Hawkens green mt barrel

[bigted]

Busy weekend but, Fri got the opportunity to begin polishing the barrel.

Ran medium grit valve seating water based solution full strokes up and down for 100 in n outs.

Patched the barrel to remove most of the grit, followed by patchs of green scrub pads soaked in ballistol/water mix as well as having sprayed several pumps down bore before. Did this around 200 times replacing the scrub pad patch every 25 evolutions.

Have it very shiny now and a tight dry patch goes down and out nice and smooth now.

Will report back when I get to field test it to see if it still destroys patch's.

Patch lube consists of having tried SPG, ballistol, spit and my own mix of bee wax/Vaseline. Any of these have served well in the past.

Tried .010 patch, .015 patch and .018thickness around a .530 ball.

Have a few .535 balls I will take along but the torn up patch's are the problem to solve first I believe.

 

[bigted]

Got to take the smoothed barrel to the range today.

Very happy camper here. Loaded her up and my home cast .530's slid rite down wrapped in a .015 patch. Shot to point of aim at 35 yards. Downing the powder, I wrapped another .530 sprue up and slid it down on the powder with one straight push. Every shot loaded the same for 12 rounds. Put 7 in a ragged hole and switched aiming points and three in a hole. Shot a few at stuff on the bank hitting everything I aimed at.

Patch recovery showed I could probably use them again ... just black smudge on the middle but useable.

Very happy with it. We should get along well now. Maybe get along even better because of the effort.

 

[Zonie]

Got to take the smoothed barrel to the range today.

Very happy camper here. Loaded her up and my home cast .530's slid rite down wrapped in a .015 patch. Shot to point of aim at 35 yards. Downing the powder, I wrapped another .530 sprue up and slid it down on the powder with one straight push. Every shot loaded the same for 12 rounds. Put 7 in a ragged hole and switched aiming points and three in a hole. Shot a few at stuff on the bank hitting everything I aimed at.

Patch recovery showed I could probably use them again ... just black smudge on the middle but useable.

Very happy with it. We should get along well now. Maybe get along even better because of the effort.

If you were just using that "one straight push" as a description of how easily the load went down the bore, that's fine but, if you really did ram the ball with one big straight push, do yourself a favor. Don't do that again.

The right way to ram a patched ball down a barrel is to do it in stages. Usually, each stage means you will grab the ramrod about a foot above the muzzle and then push the ramrod and ball down the barrel until you hand hits the muzzle. Then move your hand up about a foot and do it again over and over until the ball has seated on the powder.

Seating the patched ball using one long push like they do in the movies is a classic way of breaking your ramrod and getting the broken end stuck thru your hand or forearm.

 

[bigted]

Preciate your advice Zone. As a fact your description of proper wood ramrod use is the exact way I do it when I use the WOOD ramrod.

However ... and Should have mentioned that I use my metal range rod when at the range.

The smoothness of this freshly hand worked bore is very easy to load ... and accurate. The effort paid off in spades.