.45 Cal. Load Development - Accuracy - Terminal Results On Game

[cottonmouth]

Side Lock,
This sounds like a very interesting venture! You never know what develops when test like these are started. Looking forward to your results and also more on the bullet guide! :thumbsup:

 

[jmforge]

" Conical Bullet of Proper Design"....... Says it all. Now, you want to use late 19th century bullet design in a 17th century designed firearm. Why bother shooting the old guns?????

You are free to do as you please. But, just don't call it " Traditional hunting" when you do so. If you want a deer to drop in its tracks, shoot it with a .58, or bigger PRB out of a traditional rifle at 130 yards or less.

Yes, we all know that a .44, or .45 caliber bullet with a large meplate thumps deer very hard, and its unheard of that the deer drops in its tracks. A 20 or 12 Gauge slug will do the same in the traditional foster slug form. That is not the issue.

We are talking rather about what works very well in traditional guns. That means, the first half of the 19th century and before. ( The forum rules stop at 1865 just to politely include the last of the official use of MLers in battles, while we all know that very weak breech loading cartridges were in the works as much as 40 years before that time.)

I addressed the question posed: I did not intend, or did I desire to open this up to a wider discussion of Traditional Vs. Modern bullet design. If you want to hunt with modern bullets, use them in modern guns, okay??? :surrender:

Sorry, Paul, but I gotta poke at you. What I was talking about were bullets from the 1850's and 60's fired from guns form the same period. As for the previous comment about American hunters using conicals, what kind of guns were most of these hunters using prior to the coming of mass production cartridge arms? I doubt that many of them were using firearms of the quality that many of the guys on here make today. If you are the type who is so PC that your rifle MUST have a barrel hand forged from wrought iron, then you should probably stick with round ball and be happy. BUT, if you are looking to build a roifle with a 4140 steel barrel, why not play around with what the masters were messing with before caplocks went the way of the dodo? By the way.....take that picket bullet, flatten the base, make it way a little over twice what a round ball of the same caliber weighs and give it "wings" and a hollow point and you pretty much have an express bullet. :grin: For all of the alleged griping in the 1840;s etc about the state of English rifles, the contemporary writings that I have seen seem to agree that the late hihg velocity percussion rifles from firms like Purdey, Henry Holland, Alexander Henry, etc were they greatest thing since sliced bread. AND these are traditional firearms unless you are of the opinion that "tradition" ceased circa 1840. Why would you exclude the last hurrah of the muzzleloader designers and yet deign to include cheap guns up though 1865 (while holding your nose when talking about anything made after the fur trade fell apart) because they were used in the American Civil War? That would be like excluding the clipper ships, which were the pinnacle of design for their type, from a serious discussion about great sailing vessels just because they worked side by side with early steam vessels for a brief time. :wink: I would argue that any cheaper firearm, particularly military weapons, made in Britain, France or the US after say 1800 should be classified as "modern" because they were produced in an industrial setting using interchangable parts, whereas guns like the ones from the London makers were still pretty much totally hand made in the shop. :hmm:

 

[paulvallandigham]

Joe: The early percussion guns were NO THINGS OF Beauty, that can be sure. The military guns were converted from Flintlocks. You go to the 1842 model percussion rifles to find the first Rifled Percussion action Military rifles adopted for U.S. forces. Its not a bad gun, nor are the replicas, but it is no thing of grace. I believe that is why so many people have fallen in love with the plains rifles, and the " Hawken". The lines of these guns, even in percussion, are pleasing to the eye.

Shoot what you want. I just think talking about using heavy conicals, with wide meplates, in Traditional rifles is NON-Traditional. What is the point of shooting these guns if you are going to be stuffing 20th century designed bullets down them???

I have and shoot such bullets in my cartridge guns. They are fine. I recommend them for lots of uses. In some calibers, I would not use anything else. For hunting certain game, I WOULD NOT use anything else in a handgun.

I first saw the damage a PRB can do when I was a deer checker back in 1967, in S. Illinois. We had to check the deer brought in for age, weight, sex, number of shots that hit, ask about shots taken, and a half dozen other questions. I saw the entrance and exit wounds of deer shot at various distances with .45, .50, and .54 caliber Mlers. Back then, MLers were much in the minority, and better than 90% of the deer checked at the station were taken with 12 gauge shotgun slugs.

