Kitchen_Duty
Member
I bought a used T/C hawken off the net. After having the hardest issue of getting the thing to fire (and one gunsmith cleaning fee) finally got it to the range about 10 times and shot about 200 rounds through it. Luckily I'm part of a muzzleloader club so I've learned a lot through the folks there.
First issue: While ramming the ball down, about halfway it gets incredibly difficult to ram down. I think it is rather rusty down there or extremely out of spec. Of course past internet advise is to buy a green mountain prefit barrel but they seem to not sell them anymore. I have tried .10 patches and they do go down easier but it is still difficult. I'm especially comparing my difficulty with getting the ball seated properly with my other club members who are 30 years older than me with no difficult seating their hawkens. My barrel is around .505 at the muzzle and the balls i'm using are .490 by my calipers
How would you solve this? I did read about bore shine lapping compound and do some trial and error. I'd rather not have to buy a $250 barrel to fix a $400 brand new rifle. The accuracy is iffy iffy already but i haven't shot it enough to find its preferred load.
Another thing i had bouncing around my head was just have a smith bore out the rifling and have a "inexpensive" fowler to play around with. Ugh, stupid rifle. I can answer questions later tonight, I work nights and sleep in the afternoon.
First issue: While ramming the ball down, about halfway it gets incredibly difficult to ram down. I think it is rather rusty down there or extremely out of spec. Of course past internet advise is to buy a green mountain prefit barrel but they seem to not sell them anymore. I have tried .10 patches and they do go down easier but it is still difficult. I'm especially comparing my difficulty with getting the ball seated properly with my other club members who are 30 years older than me with no difficult seating their hawkens. My barrel is around .505 at the muzzle and the balls i'm using are .490 by my calipers
How would you solve this? I did read about bore shine lapping compound and do some trial and error. I'd rather not have to buy a $250 barrel to fix a $400 brand new rifle. The accuracy is iffy iffy already but i haven't shot it enough to find its preferred load.
Another thing i had bouncing around my head was just have a smith bore out the rifling and have a "inexpensive" fowler to play around with. Ugh, stupid rifle. I can answer questions later tonight, I work nights and sleep in the afternoon.