My Baker Rifle - finally finished and firing

[Relic shooter]

And a bit of video of my first shot(s) from when I took it down to our local range with a good mate to test it out at 50 metres. I was really happy with initial results – in so far as it fired and I landed on paper on my very first shot ever fired from this rifle.

I mostly used reduced loads of 60grains of Wano FFg with 3 grains of Wano FFFFg for the primer and round ball shot that weighed in at 315 to 319 grain.

I’d left my normal range bag with my ear plugs and prescription safety glasses at home and I really didn’t know whether I was doing everything correctly but we had a lot of fun. I started out with the paper cartridges but found they became difficult to feed, to the point that I didn’t realise that I’d not been seating the ball fully down the barrel......(and wondering why I was missing everything after that first shot). So I switched to lubricated patches and I reckon I’ll stick with them.

A bit of frustration with a whole lot of failures to spark (as you’ll see in the video) . We managed to get it firing (though more by good luck than good measure I think) - if we were facing the Frenchies I’d be toast….

This is my first ever flintlock so I really don’t yet know what I don’t know …….and I don’t know what is causing the reliability issues. Initially I didn’t have the flint well seated but sorting that out didn’t resolve it for long.

The flint built up a black residue underneath the strike edge so I swapped it out and the new one seemed to work for a while, but not consistently.

The hammer seems to be well hardened and when it does spark it seems to spark well.

So is it the way I have the flint fitted? I’m using a leather wrap and I’d been advised to wet it when setting the flint.

Do I need to clean the underside of the flint after every few shots? If so how?

Could it be that I’ve got the feather spring set too light? Given that it does spark well at other times…?

How long should a flint last and what should I be doing to maintain them?

Beautiful job on your Baker rifle

Patch lube suggestion:
About 50 years ago an old timer shooter at the Friendship national matches gave me this patch lube formula & I've yet one to beat it even though I owned a muzzleloading store with several other popular commercial patch lubes on the shelf.
Mix 1/3 each of Murphy's Oil Soap, hydrogen peroxide & rubbing alcohol.
I keep small flip-up spout bottles of this formula in my shooting bag & range box & it also works well to wipe the lock clean & clean bp from your hands.
Happy trails,
Relic shooter
Idaho

 

[Oldchief]

Larks- nice job.
You and I are in about the same place with TRS experience.
My P-1800 Baker kit took thirteen months from order to delivery, however I did have TRS assemble the lock.
My lock had to be returned to TRS where they re-hardened the frizzen and returned it in a week. I am much closer to Oklahoma than you are, though. I did have to pay postage both ways but the work was done at no charge.
I ordered their Baker powder horn and powder measure castings around last April, received them in late July.
I really think they are not ignoring people but as a small operation I suspect they are simply overwhelmed.
Enjoy the new gun, I am enjoying mine.
Cheers

 

[Larks]

What is "TB eradication?"

Tuberculosis and Brucellosis. The Northern Territory Government (in Australia) set up a program to eradicate it in cattle and domesticated buffalo in the Northern Territory.

The vast cattle stations of the NT had to muster all stock and test them as clear of TB. They pretty much had to fence off half of their station, muster all stock and relocate them to the other half while they tested them three times over a period of time.

What couldn’t be mustered, mostly wild scrub bulls, had to be destroyed and their ear tags collected for reimbursement by the government.

For a short time I had a job working for station owners tracking and shooting the wild scrub bulls by vehicle and on foot and then from a helicopter working for the NT Government........ so somewhat precariously I can kinda say that I was once a professional hunter

 

[Larks]

Beautiful job on your Baker rifle

Patch lube suggestion:
About 50 years ago an old timer shooter at the Friendship national matches gave me this patch lube formula & I've yet one to beat it even though I owned a muzzleloading store with several other popular commercial patch lubes on the shelf.
Mix 1/3 each of Murphy's Oil Soap, hydrogen peroxide & rubbing alcohol.
I keep small flip-up spout bottles of this formula in my shooting bag & range box & it also works well to wipe the lock clean & clean bp from your hands.
Happy trails,
Relic shooter
Idaho

Thankyou for that. I’m not sure that Murphy’s oil soap is available here in Oz but I’ll look out for it. I’ve made up a batch of bore butter (1 part bees wax and 5 parts olive oil) but I haven’t tried the patches with that yet, I’ve been using some EMSS lubed patches that were given to me when I bought my black powder.

 

[tsmgguy]

I think TRS prefers to do business over the phone rather than by email. I have four of their rifles including three builds done by them. I've never had any problems with them and consider the wait times to be normal. I'm in the US.