This is not intended for you, Ron T, but to new shooters in general.
1. Expect to get dirty loading any MLer; Take a towel, a bottle of water, a small bottle of liquid soap, and a roll of paper towels with you to the range. The Towel will let you wipe off your hands after loading, and the paper towels, will let you wipe off powder residue from the outside of the gun, and the Ramrod, as well as dry your hands after washing them with soap and water.
2. Leave " Speed" loading and shooting to the suppository shooters- NOT Muzzleloaders! You are both RELOADING- as cartridge shooters do at home between range sessions- and Shooting your gun every time its fired.
If you were to add in the time it takes to clean and reload cartridge casings to the "speed" at which cartridge guns are fired, there would not be much difference in the speed we get loading MLers quickly.
I learned this watching a man use ONE OLD Cartridge Casing- one of three he had, BTW-- to shoot an original Sharps Breechloader in .45-90 caliber at a rifle range when I was a kid. He did all the cleaning, decapping, repriming, powder measuring and loading, at the bench to shoot each shot. He was using a Tang Peep sight( original) and shot very small groups on a NRA 6" bullseye target, on a windy day. But, the word "speed" was not part of his vocabulary.
3. If you just have to SHOOT a lot of "BULLETS" down range, take a modern, .22 Semi-auto rifle to a range and blast away. MLing shooting is a slow, deliberate activity, where shooters find greatest pleasure in shooting carefully aimed, small groups, after carefully loading their guns.
Its not a sport for everyone- face it. And, as I Have noted above, there are days when you Want to shoot a Lot of "Bullets" downrange. Leave the MLer at home and take a more appropriate rifle to the range that day. Just don't expect the best accurate bullet placement on those days at a range.
4. Safety has to be paramount in importance, EVERY time you use a MLER. There are NO SHORTCUTS to firearms safety with these guns.
a. Always LOAD using a hand-over-hand technique, with your back hand never more than 8 inches above the muzzle; This keeps you from breaking a ramrod. You can WITHDRAW a ramrod by grabbing the other end of the rod and pulling it out, Safely, but don't try to push a ball or bullet down the barrel( Or cleaning patches, bore brushes, etc.either) by holding the rod on the end.
b. Wipe the barrel between shots with a damp patch to extinguish embers that MAY be in the back of the barrel; then run a drying patch or two down the barrel to soak up any moisture left from the damp patch. Read the cleaning patch, to see how much "gunk" you are pulling out of the barrel. If the patch is slick and shiney black in color, run another dry patch down the barrel to get more moisture out of the barrel before you load the next powder charge.
On really humid day, it may not be such a bad thing to take a percussion gunover to the safe zone at the range, and fire another cap to clear the nipple and flash channel of any moisture that is collecting down there.
5. Make sure to wipe down the area around the nipple, and the nipple, or the area around the Touchhole, the frizzen pan, the frizzen, and the flint, both upper and bottom sides of the flint, to remove BP residue and moisture that may collect there. The pan and bottom of the frizzen need to be dry, and CLEAN of residue. The residue absorbs moisture from the air, and will foul your priming charge.
6. Mark your loading(ram) rod to show when the barrel is loaded, and when its empty. Some will also mark the rod to show when the powder charge is in place, too. LOAD TO THE MARK, Always.
7. Read your spent patches to find out what is going on inside the barrel.
8. When loading any Muzzleloader, always point the muzzle away from your body, and body parts. You don't get replacement fingers, either. I don't recommend closing your thumb around a loading rod when running it down the barrel.
I wrap only my fingers around the rod, alternating my grip, hands turned outward, to load the gun. If a spark ignites the powder and drives that rod out the muzzle, my autonomous nervous system is programed to open those finger to avoid harm. My thumb is programed to close and hang on tight- just the opposite- and that is one way to lose a thumb. I call this the " monkey grip" because its so similar to how Orangutans grab tree branches when moving from one tree to another.
9. Follow all range rules for safety, and insist that others around you do the same. Follow the NRA Ten Commandments of Firearm Safety, as well.
Have fun but shoot SAFELY. Forget about those speed loading techniques in the movies. That's Hollywood, and you don't have Hostiles charging at you with a knife, Tomahawk, or bayonet bound to kill you if you don't load and shoot that gun quick enough. :nono: :surrender: :hmm: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
