Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. The gun I have is a Spanish Jukar, I did a little research on them and there seems to be a variety of opinions -while it seems to shoot well, it's probably just a $100 gun.
About cleaning it -after the range I did a quick cleaning, and having been reassured by my friend that powder today probably wasn't corrosive, didn't think much of it. I believe it was pyrodex, a bp substitute, so maybe I was lulled into thinking it was new and different...
Later that night I looked up online whether or not it was corrosive, and saw that it was. I guess that sulphur smell during firing means it's not as gentle as modern smokeless stuff... Anyways, I went down and took it apart more thoroughly, made sure to clean the nipple, the lock and the barrel thoroughly with warm water then again with Hoppes 9. I tried to look up the best way to clean these guns, and it seemed most folks take the barrels off. Only problem with this cheap gun is that there seem to be pins in the stock attached to the barrel making it too much of a pain.
As for a range report -the gun seemed to shoot accurately at the target we'd set at about 80 yards. I definately hit it with a 60 gr. load, and I think the lighter loads I shot were hitting just under the target. I don't know if I trust the build quality to go much above 65 grains on the gun, maybe that would be a good max load for deer next season. Oh, and the fix I needed to make on the gun to get it to fire was the nipple. The hole on the one it came with didn't even seem to go all the way through, but the new one works great. Only problem is that the hammer doesn't quite fall perfectly square on the nipple, making cap placement tricky and it led to a couple misfires. Overall, I think this bp stuff is a blast, and it seems to be cheap too! :grin:
.45 cal