When I finally took my first deer with my .50 caliber rifle, the ball broke a rib going in, penetrated both lungs, and the aortic arch, and broke another rib before exiting. I don't know how much more dead you could expect from any cartridge bullet. The exit hole was about .75 caliber, as was the chunk of rib missing on that side of the deer.

I was sold on the PRB as a hunting projectile, and better understood why my forefathers were quite content to explore new country and risk their lives to move West to settle this country, armed with these rifles, shooting these projectiles. At least I admit my bias. And, in this one case, I don't feel any need to apologize about it at all.

Lets agree to disagree on this. :hatsoff:

 

[jmforge]

My original intent was to raise the question that maybe a lot of the conicals that we use today are, in fact, variations on cartridge bullets that we have been trying to adapt to the muzzleloading paradigm. I have become interested in how the guys did it back then when they were trying to wring the maximum amount of performance out of the front loaders of the day. A lot of that stuff didn't translate to cartridge firearms, and you are correct in stating that a lot of people expect cartridge technology to adapt seamlessly to muzzleloaders.
I guess this is kind of similar to my interest in the design of the "fighting bowies" made during the equally brief period of time in history when the bowie knife went from being a beefed up butcher knife to what was for some folks, a replacement for other edged weapons like the small sword. The introduction of reliable and affordable repeating firearms spelled the end of the big fighting bowie, but some folks made some really cool knives in that short time period and many today consider them to be the last and one of the best edged weapons ever in their size class.
I would like to explore what the great gunmakers were doing with the percussion guns at the end of their reign. I have found that this information is a bit scarce outside of reading old material or occasionally seeing these high grade guns from the 1850's and 60's come up for sale or auction and sell for outrageous prices!!. To my mind, the real Hawken rifles are of this same lineage. They are fine weapons built by master craftsmen who gave you the best they had while still using what was the most current technology and expected to be paid a reasonable, albeit goodly amount of money for their work. The old "built to a standard, not to a price" thing. I am not as interested in what kind of rudimentary rifle Muskrat Bill the Wild Fur Trader carried, but then again, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about what Bubba buys on sale at Sportsman's Warehouse. :grin:

 

[zimmerstutzen]

I've always been interested in the long range target shooting with muzzleloaders. Kind of like the Irish Team lost with at Creedmore.

So very much of recent muzzleloading advancement has indeed been a reinvention of century old ideas. Every time I see the "New and Improved" inlines, I am intrigued by the resemblence of them to really old ideas. For instance the Remington Genesis looks remarkably like a Pheonix Target rifle of the 1870's.

There's little doubt that PRB's are not long range propositions despite the feats of Tim Murphy. Conicals in a somewhat revolutionary way, extended the killing range of volley firing shoulder to shoulder armies. And the earliest cartridge military guns were likewise not built for accuracy so much as reloading firepower in a world where volley fire was still the general mentality.

Sniping is nearly as old as firearms themselves. But is wasn't until the experiments of ballisticians of the 1830 to 1860 time period that we got an idea of what was possible from a scientific and technical viewpoint. The guns that were made for this long range accuracy were not common to say the least.

Mention a centerfire-muzzleloading rifle to the vast majority of people and you get a bizarre look. Only those who know about Harry Pope and the few others who made such guns understand the possibilities and accuracy such rifles are capable of. They aren't really guns, they are scientific machinery possessing a precision still nearly unheard of in firearms.

One account that I read of Billy Dixon, was that at the time of Adobe Walls,(1872?) his buffalo hunting rifle was a long range muzzleloader. ( Remember that his famed shot was made with a Sharps borrowed from the tavern keeper.) Early Buff hunting industry began before the long range cartridge gun was even available. Remington and Sharps didn't have long range cartridge guns in production in the 1860's.

There were hunters using special muzzleloading rifles, however uncommon.

I personally favor the PRB. But if someone wants to revisit the technology of that limited period and style of shooting , I find it hard to understand why anyone would be offended.

