Armpit instead of Cow's Knee?

[MIOutdoorsman]

My primary load is 90 grains of FF, and I carry FFFF for the pan. Having zero experience in the woods with this gun yet, I suppose I may be able to see the FFFF caking up on a humid day, at which point I could switch to FF. My main reservation from that being that I haven't yet fired it with any other powder combination than my first sentence, so I'd hate to have a buck be my first experimentation.

So far, the weather forcast for this upcoming weekend is looking dry so this all may be for naught. But... it's still great to learn from those with more experience than me. Thanks gents. I do appreciate all of your opinions!

 

[Zonie]

Years ago, I ran a few experiments to see if 4F powder would "turn to soup" if it was exposed to very high humidity.
I was also interested in finding out if the "soup" would fire in a flintlock.

After running my tests I came to this conclusion.

If the 4F priming powder is in a clean pan, it will work just fine even after hours of being exposed to high humidity.

If the pan has any traces of fouling in it, the humidity will turn to water in the fouling and it will then dampen the powder.
The damp powder usually won't ignite from the shower of sparks from the frizzen.

This fouling can be found not only in the pan itself but it also exists on the underside of the pan cover which the frizzen is attached to.

The moral of the story is, if the pan, the side of the barrel and the underside of the pan cover is clean, the 4F (or even 3Fg) powder will work fine.

If any fouling at all is on one of these surfaces the powder will be dampened and will often mis-fire.

If you want to read more about my experiment, follow this link. :grin:
http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/...195260/post/283953/hl/"soup+yet"/fromsearch/1/

 

[MIOutdoorsman]

Well... My brother and I were out on Friday and Saturday. Both days were very cold, and it did snow on both days. I made cow's knees from some leather scraps for both of us. On Friday, they were packed in backpacks too deep to fuss with. On Saturday, we forgot them in the truck! I ended up using a handkerchief, my glove, and/or my armpit to keep the snow off.

My FFFF powder did absorb moisture, and caked up pretty badly on one occasion where I had to scrape it out of the pan with my fingernail at the end of our Friday hunt. This prompted me to check my powder more frequently on Saturday.

I'm going to make a point of testing out FF powder in the flash pan during my next trip to the range to see how my Lyman GPR performs using FF in the pan. Hopefully the coating on the FF will help to prevent it from absorbing moisture as quickly as the FFFF did.

Unrelated to the powder issue... I also looked down at my Lyman on Saturday and realized that one of the two barrel pins had slipped out and was gone. I ordered some spares from Track of the Wolf, and I sent an email to Lyman asking them to replace the missing one. This is a new gun, and one of the pins would fit tightly, but the other one would go in "snug" but would loosen up if you squeeze the barrel against the stock. Lesson learned... I'll be bending the replacement pin so that it's always snug!

 

[hanshi]

Out in the pouring rain on opening day I had my flintlock smoothbore as did my partner. Before I left - empty handed, no less - I fired off my gun and it fired like a champ. I had 4F in the pan.