Welcome to the Muzzleloading Forum!

Here we will discuss anything that loads from the front, and one or two that don't! ;)

The rules are simple:

• No flaming, though good-natured ribbing is fine.
• Treat others with the same rspect you would want if it were you.
• Teach what you know, and ask about what you don't.

That should be all we need for now. Enjoy!

Bull, out!

Howdy Bull-

I used to enjoy Dixie GW kits and made a few like the Tower pistol. Lot of fun goin out in the woods and target shooting with them. Used to buy the Navy Arms 36 and 44s. I'd take em to the buffer and mirror them up, put fancy wood grips on them and such - fun shootin too.
Then DGW stopped making the fun cheap kits you could do so much with so I started making them from scratch - derringers.

I made a wood and metal jig for my floor drill that held a piece of bar stock and drilled them out to 3/8. Was pretty easy to get a straight bore, then I'd note the fat and thin sides.
I'd weld a piece of nail on for a nipple and drill it out.
Used hardwood blocks drilled with 3/8 and wet to cast the rounds.
I'd test fire them in a vise into wood blocks, tapping the cap with a hammer. They held up okay.
Then I'd work a tang on by drilling and filing.
I kept them triggerless, using an offset hammer shaped from flat stock. You'd pull back the hammer and release to fire. Banding made nice barrel straps. Then I'd go to work with filing, sanding buffing and bluing. Used a variety of spring types.
Guess you could call them zip guns but they looked sharp and were fun to shoot.

Got the Foxfire book and was going to try a rifle from scratch but sense got the better of me - plus I didn't think bar stock would work very well for a mandrel.

Two words.
"Steam Pipe"

A guy I used to shoot with made a DANDY 16ga smooth rifle (rifle stocked but smooth-bored) from what began life as a length of 1/2 inch id high pressure steam pipe. He just opened the bore up and then, using shotgun hones, lightly tapered the bore from breech to muzzle. This gave the gun a tad of choke. I figured the thing would never shoot round ball worth a hoot.

I was wrong. Way wrong!

He also had 'special' balls he used to load when loading needed to be done fast. He'd take a lead ball of the appropriate diameter and roll it between two coarse wood rasps. It made the balls look like sycamore balls. They would no longer drop down the bore if not patched, so he'd seat one quickly with the rod and fire. No patch at all. Fair accuracy at short distance. For those hard to hit targets he simply loaded a length of brass trace chain. :blink: