Shot the Canoe Gun Today, and Broke It

I got a chance to shoot the canoe gun today over at a friend's place. He has some land and we can shoot safely in his yard. Unfortunately it was raining and the only place I could load while under overhead cover was his patio. I'd then step out to shoot and some tin cans we placed on a hillside.

My load of 1 oz. of #5 shot on top of 65 grains of Scheutzen 3Fg black powder penetrated both side of a #10 can from about 20 yards, so it's got enough power for hunting.

I also tried a couple varieties of ball loads. I shot a half dozen .570 balls loaded in paper cartridges on top of 65 grains of powder. I also tried a few shots with .575 balls loaded on top of a tow wad, with another tow wad over the ball to hold it in place. The balls loads shot high with how I was holding the gun.

I absolutely need to put both shot and ball loads on paper.

Everything went mostly well until the gun fell over onto the brick patio, landing on the hammer which was on half cock. That broke the half cock notch on the tumbler. (Insert vast amounts of profanity here.)

When I was done I used tow wrapped around a worm to scrub the bore. This was the first time I've tried using tow for cleaning and it works pretty well, much like a bore brush. I'll be using it at least for my smoothbores in the future.

Tonight I ordered a replacement tumbler from Track of the Wolf and I paid extra for 2 day delivery. I may be going upstate next weekend and if so I'd really like to bring the gun with me to pattern shot loads and figure out how to hold it when shooting ball.