the caps don't go off. At some point during the shoot I have to remove the nipple and clean the flash channel with a pipecleaner and put a small amount of powder in the nipple hole just to get rid of the misfired round. The accuracy is not great, although this could be me anticipating a misfire. On the whole, I do not enjoy shooting with it as I am expecting a misfire every time I squeeze the trigger. What is happening here? Whilst the comment 'The Jukar is a good rifle and the Investarm is rubbish' might be true, is there something I am doing wrong here? I clean both rifles thoroughly after shooting, swab out after 4 rounds and use identical loads and bullets.

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Your .45 cal Jukar is what I have as a CVA Mountain rifle. Mine is reliable and accurate. You have peep sights on yours and that is a nice set up. I also have had several Investarm rifles. The lock on some of the Investarm seem to be weak. They didn't seem to hit the cap hard enough to set it off each time. I sold two of them and kept one that was like new. I put a washer in the main spring to make it stiffer thus hitting the cap harder. That along with putting a slight taper on the nipple so the cap fit better helped. I kept this Investarm .45 cal because it has 12 lands and grooves.

It's actually pretty simple. When you learn how to deal with used gun purchases..
The snail breech ignition system of your Investarms is fouled with carbon. It's a common problem.
The previous owner, neglected too have the fire channel completely free of all "oil" deposits, and fired the gun. (maybe more than once)
When storage or preservative oil's are present, even a single firing with black powder, will create significant fouling of the fire channel and lend the exact difficulties you are having.
There are methods to clean that, within a home based situation. That cleaning process can be somewhat hazardous and not easily shared on an open forum.
The issues you have are common, given your location I'm not sure of the translation abilities,
Perhaps a PM(?)

necchi said:

It's actually pretty simple. When you learn how to deal with used gun purchases..
The snail breech ignition system of your Investarms is fouled with carbon. It's a common problem.
The previous owner, neglected too have the fire channel completely free of all "oil" deposits, and fired the gun. (maybe more than once)
When storage or preservative oil's are present, even a single firing with black powder, will create significant fouling of the fire channel and lend the exact difficulties you are having.
There are methods to clean that, within a home based situation. That cleaning process can be somewhat hazardous and not easily shared on an open forum.
The issues you have are common, given your location I'm not sure of the translation abilities,
Perhaps a PM(?)

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Translation will be no problem - I live in France, but I am English. I bought the Investarm new, so it's Probably my fault for firing the gun before giving it a preliminary clean. TThank you for your info and patience!

1sgt said:

Your .45 cal Jukar is what I have as a CVA Mountain rifle. Mine is reliable and accurate. You have peep sights on yours and that is a nice set up. I also have had several Investarm rifles. The lock on some of the Investarm seem to be weak. They didn't seem to hit the cap hard enough to set it off each time. I sold two of them and kept one that was like new. I put a washer in the main spring to make it stiffer thus hitting the cap harder. That along with putting a slight taper on the nipple so the cap fit better helped. I kept this Investarm .45 cal because it has 12 lands and grooves.

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Thanks for that, Sgt. I will make your recommended modifcations!

Dude said:

My suspicion is the Hawken's breech plug is one of those with a smaller diameter chamber than the bore. When it gets cleaned, the swab pushed debris into that chamber

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You are absolutely correct what I do to permanently fix the issue is to run a bore drill down and in large the chamber. Or you could look at your load. There is no need for a bore to be swabbed every few shots especially when you are short range paper punching 35-50 grns is more than enough to win matches out to 50 or so yds The juker is nothing but a cva in disguise and in 99% of them 3f will shoot cleaner the investarms is a toss up weather it likes 2 or 3f In August we had a demo shoot for the public 2-3 hundred rounds per gun and most of us only wiped out our guns after coming back from lunch