 

[BrownBear]

Bingo! :thumbsup:

 

[CoyoteJoe]

Let me just add this quote from Ned Roberts "The muzzleloading Cap Lock rifle" page 183.
"Thus I know from actual experience that the double barreled muzzle-loading rifle of 44 or 45 caliber with a soft lead picket bullet weighing 275-350 grains backed by 75-90 grains of good black powder in the hands of an experienced hunter-rifleman is a very effective killer on deer, black bear, caribou and moose, all of which I saw Uncle Alvaro kill with that Billinghurst double rifle before he adopted the breech-loading hunting rifle."
Now old Ned was writing of the results of a bear hunt in 1876, which is really into the breech loading era, I doubt such loads were really common 20 years earlier. I personally have always felt that a .45 caliber rifle with bullets of 300-350 grains loaded up to 1600-1800 fps would make a dandy hunting rifle for all Colorado big game. Something like the 45/90 or the British .450 Black Powder Express breechloaders. It should give a point blank range of at least 150 yards without excessive weight or recoil. Unfortunately Colorado has set a .50 caliber minimum for elk although I have no doubt a .45 caliber 300 grain bullet would be better on elk than any .50 or .54 caliber ball.
I eagerly await the further results of your experiment SideLock.

 

[jmforge]

A LOT of the fine firearms that you see people build on forums like this were not what you would ever call "common" in the modern sense of the word nor would they have been afordable to many folks back in the day. A great many of them were custom built or "one off" pieces if you will. Many of the guns that I am talking about did not see wide spread use first and foremost because they would have cost someone like a skilled 1840 fur trapper perhaps as much 40% of his annual gross revenue and the average agricultural worker a full years salary or more and that is only if they could have taken a trip to London to order one. :grin: These guns are the ancestors of the later double rifles and game guns which sell today for amounts in the low six figures and the cusom bolt rifles that start at 5 figures and go up from there. The difference is that today, we can actually reasonably replicate the older percussion guns in our little workshops for a semi-reasonable price using ready made parts and a good bit of elbow grease, albeit without all of he engraving, platinum blowout plugs and other such luxuries. The idea of being able to own a reasonable facsimile of something that, had we been alive in 1865, we could never have dreamed of buying is kinda cool.

 

[Dphar]

Just read the book and you will see you don't know what you are talking about. Read the book and then I will converse with you. You asked for a document, and you will find many documented examples by those who were there and did. Certainly you would not be afraid to read it.

I have read the book NUMEROUS times.
You need to READ it and not just look at the pictures of bullets and jump to conclusions.

For example the Rigby LR MLs used by the Irish team were not hunting rifles. They were high trajectory at hunting ranges (relative to a HV RB or Express rifle) but were wonderfully accurate at KNOWN ranges with the proper sights. They were not hunting rifles they were target rifles designed to comply with a certain set of rules for 800-900-1000 yard rifle matches. I am sure someone shot game with one. But this does not make it a HC hunting rifle for the 1870s or more importantly *practical* for the purpose.
YOU are NOT recreating what Roberts was doing, or Chapman (who was shooting picket bullets long before Roberts was born) or the other people shooting hunting and offhand rifles with the picket bullet.
Nor are you recreating what Warner, Perry and a host of others were doing with their super accurate bench guns. Most of which weighed 25 pounds or more. 35 to 40 is common some were much heavier. There is a Warner in the Cody museum that likely weighs 40 pounds at least. Warner built a 68 or 69 caliber for one match and it shot so well nobody would shoot against it.
You are not doing what Schalck and many, many other were doing in making offhand target rifles and some multi-purpose guns. The multi-purpose guns generally came with moulds for RB and picket. See Roberts again note the photos of pickets and Rbs for the same rifle.
There is a Gumpf mould in Whiskers "Gunsmiths of Landcaster County" that has a RB cavity, a pointed picket cavity and a "double ball" bullet about 2 calibers long round on both ends. But no grooves. Its apparently for a cloth patch just like the other 2.
You seem to have read what you wanted to into Roberts and seem to have an agenda that sounds remarkably like Toby Bridges. He likes to show scoped MLs, selectively cropped photos, and such never mentioning that they were target guns and likely have no loading rod.
Look at the number of rifles in Roberts that have no provision for a loading rod. These are not hunting rifles.
Look at the number with rods that have been turned for a starter vs the ones for the RB only.
Then how many have a false muzzle. A man would be silly to hunt with a false muzzle equipped gun. Damaging the ram of a guide starter is bad enough. PITA to repair/make if the ram is damaged or the entire tool is lost. These things were made to close tolerance.

25+ years ago I did baffle board penetration tests using RBs and 54 maxis (poor hunting bullet BTW). You know what I found? I found that based on penetration obtained on actual animals with a FL pistol with 800 fps MV that a 50 caliber RB rifle would shoot through deer and antelope, either completely or to the offside hide at 200 yards. The rifle penetrated the same at 200 as the pistol did at 25.
Yes the maxi-ball penetrated better. But the RB would shoot through a deer at a distance that few people could hit one so what was the point?

