As it says in the title, I have graduated! It seemed like such a momentous occasion (if only in my own mind). I was having a nice little morning shoot at the best little range in the canyon when I became only slightly distracted. I know that most of you could just fill in the story from here, but I'm having such fun recounting it that I'll just continue. As I was saying...distracted; I had just popped off a shot and reloaded. I placed my cap on "Ol' Reliable" (a Lyman .54), took careful aim squoze the trigger and pop....replaced the cap, repeated and pop! No boom . This was new territory for me in several years of shooting my front stuffer. When I sent the range rod down the bore it became readily obvious that I forgot to precede the ball with powder. Thanks to many years of learning from all of you on this forum, it was a simple matter of feeding a few grains of powder into the patent breech through the clean out screw in the snail, cap, pop and silly mistake rectified. I don't want to repeat this error again, but it does feel like somewhat of a graduation of sorts.