Dirty Barrel

[Bald Baron]

Well I took Sweets to the range on Friday to give her the last little tweek before the season opens. I wanted to zero her at fifty yards because of our dense foilage. I first wiped the barrel with a clean dry patch, shot at 8x10 sheet of paper with a bulls eye in the middle and missed the hold thing. How could that happen? Reloaded and hit the bulls eye from then on. Surely Sweet does'nt want to stay nasty all the time.

 

[Zonie]

What your seeing, happens to all rifles but is most notable with Black Powder guns. The first shot out of all of my guns goes wide of the mark.
This is the reason when people are in a target match they are given a "fouling shot" which doesn't count towards the score.
This seems to occure worst in guns whech were taken apart to clean them and then reassembled.

When a gun is shot there are all kinds of wierd vibrations, expansions, and osculations happening to the barrel so my own theory is "the first shot seats the barrel back where it was when I sighted it in last".
To see if my theory is pure bunk you might take your gun out and shoot a few shots. Then using rags to protect the wood, clean the gun without taking it apart (at the range or where ever your shooting), dry and lightly oil the bore, reload and take your best shot to see if it is still hitting where it was before cleaning.
If it is still hitting the same place your problem is solved.
Note, I have never tried this so I don't know how it will work.

Any one else out there with any ideas??

 

[tg]

This is a hit and miss phenom. with ML guns, you might try a tighter patch and ball on the first shot, some guns don't care some do. I have never had this problem with all the ones I have used, playing around with lube and powders may give you a good shot out of a clean barrel also.

 

[LRB]

TG and ZONIE both have good suggestions. DOn't know what kind of gun your shooting, but I have always had better luck with tight loads. If your gun is a T-C hawken or that type, I would suggest glass-bedding the tang and the barrel up to the wedge area or maybe the entire barrel. You may even put some on the tang face to give the barrel an even seat against it. I would try a tighter load first and save the bedding as a last resort, but often it cures such problems, especially with the removable barrels.

 

[No Powder]

Don't know what kind of patches you are using, but if using precut patches it is possible to NOT get the patch centered so that one side of the ball is against the barrel and patch is against the other side. It won't fly true that way and sometimes on the first load your in a hurry to smell that black powder and not as careful with the loading. Been there done that.

 

[roundball]

When I started with muzzleloaders I had heard of this "first shot / next shots" deal so I started out using the approach of always sighting in for the first shot out of a clean barrel, but I quickly found that subsequent shots are also on the mark.

All I shoot are TC Hawkens, Hornady or Speer
.440, .490, and .530 balls with .018" prelubed natural lube 1000 pillow ticking patches...

 

[musketman]

When I use to practice this, (before musket days) I would fire a half-charge only first, no projectile, just powder.

Just enough to get the lands and grooves fouled a bit, then I would load as normal, this seemed to work for me well.

I would do this before I would leave to go hunting, this way I would not spook the deers.
(of course the neighbors freaked out a bit, but hey, they didn't need their snooze alarms then.)