Alrighty! Finally done with the chicken coop, Mother’s Day dinner (we are celebrating a day early), and have a minute to post up on the first shots.
Set up a target (cardboard IDPA silhouette) large enough that I knew I would hit it at 30 yards. 50 grains of FFF, .490 ball with .015 ticking patch. Little bit of 4F in the pan. Went off the first three shots without a hitch. Switched to son in law shooting, first shot was a flash in the pan. Frizzen didn’t open fully. He was solid and held on target, waiting on the hang fire. He stayed on target, I found the frizzen down against the flint. Opened it, reprinted. And he got three shots in a row with no more problems. All the same load as the first one. With all the trash talked on the Traditions, it actually surprised me when it went off the first time. I’ll upload the video if I can.
My three shot group was around 4 inches, maybe a hair larger. I didn’t have a spot on the cardboard to aim at, as I was mainly checking function. Aimed large, missed large, LOL!
Clean up: I ran a hot, soapy, water large bore swab down the barrel numerous times, until it looked good, then I used some black powder cleaner, and got around fifteen dirty patches in a row. I mean filthy. So, I ran the swab back down the barrel another dozen time, then a jagged patch with the cleaner on it… another round of dirty patches, did this two more times with the same results. I finally just ran a patch with oil down the barrel and started getting clean patches.
I’m probably going to clean it all again tomorrow after church and see if I can ever get a clean patch when I’m running cleaner down the barrel. Guess we will see.
Over all, AWESOME first time shooting it. I have two son in laws and my nieces husband that I think may get on board with all this. All three love shooting, and this is all new for us. I’ll try to load the video of my SIL shooting, you can hear my grandson at the end of the video. He’s three, wanted a turn, lol! I told him we will start him out with a rifle that fits him. This one’s a bit heavy now, but hopefully he can learn flintlock shooting on it.
-Red, VERY pleased…
It’s hard to see, I guess, the three lower clean holes were my shots, the one to the upper right of my group, and up, were my son in laws. The rest are all pistol holes from a match we shot at some point… if you look close, you can tell which ones are the fifty. We were shooting the back side of an old target.
