More Archery

I was able to get some shooting with my Mongol bow in every day over my Thanksgiving break. Yesterday I took my daughters out to a friend's place to shoot our bows. My friend and I did a little walking around and decided to take a few shots from about 12 - 15 yards at the woodpile he has out near his fire pit.

The arrows from his 38 pound target bow just bounced off the wood. That was not the case with the arrows shot from my 50 pound bow.

The one on the left buried itself pretty well, while the one on the right slid between a couple logs, blew through a half-rotten log about 3" in diameter, and then stuck in another log behind it. Thankfully, I was able to wiggle both out fairly easily and neither was damaged.

This bow continues to impress me as a great value, as do the bamboo arrows. With the string silencers I installed over the weekend, the bow is very quiet and still shoots fast. The bamboo arrows fly well and are rugged. I put them into the dirt several times yesterday but they remain in good condition. I have another dozen on order. Eventually, I'd like to build some with proper hunting broad heads.

Shooting my Mongol Bow with Bamboo Arrows

Back in 2012 I bought this late Mongol, Manchu-influenced horsebow from "handmadebow" on eBay. It draws 50# @ 28". The riser and siyahs (limb tips) are wood while the limbs are leather-covered fiberglass.

I've posted pictures of this bow before but these came out better.

Closeup of the riser. As you can see, it has no arrow shelf. You shoot off the hand with this bow.

The top siyah, which is rigid. Essentially, Asiatic bows like this one are static recurves. The small block of wood on the belly side of the siyah is a string bridge, and helps to give the arrow an extra little pop.

About 2 weeks ago, I ordered a half dozen bamboo arrows from another Chinese eBay seller, "arrowmaker2013." They are 28" long and I asked the seller to send arrows spined for a 45 to 50# bow. I don't know if he did any special selection or not, but they fly very well from my bow.

The arrows are well made and straight. They have some kind of varnish or shellac finish and are nice and smooth.

You can get these arrows with field points or bullet points, but I went for the 150 grain "broadheads," which have three edges. They are very pointy but the edges are dull, which is fine for target shooting.

These points should work well on small game. Or zombies. ;)

The feather fletching is glued on and also secured at the leading edge with thread. The self nocks are reinforced with thread. The thread goes up to the back of the fletching but is just decorative at that point.

I've been wanting to try bamboo arrows for awhile now. Some people refer to them as "nature's carbon fiber." They fly very well from this bow, at least as good as my Port Orford Cedar shafts from 3Rivers Archery. At about 12 yards, this is how far they penetrate into my block target:

Not shabby at all, IMO. Remember, this target is designed to stop broadhead-tipped arrows shot from a modern compound bow like my Quest Rogue. I have no doubt that properly placed arrow with a sharp broached fired from the Mongol bow would shoot through a deer's chest cavity at up to 20 - 25 yards.

Edit 11/26/15:

I shot the bow this morning after adding Mountain Man Beaver Ball fur silencers to the string. Since the bow normally gets unstrung after each session, I used some artificial sinew to secure each end of the silencers, which are just narrow strips of leather tanned with the fur on, that you wrap into and around the string. They got rid of the twang and now it's silent.

Aside from shooting the bamboo arrows, I also shot some POC cedars tipped with bodkins. It shoots both types well, but so I have a larger quantity of a matched set, I ordered another dozen of the bamboo arrows today.

Networking Lab Experiments

Today I went out and got a table to get my rack of Cisco gear off the floor. I first went to Lowe's and bought a 5 foot long folding table but it turned out to be a little too long, so I returned it. I wound up getting a Husky portable workbench at Home Depot. It seems quite sturdy and I'll probably get a good amount of use from it, and not just to hold up old networking gear.

(There's a mirror on the wall behind the Cisco gear, courtesy of our house's original owners. It'll be replaced with drywall when we redo the room.)

The power strip that everything is plugged into came from Lowe's this morning. It's their Utilitech house brand and has two USB ports for charging devices. I should be able to power a Raspberry Pi off it.

I was working on switch configuration, including VLANs, so I wanted to have more than one computer so I could verify connectivity between hosts was working (or not working, depending on how things were setup). So, I dragged out my old MSI Wind netbook, running Windows 7.

Well, something is hosed up with the networking on it so I decided to dual boot it with Lubuntu Linux. Nowadays my work with Windows is infrequent enough that fixing issues is more of a PITA than it should be, so I figured that Linux would be less trouble.

All my config work was performed using the MacBook Pro, accessing the switch through ZOC and a console cable.

