The Muzzle

[nkbj]

Have a request for everyone shooting round ball.
If you would, could you post some good quality photos on how you have smoothed the entrance into the rifling on round ball rifles?
For that matter, perhaps problem child muzzles would be good also.
There are discussions of coning in the past but actually very little that would serve as being instructional to shooters starting out with muzzleloading.
I will take some tomorrow and post photos too.

 

[Phil Coffins]

The slight blending is how I do them and they load fine, the other is a coned barrel. It not as dramatic as some I’ve seen.
IMG_0421 by Oliver Sudden, on Flickr

 

[ApprenticeBuilder]

 

[SDSmlf]

A lot of folks like to use their thumb and a bit of sandpaper on bore crowns, but I take it a little further, just for the sake of consistency, at least in my opinion.

I use a series of ball bearings, from about one and half times the bore diameter, to right around bore diameter, and use sandpaper of different grits from 120/180 up to 320 or finer (I take it up to 1000 grit for a mirror finish). A couple of turns of muzzle over each ball bearing with progressively finer sandpaper over them gives a smooth barrel crown to bore transition

Basic idea is to hold the sandpaper over the ball bearing (you can place ball on the floor and hold paper with your feet, maybe on a pad or thin carpet if you don’t have a lathe to chuck up the barrel in) and rotate the barrel bore on the bearing with the paper on it. Easy to keep barrel square with the floor. I’ll start with the larger diameter bearing and roughest grit paper and end with a smaller ball bearing near bore diameter, repeating with progressively finer grit sandpaper. I stop when I have a slight chamfer on bore and rifling lands that is highly polished.

I use Dykem (or a Sharpie) to mark the inside the bore so I can easily see when I starting to clean up everything without going too far. Note the 60° chamfer in the photograph was cut on a lathe, I just use the ball bearings to break sharpe edges and polish.

Just note with either method. If your barrel is already finished, you are going to remove finish from the face of the bore if you don’t protect it. I’ve used ‘masking’ tape with a hole punched through it (use a wad punch), but only on other people’s gun’s, not worrying about it on mine.

 

[billraby]

Here is video showing how to crown a muzzle. Gets to that part around 18 minutes in.

 

[hanshi]

The point where the lands stop at the muzzle is quite sharp on most rifles. The idea is to break that sharp edge so the prb starts smoothly into the muzzle with the short starter. Torn patches are often the result of being started the rather abrupt entry caused by the lands. Smoothing the crown allows use of thicker patches and/or larger ball sizes.

 

[ohio ramrod]

I like the color, was it one of those lighted bobber lights.

 

[Eric Krewson]

Neat idea, I have a barrel to crown and will turn a wooden tool like the one in the video on my hobby wood lathe complete with a dowel out the back to fit a cordless drill to.