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THIS! If you're lucky, you may find some that will be happy to give you the "kame" (channel) scraps to avoid hauling them to a scrap dealer and/or paying hazmat disposal fees (depending on jurisdiction). Most kames are pure or close to it, although some may be alloyed for greater strength, and...

Are you asking about something you saw a picture of or something you saw mentioned or described? I faintly recall seeing something that might be this that was kind of like a percussion cap dispenser. The container (bag??, flask??) had a "spout" that had notches cut in the two sides with just...

Strictly speaking, none. All you need is one good spark from the frizzen (properly called the hammer in period terminology) to bounce into the touch hole and land on a grain of powder to make it fire. Of course, that's not very reliable. Almost all of us have had that happen accidentally at...

My experience with cut flints other than Herr Sifter's was that sharpening them with a diamond lap was slower than knapping by any of several techniques, but not really onerous. That said, I have not bothered with cut flints since, although I am curious about the difference between his flints...

I have always read it as referring to punching "card" wads out of old well compacted saddle leather, and using those in some combination with the tow. Regards, Joel

Congratulations, and welcome to the club. That's my .50" Kentucky in my avatar photo. It's one of the earlier ones (I forget the proof date) that were actually .510" bore. Regards, Joel

To start learning about muzzleloading smoothbores, there is no better place to start than our member Spence10's Black Powder Notebook website. Much reading from both original sources and his experiences. And besides the information he provides, his stories alone are worth the visit. Have fun...

I can't help with the price, but the one I handled (not for sale :( )was SWEET! Good balance, light, very well made but not fancy, excellent condition, and still in regular use. The owner took his first deer with it - he'd had it a LONG time. And yes, the idea of hunting with an original is...

I have heard reference to using a tinder tube to light a candle (or stub) in fire lighting. Is anyone familiar with this? Does one light the candle wick directly from the coal, or does one melt some wax off the candle into the tinder-tube coal then blow that up into a flame? Regards, Joel

There are a couple of factors at play here. Black powder burns most consistently with a certain amount of settling & compression, and this has been extensively explored in the context of BPCR and percussion precision shooting. Ignition can be a different matter. Percussion ignition systems...

Is it me, or are the lines of the Pedersoli Pennsylvania/Kentucky/Alamo rifles not reminiscent of that rifle? Regards, Joel

Request for clarification: are you talking about btech's photo or Shine's, since you appear to be replying to Shine? Regards, Joel

With muzzleloaders, only one of more than a second - that was in the few-to-several-seconds range (can no longer recall the count). With center-fires and OLD ammo, several in the fraction-to-few-second range and one that was more than 10 seconds (again, cannot recall the count). None have been...

azmntman, the other consideration is that there has to be enough thickness in the several inches behind the muzzles of the barrels of the double to safely remove up to .040" in the expansion chambers. Regards, Joel

If nothing else, there were "speed loaders" for fowling guns in the 18th and 19th centuries. I've seen both documentation of them and photos of surviving examples. Sorta like the modern plastic ones, they were double-ended with shot in one side and powder in the other, but were made as two...

That's an early-production Pedersoli Kentucky .50 lying on a Mulie doe it took in my avatar photo. The small lock is fast but maybe a bit more finicky than the much larger one on my Frontier, or the L&R Mantons on my double. I'm quite happy with it. Regards, Joel

I don't have the documentation but have read of experiments that proved that radiant heat from the flash was sufficient to ignite the charge. A thin window-pane of transparent mica was placed over the flash hole and the charge still fired consistently. Naturally, they had to replace the mica...

I'm not the killer of stumps, but I have shot Breneke slugs, however only in those firearms that load from the wrong end. They work well. Regards, Joel

You will likely find that a single O/S card is too thin to seal even in a perfect bore, as is even a full 0.5" cushion wad by itself. When Iron Jim first wrote about simplifying life by carrying only O/S cards, he found 2 over the powder sufficient in his gun(s?). My 16ga has somewhat rough...

I couldn't find a comprehensive one in a quick websearch, but I found some bits using "steel shot brinell hardness" as search terms. I originally read it in a discussion of just this subject on a shotgun board that expanded into the various hard and soft (comparitively) tungsten-based shot...