Today at our club breakfast I was describing a small problem I was having with my new muzzleloader with a couple of longtime members of our club, Walter and Ted. The gun is a Dimick rifle with a patent breach, the same as on a Hawken rifle. Each time I take it out to shoot the first shot is always a misfire. I typically run a dry patch down the barrel to remove any oil that is left in the barrel after the last cleaning before I load my first shot. Sometimes I also snap a cap to blow any residue out of the nipple and breach area before loading. Even though I did these things each time I would have a misfire on that first round and I would have to add some powder behind the nipple to fire the powder charge. This gun is my first patent breach rifle and I assumed there was something about the breach that was clogging easily.
The suggestions I got were two fold and both make sense to solve the problem. First suggestion was that I was leaving too much oil in the barrel after cleaning. That was probably true. I run a patch with straight Ballistol down the barrel as my last cleaning step. So I will use a little less or I will run a dry patch to remove excess oil before storing. The last suggestion was the real eye opener and was so simple. Store the gun muzzle down to allow any excess oil to drain out into a paper towel. Why didn’t I think of that! Always learning something new from the people that have experience.
Thank you Ted and Walter for the suggestion and keep your powder dry!
