very nice looking smoke pole you have there Madness.

Inspiring.


There is a Lyman great plains rifle here I have been looking at.
54 cal percussion - but I sort of had my heart set on a flintlock. Just because.

nice, beautiful guns. 

I'll be watching this page with interest. Would love to have a crack at a deer with a muzzle loader one day.

My interarms .45 piece of pipe.  Not quite as classy as a few others here- the deer stalkers are a nice looking piece. 

I wish madness, just the light.  Really would be better especially down here-Im realising Fiordland and black powder arent best mates, one day everything will align

I wipe out with maths or isopropyl alcohol before use , then dry the bore , when you cap off point the muzzle at a blade of grass , if it moves it is clear , if not try again .
The nipples that come with the factory rifles are usually inferior cheapies and it would pay to get some better quality ones from  Track of the Wolf , the budget ones burn out rapidly, enlarging the hole each shot , thus changing the flash size and the back pressure , thus grouping difficulties . If the hammer recocks on being fired  you definitely have nipple problems  .
Patch thickness and patch lube have a large bearing on round ball accuracy  , as does twist , slow twist for ball , fast twist for slug .

.50 early Lancaster (1770)  rifle 42" swamped barrel 1/56 twist with hand cut round bottom rifling ,walnut stock, iron fittings .



Stock detail



Lock



Made by Earl Wyatt

.40 cal rifle with 44"  hand cut round bottom rifling swamped 1/48 twist barrel , single trigger Chambers lock . Maple stock , brass fittings . Bunnies - small deer with this ..40 was the 223 of the day.




Lock detail , Honey French flint



Made by Phill Edwards  USA

.69" ball or 20 ga shot Chiefs Grade trade gun  smooth bore 42" octagon to round barrel, shoots ball or shot .
This is the type of gun traded to the US natives for furs etc .1680 onwards



Lock



Sideplate


Made by Mike ( Kiwi) Rowe in the USA

These are my shooting essentials
Powder horn and possibles bag or shooting pouch and contents
L-R :
Hemp tow for cleaning , capping tool , screw worm for putting tow on , antler handle awl , above: flash hole pick and screw driver combined , Iron adjustable powder measure , small priming horn with ffff powder ( original) , above flints , Black English and amber French , bark dyed cotton ball pouch and balls, Short starter and patch knife on possibles bag



I forgot the pillow ticking patches and bullet mould

same SF90

Yep, looked at that yesterday - and that's where I got lost.
Today I've got a different problem - those images I downloaded yesterday have gone somewhere - and I don't know where.
My fifteen year old thinks I'm dumb - but he couldn't find them either.
Anyway - have had enough for now so I think I'll bugger off to the garage and do some procrastinating.

I appreciate you guys trying to help. Thing here is I'm okay with a hammer and file, but I'm one of those people shouldn't be allowed to own a computer.
Anyway - by this morning I'd got over the hump and decided to have another go.
Got two reasonable (a bit dark) photos downloaded on the computer - and I know where they are.
So - I opened an account with Photobucket and fired those images off via email. Last I looked, they'd either missed or were taking a while to get there.
Next option was to email those photos to a mate who's got a better grip on these things than me - and see if he can do it - 'cept the bugger's gone off visiting and won't be back for a while.
All that had me wondering whether it was worth it, then I thought - stuff it, those photos are going on here one way or another.
And all that's on top of forgetting my wife's 50th birthday the day before yesterday which gave her an excuse to empty her head of some critical words - things already not being good  because I'd laughed when she'd stood on one of her dreads and ripped it off her head.

Nice rifle , judging by the quality of the finish I'd say you are more than a hammer and file man . What make is the lock and the barrel .? is it a TOTW kit?

Jim Chambers makes fine rifle parts and rifles , Rice barrels have a reputation for quality and  accuracy .
A member of this forum has a very nice left hand Chambers English Gentleman's Sporting  rifle that he brought as a kit and got it built up here , http://www.flintlocks.com/rifles05.htm
My .50 Lancaster has the large Siler lock , the .54 Henry has a L&R Manton lock , I use a round ball in all my muzzle loaders as I an very allergic to lead fumes I can't cast bullets so I buy Hornady swaged ones . I sort and batch them by weight , this works very well .
My .54 Henry's hunting load  shoots  75mm high at 50m and to point of aim at 100m using 120gr of FFFG Goex and a .535 round ball patched with pillow ticking and lubed with Mink Oil Tallow , It averages 1400 FPS over the chronograph with that load .
I used to be on a ML forum in the states , and was told by several members that Lancaster rifles didn't have walnut stocks , then one highly respected collector said he had 6 originals with walnut stocks and the discussion stopped .

https://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co.nz/f53/hawkins-plains-rifle-project-8740/

Allen Martin in the States does a nice schimmel too.

And just because I reckon this is one of the best things I've ever done, you are going to see it - whether you want to or not.

