Looking for some insight

[Mnt rifle]

Hello, I've been doing a little shooting with the CVA mountain rifle I recently built and I'm looking for a little insight. I noticed that my hammer was just barely clearing the cap before striking and once it failed to set off the cap due to this...I took the hammer off and removed a fair amount of material from the inside of the hammer and now have decent clearance, and the caps are going off, but they're pretty well flattened and destroyed...is this affecting the function of the cap? Did I ruin this hammer? Part two of my question is in regards to musket caps...I became interested in them as I want my gun to be reliable in a hunting situation and I've experienced ignition failure in these CVA guns more than once, it seems that they can really only be totally relied on to go off with a few grains of powder under the nipple, even in a brand new completely clean gun...I was given a tin of RWS musket caps and ordered a nipple...when I tested a cap, it went off well, but half cocked my hammer...is this safe? Should I use a different hammer for musket caps? For reference, all failure to ignites were while shooting pyrodex ffg equivalent in a clean gun with a clear nipple.

 

[chorizo]

Try changing your mainspring on the lock. Deer creek products has them. Easy to do. It will likely solve all of your issues from popping the cap to hammer blow back. Also I recommend a treso musket nipple. Some guns can be particular. Be sure to rap you stock while tilting the gun towards the lock after putting powder in. Helps settle some powder into the flash channel.

I have had to relieve all of my hammers on my CVA's to get things just right

 

[dave951]

Hammer being blown back to half cock is a sign of either a very weak hammer spring, nipple flash hole is too large or too much powder.

 

[Dale Allen Raby]

Also... Pyrodex is not the most reliable product in side-hammer guns. Get some real black powder as soon as you are able to do so.