Some Hands-On Cisco Troubleshooting Today

Today I got to put into practice at work some of the stuff I've been reading up on. I was configuring the integrated lights-out management ports on some HP DL360 servers, but could not access them over the network. The network engineer I work with gave me access to the Cisco 4948 switch that the servers are connected to, and I experimented with port speed and duplex settings to no avail.

I pulled up the running config and noticed that the VLAN trunk port from the switch back to the Juniper MX480 router we're using was misconfigured. The original port config looked like this in part:

interface TenGigabitEthernet1/49
 switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-103
 switchport mode trunk

It should have looked like this:

interface TenGigabitEthernet1/49
 switchport trunk allowed vlan 100-104
 switchport mode trunk

Difference in bold.

In other words, van 104, which carries the iLO traffic, wasn't being trunked back to the router, so it wasn't accessible from anywhere else on the network. As soon as I added vlan 104 to the trunk port I was able to ping the iLO ports from outside that vlan.

I have to say, I feel pretty good about myself for catching that.

Cisco Lab

The equipment I ordered to use in my CCNA studies arrived yesterday. As expected, the switches and routers show some wear but overall, they look to be in good shape. The 12U rack is new and went together without too much trouble. It came with a bag of 8x32 rack screws.

I mounted the three Catalyst 2950 switches at the bottom. Incidentally, the auction description said that they would be 24-port switches, but as you can see from the picture, I was shipped 48-port units. I suspect that's what the seller had handy.

Because of how Cisco designed the 1841 router case, I mounted them backwards in the rack so that I have easy access to the ports. I decided to leave 1U between them for routing the power cords. I still have room for a couple more devices such as a server or a 1U power strip.

ASSuming I get the CCNA, if I go on towards my CCNP I'll probably replace at least one of the 2950s with a Layer 3 switch that can route traffic between VLANs. That's a little while down the road, however.

I plan to fire up everything after work tomorrow.

Teaching An Old Dog New Tricks

One of the challenges of a career in IT is keeping up to date and learning new skills. For the past 14 months or so, I've managed the primary lab/data center at my employer's corporate HQ, but have relied upon a couple other guys to handle the network. I'd like to take over the network, which mostly runs on Cisco equipment. So, I decided it's time to get my CCNA certification as a way to get my feet wet.

For texts, I went with Wendell Odom's CCNA Routing and Switching 200-120 Official Certification Library. Additionally, the Free CCNA Workbook site has a variety of lab exercises to do.

Although I'll be able to work on real equipment I felt it would be prudent to learn on gear completely separate from my lab network. My first step was to download and install the GNS3 router emulator on my laptop. I was able to find some usable Cisco images by exercising my Google-fu.

But I also wanted physical hardware to bang on. eBay is full of used Cisco gear. This post on Reddit was helpful in deciding what to buy (and what to avoid). Using that, I ordered a kit off eBay containing three Catalyst 2950 switches and three 1841 routers, plus various cables and T1 WICs, and a desktop rack.

One thing you need when working on initial device configuration and sometimes for troubleshooting is a console cable. Most laptops no longer have a serial port, so I and my coworkers have been relying on USB-to-RS232 adapters, mostly the Keyspan USA-19HS. However, I recently found FTDI chipset based USB-to console cables and got one of them. So far, it's been working fine in OS X Yosemite and El Capitan.

The Framers of the Constitution Accepted Private Ownership of Fully Armed Warships

One of the canards trotted out by anti-gunners after every mass shooting is that the Framers could not have envisioned the power of modern weaponry, so that the Second Amendment does not protect civilian ownership of "assault weapons." All you need to refute that argument is that the Framers did indeed accept the private ownership of military weapons is to point out Article One, Section Eight, Clause Ten of the Constitution:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
...
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

Emphasis added.

So what is a Letter of Marque and Reprisal? Essentially, it was a government license to attack, capture, and sell enemy ships. The letter of marque is what distinguished a privateer from a pirate. In order to do that, you need an armed ship yourself. Letters of marque weren't issued to US Navy ships, they were issued to the private owners ships who would outfit them for privateering, including naval artillery.

In the 18th and 19th Centuries, an armed warship was the closest thing extant to a weapon of mass destruction. And we haven't discussed the private ownership of artillery on land or inland waterways, which was common through the 19th Century. E.g., flat boat-mounted swivel guns used by fur traders in the West.

So can we agree that the Second Amendment does protect the right to own military weaponry, just as the First Amendment protects your right to spout uninformed bullshit on the Internet?