The below pic is scrimmed on a sperm whale tooth and is of Thomas Crean, an Irishman who was with Shackleton during his 1914-17 Antarctic Expedition.
I copied that off an Expedition photograph - really liked the image.

Had lost my license due to a cataract and had got totally bored and was scratching (pun) for something to do when I did that.
Wearing three pairs of $2 shop glasses, one over the other, I did it with a sharp scriber using dots and scratches, then rubbed in ink to see what I had - then wiped it off again, the ink staying in the scratches.
Took a week to do - and it gave me a hell of a headache.

Anyway - that's a scrimshaw and if you ever want to tart up a horn or bone handled knife, that's a good way to do it.

And, because I haven't tun out of words yet - Scrimshaw as an art form was originated by the Nantucket/New England whalers during the mid 1750's - a result of them looking for something to do during their leisure hours out on the 'big blue'.

They probably smoked pipes and gossiped like old women as well - but that doesn't seem to be documented.

So, tart up your horn or whatever with scratches and ink and you'll be a 'Scrimshander' - just like me.

That is an interesting horn - in some ways it's sad to see it leave the original family, but also good that it got to someone who appreciates and knows its history. So much stuff like that gets tossed at the tip - I see it all the time when the 'olds' pass on and the kids, or grand kids clean up after them. We had an open tip out here for many years and you wouldn't believe the stuff people throw away - no understanding nor appreciation.
The Council do it different now - us 'seagulls' were a constant irritation, so they ensured what got biffed - stayed biffed.
Incredibly sad.

I've never seen a vintage horn in the flesh - only photos.


That tooth I did also has a story ...........
Got gifted that by a friend along the road, Brigadier Ian Thorpe who was sent to Fiji at the time of the Sitiveni Rabuka coup in 1987.
Whale teeth have a tradition in Fiji and are regarded as Tabua and can only be passed on as a gift - and very few leave that country.
It likely found its way into Fiji in the possession of a Russian whaler in the 1960's and was exchanged for services/favours - fairly common practice back then.
When I was given it - I was told to do something with it and for many years it sat in my drawer as I had no idea as to what I was going to do - that tooth frightened me.

I had scrimmed a horn many years before, but memory tells me it was a fairly shabby effort - then I came across that photo in an old shipping book a lady had sent me from England - and couldn't get it out of my head.
So one day I took that book into town and got that photo copied and sized so I could transfer data from the photo to the tooth with dividers - then got stuck into it.
Started with the eyes and muffed them three times, having to sand it all back and start again until I got it right.

Was thoroughly startled with the result - I'm not normally that good.

Then it sat for a year before I showed Ian - was crapping my pants he wouldn't like it as I hadn't done a traditional nautical theme - as on your horn.
But he did.

That was sixteen, seventeen years ago I did that.

Have done some more scrimming since then on horn and bone, but nothing like that tooth - very proud of that.

And to continue with stuff that gets biffed - because this still upsets me.
Had another friend along the road die suddenly with a stroke - and did he have some interesting stuff, was always poring through it - and he liked to show it.
He had no kids and the estate got left to his nephews.
I was passing one day and watched the trailers being loaded up with his possessions as they cleared the house and garage - but I didn't know them and didn't linger to chat.

Then I got talking to another neighbour and he told me that the bulk of it had gone to the tip - and that floored me.
So I went back and had a chat to the nephews and suggested that anything they were dumping they leave outside - and I'd flog it.
Was quite hard to do that - had to swallow some considerable embarrassment - I was blatantly bludging.

Next evening I was back and found two trailers loaded - one obviously with rubbish, the other with good stuff.
Amongst the good stuff was an old tin, still full and marked 'Sperm Whale Oil' and a whole bunch of other stuff from that era that was too good to flog.
Going to the other trailer I fished out some stuff including an unopened packet of 'National Sperm' candles - which I took.
Back the next evening I caught the nephews still there ........
"You didn't take much ?"

And I told them what I got.
"Why didn't you take stuff from the other trailer, it's all being dumped, we've got nowhere to store it"

And I was so shocked I had nothing to say.

The next evening it had just about all gone - a few bits and pieces scattered here and there - and a sixty litre drum sitting there marked 'Martha' - and I knew exactly what was in there.
"What's in there," one of them said - "Just dirt by the look of it."

And after what seemed like quite a long time - I told them.

That drum contained the broken up sediment from the hopper at the Martha gold mine at Waihi.
They were cleaned out every so often and the sediment sold to a company in Australia who extracted the gold using mercury as it was so fine. That drum load sold for $200 - and that was in the days when gold was $35/ounce.
Then I helped them load it in their wagon.

Three people knew about that 'Martha' drum, Bob (the bloke who died), myself and another neighbour and it wasn't long after that I bumped into him.
"Wonder if they found Bob's 'Martha' drum.
"Oh yep."
"And, I suppose you told them ?"
"yep."
"f**king idiot."

she is a thing of beauty Mate.

small things/minor details, she is a thing of beauty and functions well......what more does a man need???