The ML hunting rifles Roberts used with bullets use CLOTH PATCHED PICKET BULLETS. Not PP, not "naked" bullets. He was also comparing the effectiveness to his 44-40 WCF which, along with the 38-40 is a p==s poor deer cartridge. A 45 RB is better. If used in a repeater the bullets are usually hard and make pencil diameter wound channels. BTDT. Deer still died in about 40 yards.
Also note that Robert's Read and Uncle Alvaro's Billinghurst had slow twist barrels that did not foul much with C&H Diamond grain.

My problem here is your trying to tell me that shooting GG and PP bullets in ML HUNTING RIFLES with 777 and Pyrodex is historically correct. Its not IT CANNOT BE since Pyrodex/777 is a MODERN propellant. 777 in particular was designed to give high velocity in inlines. So for the traditional minded shooter your experiment is a waste of powder and lead. Nor will BP produce the velocities the 777 will and it will barely keep pace with Pyrodex since its not blackpowder either.
The picket bullet had been in use in Eastern American since the 1830s at least. Garrard in "Wah-to-Yah and The Taos Trail" mentions a man with a Hawken shooting a bullet 1 inch long. But the ball was still more common. Picket rifles are almost always turned round at the muzzle. Look at the old rifles. How many surviving hunting weight rifles 10-12 pounds, have false muzzles or are turned for a starter? They are out there but they are badly out numbered. Chapman liked the false muzzle for picket bullets.
But it was mostly used for target work. Read Chapman's "The Improved American Rifle". I think his accuracy claims are a little exaggerated but a lot of shooters were using them for target work. Chapman favored a false muzzle even for the picket bullet. Most American ML Schuetzen rifles shot picket bullets some were identical to the.
You will note that one of Robert's hunting companions Cousin Alvin I think, was using a Spencer.
The ranges for the bear hunt were often in FEET.
Yes, a soft lead 300 gr +- bullet will work very well in 40-45 caliber. I have used them in 40and 45 caliber BP cartridge rifles. It might surprise folks here that a 300-350 grain bullet works better on deer than a heavy slug will.
But back to MLs. Sidelock is wanting to duplicate inline ballistics with a side lock. To what end? What is the point. Especailly in the east where a lot of traditional ML hunters us SMOOTHBORES.

A 20 bore RB weighs about 350 grains.
These are very effectice on big game and at the ranges Roberts was shooting bears would have worked just as well.

Most dedicated picket rifles have twists in the 30-36" range or a gain twist (very common) ending in this range. The slower twist guns like the 48", which will shoot bullets to 2 calibers long fairly well, BUT the bullets are poorly stablized and tend to veer off course when striking flesh. The minie ball was notorious for veering off course. British surgeons in the Crimean War found this out.
Now a 18 twist will track straight. But its not a twist used in hunting guns in the 19th century. In fact the British BPE cartridge guns all had pretty slow twists since they shot light bullets. The 450 BPE, for example, used bullets for 270 to 360 grains.

The problem with high pressure loads is nipple erosion. It happens. If you are using a steel nipple with high pressure loads and claim its lasted 200 rounds you are not paying attention.
If you run a stainless nipple you may or may not get long life out of it. At 80 grains in my 40 caliber picket rifle I immediately started getting a lot of gas out the nipple. But it shoots better than 70 though I suspect that the nipple, from examination, is already shot out past target accuracy. Its had less than 100 rounds though it. But it is a soft stainless.