Free Book Download from Sparks 31

I've been following Sparks 31's blog for awhile now, and bought his book Communications for 3%ers and Survivalists. He's decided to make the full text of that book and his other tome, The Modern Survivalist available as one PDF, for free.

https://sparks31.wordpress.com/2015/08/26/free-book-download/

It's worth a gander.

Shot My Cabela's Traditional Hawken Today

The last couple of times I've gone shooting it's involved charcoal burning and I've really been enjoying it. So, today I hit the range with my Cabela's Traditional Hawken, which I haven't shot in awhile. The rifle was made by Investarms in Italy, and is basically the same thing as a Lyman Trade Rifle with the addition of a cap box on the stock, double set triggers, and availability in lefty persuasion, which mine is. Checking the Cabela's website, it looks like they now carry a similar rifle made by Pedersoli, but not the same one I bought several years ago.

My load today was a .490 round ball, pillow ticking for a patch lubed with T/C Bore Butter, and 80 grains by volume of 2Fg Goex black powder. My rifle is a caplock, and I used CCI Number 11 caps.

I put around 20 shots through the gun. In the past I've alway wiped between shots: 2 sides of a wet patch followed by both sides of a dry patch. Today I decided to try just one side of a wet patch followed by one side of a dry patch. The wet patches were cut from T-shirt material that I'd moistened with water ahead of time and kept in a Ziploc bag. The dry patches were flannel patches sold as gun cleaning patches. This combo worked well to keep the fouling in check and I was able to load the gun easily, and allowed me to get more rounds downrange in less time.

I did experience one failure to fire. After about 10 shots the cap failed to set off the main charge. I tried a second cap but no dice. Thinking I'd dry balled, I removed the nipple and used my flintlock priming flask to dribble some 3Fg down into the bolster, put the nipple back in, and capped the gun. When I shot it, it recoiled the just like there was a full powder charge. The patent breech must have gotten really fouled, which was a first for me with this gun. (This is an example of why having a flintlock priming flask can be handy, even if you're shooting a percussion rifle.)

I shot OK today, nothing to write home about. All shots were offhand and I kept them in about a 6" group at 50 yards. I made my last shot count -- at an 8" gong which I hit squarely.

After I got home I finished cleaning the rifle by dismounting the barrel and putting the end in a bucket of hot water with a drop or two of dishwashing soap, then pumped the water through for a few minutes. This was followed up with some dry patches, then I sprayed WD-40 down the bore to make sure it was dry, wiped that out, then left it with a coat of FP-10. Petroleum-based lubes don't belong in a black powder gun's bore when you're shooting, but they are good to protect it in storage. I don't buy into "seasoning" muzzleloader bores. They are steel, not cast iron. As long as you get the petroleum products out before you load, you're good to go.

One thing I'm not happy with on this rifle are the sights. The front is a plain bead, which I could live with. However, the rear sight is awful. It's adjustable for windage and elevation but there is some slop in both the windage and elevation. Worse, the rear blade is shaped like a shallow "V" express sight. I am going to replace them with a Lyman set from Track of the Wolf that includes a fiber optic front sight and adjustable rear, also with fiber optics. Far from traditional, but now that I'm in my late 40s seeing plain metal sights isn't getting any easier.

After dinner tonight I removed the rear sight. This involved removing the elevation screw, driving out the roll pin on which the sight leaf pivots, then removing the two screws that attach the base to the barrel. One of the screws stripped so I had to drill it out and use a screw extractor. I used my mill for this. Here is how I used the drill chuck to apply downward pressure on the screw extractor held in a tap wrench.

I ordered the replacement sight set along with several other items from Track, and expect to get them towards the end of next week.

TNW Suomi SBR

Back in April I e-filed a Form 1 to turn my TNW Firearms M-31SA Suomi into a short barreled rifle. BATFE approved the Form 1 on July 19th, but never emailed it to me. I logged into atfonline.gov last week, and lo and behold, it was sitting there in approved status.

Friday night I engraved the receiver and then cut the barrel to 12.4”. I used a hacksaw to cut it off a little on the long side, then put the barrel in my lathe where I faced and crowned it. The Suomi barrel is about 19.5mm in diameter, so it just fit through my lathe’s 20mm spindle bore.

Before:

 

After:

I touched up the muzzle with some Birchwood-Casey cold blue, and it’s a pretty close match to the TNW phosphate finish.

Aside from looking correct, it now balances much better. It’s not nearly as muzzle heavy and actually handles pretty well, even though it’s heavy.

