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  1. L

    A dog tale... (long, sad, depressing)

    I sorrow for your loss. I too have lost good dogs and I know just how much it hurts to say farewell. I believe about dogs as our ancestors in pre-Christian Europe and some of the Indian tribes did: that canine love is an expression of divine love, perhaps the closest in this life we will ever...
  2. L

    DOGS

    Hard to generalize about Indians and dogs. From what I remember of the cultural anthropology I studied 40 years ago, many tribes (and perhaps most) regarded dogs as sacred -- living expressions of the Creator's love and benevolence. Others regarded dogs as food. A few tribes may have held both...
  3. L

    Last of Mohicans Bloopers

    The brief appearance of Cheech in the The Last of the Mohicans ambush scene is due to the eerie but very real capability of both still-camera and motion-picture film to sometimes function as a genuine time machine. In the real, historical battle depicted in the movie, a Cheech-like character did...
  4. L

    Enjoying the T/C Hawkins Flintlock

    I'm beginning to get the flintlock bug. Had one in my teens -- an original .69 caliber Hutchinson pistol, Dublin Castle proofmarks, c. 1770 or thereabouts and still very much a shooter in the 1950s -- but that gun was stolen in 1964, and I've not had a flinter since. I know that lock quality is...
  5. L

    New .54/Green Mountain Questions

    One ruinous problem to very much beware of with the new-fangled Green Mountain aluminum ramrods is that the brass fittings will pull out of the ends of the aluminum tubing when you use these accursed ramrods as cleaning rods or to pull a ball. This happened to me on the first day out with a...
  6. L

    Patch Ban

    Once again -- just as in its support for a renewed assault weapons ban, a total gun-show ban and the criminalization of even minor mental disorders (not to mention ongoing obstruction of the congressionally mandated Armed Pilots Program) -- the Bush Administration shows its true anti-gun colors...
  7. L

    .62 Cal. Smoothbore w/ball..what is your load?

    Oh, yeah, Rat; I forgot to mention this: That damnably oppressive tag scheme is the state's response to the more-than-50-per-cent decline in hunting and fishing license sales due to the closures. Its purpose is to inflate revenues by forcing people to buy licenses they don't want or need. I...
  8. L

    .62 Cal. Smoothbore w/ball..what is your load?

    Rat... When the road closure system was first introduced (in Whatcom County in 1972), I supported it too. But that was in 1972, long before the Democrats developed their anti-gun, anti-hunting, anti-fishing strategy of deliberately recruiting eco-fanatics into wildlife management...
  9. L

    .62 Cal. Smoothbore w/ball..what is your load?

    The few times I've driven into Eastern Washington recently -- to Okanogan last spring (a beautiful trip on the North Cascades Highway) and over by Ellensberg the year before -- there were just as many road closures and "no shooting" signs east of the mountains as west. No BS, ALL of the places...
  10. L

    things gone by...............

    Heartfelt thanks for posting this. I was born in 1940 and wouldn't trade my good childhood memories with anybody. Don't feel especially long-winded just now -- I'm a writer by trade and wrote myself plumb out finishing up a money-maker tonight, so suffice it to say I grew up mostly in the...
  11. L

    .62 Cal. Smoothbore w/ball..what is your load?

    This is interesting because during the '50s, when I hunted with an original 14-gauge (.69 caliber) percussion Lacey of London Northwest Trade Gun, what I did for round-ball ammo was cannibalize old 16-gauge "pumpkin ball" loads (probably a .62-.64 caliber round ball, plenty of those still...
  12. L

    .62 Cal. Smoothbore w/ball..what is your load?

    Re paper cartridges: I used them routinely back in the 1950s, when you could buy saltpeter for nitrating cartridge paper (which I made from tough brown wrapping paper), but those days are long gone. As I understand it, BATF regs make it illegal to make black powder -- even tiny chemistry-set...
  13. L

    Cleaning Black Powder Firearms: A Dissenting Voice

    I do likewise. Also will confess to using solvent (Hoppes #9 Plus) for between-round swab-outs: wet patch followed by two dry patches, all wool. And BP fouling does indeed "set up": be soft and greasy when you leave the range or the woods, rock hard a few hours later. Obviously some kind of...
  14. L

    Cleaning Black Powder Firearms: A Dissenting Voice

    Much agree on the monthly oiled patch and your other points are good too. Everything but my Enfield (a Parker-Hale Musketoon from the early 1970s) has a patent breech and barrel wedges, so barrel removal for cleaning is easy and was clearly intended so by the designers and gunsmiths. This was...
  15. L

    Cleaning Black Powder Firearms: A Dissenting Voice

    I just spent the last hour writing a reply, quoting from a British musketry manual, and my server (or more probably this site) malfunctioned and ate it -- destroying all my work. Basically, what I said was that leaving non-stainless steel or iron in contact with water for two hours will...
  16. L

    Cleaning Black Powder Firearms: A Dissenting Voice

    Another of my trade secrets is to save my old, past-darning wool sox and cut them up into cleaning patches. For muzzle loaders -- especially rifles but smoothbores too -- these are many times more effective than cotton patches, even the fairly coarse GI patches available from SARCO and other...
  17. L

    Cleaning Black Powder Firearms: A Dissenting Voice

    Sorry. Saw a couple of entries back awhile touting various Magical Mystery Tour cleaning methods -- and obviously got the wrong impression. My sincere apologies; that crow is pretty chewy (but tasty if marinated for a couple of days in the right kind of moonshine). :) In fact I'm liking this...
  18. L

    .62 Cal. Smoothbore w/ball..what is your load?

    Longbarrel, if you're in the Knoxville area, check out the Volunteer Rifle and Pistol Club. My late father was a club officer during the '50s and '60s and I shot there often as a teenager: rifle ranges of 500 and 1000 yards, a 50-yard pistol range big enough to accommodate about 50 shooters...
  19. L

    Cleaning Black Powder Firearms: A Dissenting Voice

    I had a number of original muzzle loaders in my teens and early 20s (the 1950s and early 1960s). While all these firearms had rust blemishes and dings aplenty on their exteriors, most had bright unpitted bores in excellent condition. One such gun, with a genuinely perfect bore, was an...
  20. L

    .62 Cal. Smoothbore w/ball..what is your load?

    Thanks for raising this question, and thanks to everyone who answered it. On a trade I got a .54, 1" Thompson/Center roundball barrel some idiot had ruined by improper cleaning, and I had Ed Rayl freshen it out to 20-gauge (61 caliber). But since I was forced out of my home and had to move...
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