To recap. I have already shot quite a number of animals over the years with lead RBs and bullets of varying lengths. The kicker is that a deer shot in the lungs with a 30-06, a 6.5x55 or a 7mm mag, or a 38-40 or a 50-54-58 or .662 RB will travel about the same distance on AVERAGE.
I have shot deer with a 50 caliber RB at 140 yards and had them pile up on 50 yards or less.I have shot them with the same rifle and had them run 200. I have shot deer with a 400 gr FP PP from a 44-90, this thing was a masher, and had them run 150 yards with a perfect lung shot.
You see were I am going here? I have never shot deer with anything that would reliably drop a deer in its tracks. My brother-in-law tells me that a 25-06 with an 87 grain will do this. My mother shot one with his 25-06 and was mad as hell since she lost about 1/2 the deer to bloodshot.
Where the projectile is placed is far more important than want it is. A good lung shot with a 38-40 BP load, a 45-70-350 or a 45-70 325 at 2000 at the muzzle or a 45-66 caliber RB will produce the same result. There will die in a less than a minute, probably with in 10-20 seconds and within 100 yards of the bullets impact.
As I tried to point out before, the "naked" bullet in MLs has problems besides blowing the hammer to half-cock and this is one reason they were not used. I built a 45 caliber fast twist ML back near 30 years ago. It was a target rifle. It never occured to me to hunt with it. I didn't need it. I had better rifles for the job. Either my RB shooting Flintlocks or BPCRs shooting light to moderate weight bullets. It also ate nipples so that they needed replacing every 20-30 rounds. But I think I said that already.
The 40-70 with a 300 gr FP of 1:40 alloy with FFG black is a good killer on deer and it makes 1"+ exit wounds in Antelope if shot though the shoulders. Antelope piles up in 40-100 yards. A 40-90 with 80 odd grains of FFG Goex will make big wound channels in elk at 175 yards. About like a 30-06. But its not a HC ML hunting rifle either. It was a Winchester Single Shot action with a Shiloh barrel.

Like I said I have already done this stuff. Repeatedly in some cases. I shot the 45 ML bullet rifle to 1200 yards and it did pretty well if the barrel was kept warm. I had the barrel cut with a .456" BORE so I could thumb start a Lyman 457125.
While not complelety HC it was a heck of a lot closer than you shooting replica powder at 1800+ fps.

If you read my posts they were not about the killing power. They are about the practicality and the HC aspects. The heavy conical and even the Picket have some serious down sides. The PRB is simple, it works very well too. When used with BP it is iron clad historically correct.
I have never had an instance were I could blame a soft lead bullet for failing to kill game as I expected. I cannot say the same for jacketed bullets. Problems with lead bullets have always been operator error. Rbs penetrate plenty well enough. A friend told me of a 54 round ball passing though a BC Canada moose at 175 yards (Lasered) moose piled up in a few feet.
The problem is that you have come a mostly traditional ML forum with an inline mentality. Most folks with experience know they don't need this stuff.
If you are going to do testing then you need to test the PRB in the common calibers, 45-50-54-62 and 69 too. Then test a 270-320 gr picket. The 300-350 grain picket, BTW makes the 45 caliber into something similar to the 62 RB. The advantage of the picket over the minie is that the picket can use large powder charges. The HC Mini and other deep hollow based bullets cannot. If you try them you will find the larger RB guns 62 and up, really are powerhouses to 150-180 yards. My 16 bore will break 2" sandstone/mudstone/limestone at 180 yards with a WW ball. It will launch a 4 gallon jug of water 3 feet in the air at 30 yards or so with 140 grains of FFG (only 32% of ball weight).
Its accurate, its hard hitting, its 100% HC for 1800 and it operates at lower pressure than most 32-40 caliber RB rifles.
I don't need a conical or even a picket. If I do, and where I live I do some times, I use a brass suppository gun. We have not inflicted ourselves with a ML season here and hopefully won't.
Another book you might scan though is "Pondoro" by John Taylor. He mentions shooting African elephant and Rhino with a 10 bore smoothbore with a 165 grains of black and a hardened ball when his ammo shipment got misdirected back in the 1930s. Never lost an animal he shot. IIRC he killed 14 "good bulls" and some rhino before the supply of hardened balls was exhausted.

Dan

Roberts shows GG bullets on page 47 of my "Bonanza Books" NRA edition. The GG are surely from a Schalck Schuetzen rifle (see page 27). Schalck used false muzzles too, I would have to get the Schuetzen book from upstairs to confirm, not worth it. The hex bore bullet looks a lot like a Schuetzen bullet but could be a hunting rifle but its still going to have bore obstruction problems since its cast or swaged to fit the bore and WILL move. The 48 caliber PP bullet is for a 60 pound rifle. Some of the Civil War Ammo he shows as ML bullets on later pages are for Sharps and Smith BL percussion carbines. At any rate its all MILITARY applications. Sharps made a lot on hunting rifles back to the early 1850s that used GG bullets. But they were BREECHLOADERS. Yes the bullet technology was known but it is not practical since "naked" bullets will neither seal the bore from moisture or stay on the powder reliably ESPECIALLY if horse back. See "Firearms of The American West" Vol I By Worman and Garvaglia for the problems the cavalry had with loose fitting loads.
I don't see why this is so difficult to understand.