Thanks for all your input and ideas, chaps. The breech plug chamber on the Investarm is indeed a smaller diameter than the rest of the barrel. I gave this rifle a thorough clean, and once cleaned I poured some solvent down the barrel - the kind of stuff medics use to dissolve elastoplast glue. I left that in the barrel for about two hours, and cleaned the barrel out again. It seems the solvent dislodged a whole lot more 'gunk' that I didn't know was in there! Hopefully, this is the tar like substance I no doubt caused when I fired this gun without first running a rag through the barrel and getting rid of the protective lube. I will treat this gun with a bit more tolerance in the future! In the meanwhile, the Jukar ( cva ) continues to be the sweetest gun I ever fired, and it was 380 Euros very well spent a couple of months ago. I intend to move a step up and take it onto the 100 yard range tomorrrow. In addition, it just looks the business, whilst the Investarm, God bless it, will never look like an antique rifle no matter how hard it tries. I will probably keep it though, as I seem to be starting to be a bit of a collector.

I can not speak about your particular Investarm, but I do remember Lyman guns (manufactured by Investarm) came from the factory with a very difficult to remove ‘rust’ preventative coating, for lack of a better term, in the bore. It required something much stronger than the typical blackpowder bore cleaning solutions. Sounds like you are on the way. With the barrel removed from the stock I would recommend using the strongest solvent you have available to you for soaking and cleaning the bore. Once that factory coating is removed, the bore can be cleaned the same as any other muzzleloader after each range session.

dave951 said:

One other thing not often looked into is the geometry of hammer to nipple. A misfire could well be the result of the hammer not fully impacting the to of the nipple or hitting at an angle. Check that first. Next, use only real black powder.

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The one pictured appears to be a flintlock. No nipple

flconch53 said:

The one pictured appears to be a flintlock. No nipple

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Yup, but if you read his post, he makes no mention of flintlock. In fact, both pix are bog standard pix from the net.

dave951 said:

Yup, but if you read his post, he makes no mention of flintlock. In fact, both pix are bog standard pix from the net.

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Just reread it see no mention of either cap or flint

dave951 said:

Yup, but if you read his post, he makes no mention of flintlock. In fact, both pix are bog standard pix from the net.

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The one on the carpet isn't, I took it myself. Both are percussion - hence the OP being in the percussion rifles section, and both have nipples. The picture of the Investarm is indeed from the internet. I did lazily put a picture of a flintlock in there by mistake, as I hadn't photographed my own investarm when I wrote the OP. Here is a proper picture of both rifles together. I have tried update the OP but it won't let me!

A common problem I have found is 'burrs' in the flash channel and fouling can build up on them and cause misfires. Have a competent gunsmith or someone who knows what they are doing smooth out the flash channels - even opening up to a bigger diameter if posible. I find a thorough clean with hot water after a range session will usually let me shoot the next match without any issues. I then use WD40 or good old Young's 303 oil to keep it good. On my CVA Kentucky which has the same breeching system as your Jukar - I actually ran a drill (very extended) down the barrel and opened up the breech to the thread diameter of the drum and then faced off the drum so it still engages the breech plug - creates a much larger 'antechamber' in the breech so far ignition has been absolutely 100% -I did reproof the assembly after this surgery. The L&R RPL lock helps too.

Sir Boniface Harrison said:

The one on the carpet isn't, I took it myself. Both are percussion - hence the OP being in the percussion rifles section, and both have nipples. The picture of the Investarm is indeed from the internet. I did lazily put a picture of a flintlock in there by mistake, as I hadn't photographed my own investarm when I wrote the OP. Here is a proper picture of both rifles together. I have tried update the OP but it won't let me!

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Thank you for clarification

Sir Boniface Harrison said:

so it's Probably my fault for firing the gun before giving it a preliminary clean.

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Yes, that will cause a problem. With the very first firing.
That is a common negligence and there are basic solutions too that issue that can be somewhat hazardous.
It can be debated or resolved.
Without knowing your abilities, location and personal resolve there is little that can help here.
perhaps a PM?