[John Rogers]

Yes I did the wood work. That took about 5 weeks of sanding, scraping and more sanding. The stocks from most places come about 75% completed and the biggest item is to inlet the barrel channel and cut out the area for the patent breach/tang. That all gives the phrase measure twice.....cut once a real meaning. I sprayed on 20 coats of clear gloss lacquer and it was 2 days per coat so that took a while!

The apparent miss fires are from the percussion caps not seating fully on the nipple and it generally happens with ones from Europe, not ones made here. It happens because they are a bit tight and after the nipple gets some wear that goes away. The bullets are bore diameter after the wrap so no starter is needed and they swell when the black powder fires off and start the 0.060 fiber wad down the barrel. It is interesting to see the piece of paper fly out the barrel with the huge cloud of smoke and they generally are 50% destroyed. With a double wrap patch, the paper can go half way to the targets at times and can really upset the bullet, even one that big. In the late 1800's false muzzles were used with a cross type of patch until shooters started using bullet swaggers to reduce the size of the bullet, around 1880 or so I've read.

I wipe after each shot as the guns shoots better doing that. We have some shooters that will shoot a whole 25 shot match with no wipe at all until finished and their guns shoot well. That is just one of the items that make shooting these guns interesting. I did build a couple of AR-15s and a pair of 1000 yard high power rifles but got tired of them and sold them all (made some $$$$) and just shoot the muzzle loaders now.