The various multi part, hard nose/soft base bullets are for 20-40 rod and longer range target rifles. Who would go to the trouble to cast two part bullets and then swage them to shoot deer with??? Especially with a hard nose. The moulds and swage would likely cost 4-5 times what a RB or picket mould would with no increase in effectiveness. The paper patching is a big pain too. Done lots of that.

Yes, look at Roberts but quit getting so excited about the bullets you see and note what they were actually used for.
*Practicality*. "Naked" and PP bullets are not practical in the 19th century context for hunting rifles. I am not going to repeat the problems. 2-3 times should be enough for anyone.
So far as 777 etc.

Better things to do.
Dan

 

[paulvallandigham]

Dan: What is a " GG " bullet???? I missed something, along the way, and went back and re-read your post trying to find the answer, but didn't. Thanks in advance for the explanation. Paul

 

[Joel/Calgary]

Dan: What is a " GG " bullet???? I missed something, along the way, and went back and re-read your post trying to find the answer, but didn't. Thanks in advance for the explanation. Paul

I believe it refers to grease-groove bullets, Paul.

Regards,
Joel

 

[Zonie]

You guys can keep on discussing this topic but have you noticed that the original poster is now called Anonymous?

That means he is no longer with us. :hmm:

 

[gmww]

That's really unfortunate. I was hoping to see what the research yielded.

 

[Skychief]

As I have professed elsewhere on this forum, I love the patched roundball for my hunting. I have often called them "over-achievers", based only on the opinion of the unknowing.

Pure lead patched roundballs have killed a BUNCH of 200#+ (field-dressed) whitetail bucks for me. The farthest kill was 119 long steps (just saying). I haven't shot any game farther than that even though the .490 roundball did it's job. The only failure I have had with prb's was a doe that was shot and I lost after an exhaustive track, then body search (3 days of it). The roundball didn't fail though, I did... with a hit in the paunch and foolishly jumping her up and into a huge swampy bottom. I paid some tuition fees on that hunt! :shake:

I am all for neat experiments and love to hear the results of the same. Be that as it may, the roundball RULES for thin-skinned game in my opinion. They are superb, efficient and reliable killers.

 

[Skychief]

I should also include the fact that I have killed several deer with conicals years ago. The conicals of course killed deer, but, no better than the prb's. As my friend likes to say, "dead is dead".

 

[jmforge]

One point. Selous started off using the 4 bore because someone stole his 12 bore rifle off of a wagon when he arrived in Africa. He commented that the 4 bore gun was so painful to shoot that it likely effected him physically for the rest of his life. IIRC, later in his career, he settled on using a 7mm Mauser loaded with 175 grn solids for Elephants. Not exactly a good spokesman for big round balls or big bore guns in general for hunting large game. :wink: :grin:

 

[jmforge]

You guys can keep on discussing this topic but have you noticed that the original poster is now called Anonymous?

That means he is no longer with us. :hmm:

Does that mean we ran off another evil non-PC "modern" guy? Oh, goodie!!!!! Now lets fix that forum motto. How about "Keeping Tradtion Onerous"? (insert offical Muzzleloading Forum sarcasm warning label here) :v :grin:

 

[dyemaker]

" Does that mean we ran off another evil non-PC "modern" guy? Oh, goodie!!!!! :grin: "

I'm pretty sure that's what it means. But why?

 

[Rancocas]

Wow, Dan. Either you're a silver tongued used car salesman, or you really know what you're talking about. :bow:
I don't know much of anything about ballistics or different bullet styles. I'm not interested in such things. I just know what works for me and what I like. I like to keep traditional (read rd. ball and real BP) separate from modern (read cartridge guns), and I don't care for the fudge in between the two.
This thread seems to be all about muddying up the waters. However, I am sorry if Side Lock has been run off. He might have learned what "traditional" means to many of us here. Or, maybe he did, and that's why he left.

 

[BrownBear]

You guys can keep on discussing this topic but have you noticed that the original poster is now called Anonymous?

That means he is no longer with us. :hmm:

Evidently he was locked out. I just got word from him that when he tried to sign on as Side Lock, he was denied.

:hmm: is right!