I was going to shoot it today but about 2/3s of the way to the range I realized that I had forgotten my range badge and key. Hopefully I’ll be able to put some rounds downrange through it next weekend.

Ted Cash Capper

One of the challenges of using a caplock muzzleloader in the field is finding a convenient way to carry your percussion caps. If you keep them in the original tin you need to handle individual caps every time you load. This risks dropping the small caps and spilling the tin.

Shortly after percussion caps came into use in the 19th Century, people developed cappers, which hold a number of caps. They can be as simple as a piece of stiff leather with holes punched in them to hold the caps, or can be elaborate spring-powered affairs.

This brass capper by Ted Cash Mfg. is simple and holds up to 75 caps.

In the picture above you can see a cap ready to be placed on a gun’s nipple. To get it into that position you press the L-shaped button sticking out the bottom.

To open it, slide the catch on the lid down so it disengages from the pin. This allows you to put in up to 75 caps and shows the simple mechanism.

I’m planning to keep this one in the Finnish gas mask bag that I’m setting up as a hunting pouch to go with my Euroarms Magnum Cape Gun. It’ll also be useful with my Cabela’s Traditional Hawken and Thompson-Center Renegade.

Note that this style capper cannot be used with percussion revolvers because it can’t fit into the nipple recesses in the back of the cylinder. An inline capper or other capper made for revolvers would be required. E.g., this one.

The workmanship is very nice on this capper, with a nice polish. I’m planning to let it develop a natural, non-glare patina. You can find them at various black powder suppliers or on eBay, which is where I bought mine.

Desktop PC Upgrade With SSD

This weekend I upgraded my desktop PC with a 500 GB Samsung 850 EVO Solid State Drive. (I bought the SSD locally at Microcenter but Amazon has it cheaper.)

The PC is a Microcenter PowerSpec B707 that I bought 4 or 5 years ago. It has a Core i5 CPU and I’ve upgraded a few components over the years, including the RAM to 16 GB, the video card, and the power supply (to handle the video card). The last remaining component to upgrade to improve performance was the hard disk.

Aside from the excellent reputation of Samsung SSDs a major reason that I chose one of their disks instead of a Crucial SSD is that Samsung includes a nice disk cloning software. I wanted to migrate my existing system over rather than rebuilding it from scratch, which would take days. After installing the cloning software, I used a USB-to-SATA adapter* to connect the SSD to the PC, then let it run for about six hours, finishing up after I went to bed last night. This morning when I checked on it the clone was complete.

Note that if you want to upgrade a Mac to an SSD, you can use SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner, both of which are free. There are free Windows disk cloning tools, but other than CloneZilla, I don’t have any experience with them. Samsung’s clone app was easier to use and better for less technical people. It’s very pointy-clicky.

To install the SSD in a desktop you’ll also need a 2.5” to 3.5” drive bay adapter, in order to mount it in the case.

With the drive cloned and the SSD installed, I booted the machine, which went a lot faster than before. It did require a reboot to install the Windows drivers for the SSD. Then I installed the Samsung Magician software, which helps you monitor the health of the drive and optimize its performance. One thing it suggested to do was put the drive controller into AHCI mode by going into the BIOS. Unfortunately, that’s something you need to do before you install Windows. Windows blue-screened before booting fully when I tried this, so back to IDE mode it is.

The machine boots much faster, and I get a usable desktop much more quickly after I login. Even large applications like Word and Excel open very quickly from the SSD. I expected all this, based on my previous experience upgrading my mid-2009 MacBook Pro with an SSD.

Another nice thing is that the PC is a little quieter without the spinning disk.

If you have a PC that’s a little older and in need of a performance boost, replacing the spinning hard disk with a solid state drive is probably the best bang for your buck.

 

 

*Mine is a Newer Tech USB-to-IDE or SATA adapter that I got from Macsales.com several years ago. One of the cheaper USB-to-SATA units should work fine, if you never  have need to read IDE disks.

Ball Bag

{Insert Beavis and Butthead huh huh here.}

In setting up a Finn gas mask bag as a possibles bag to go along with my Euroarms Magnum Cape Gun, I needed a small bag to hold the .690 round balls I'll use for deer hunting. You can buy ball bags fairly cheaply, but I decided to make one using some pigskin I had laying around from my last visit to the Allentown, PA Tandy Leather shop.

The base is about 3" across, and it's a little less than 4" tall. I had the lacing from a past trip to Dixon's Muzzleloading Shop. I sewed the base and sides together using artificial sinew. It'll comfortably hold 25 .690 balls, far more than I need for a day in the woods.

Euroarms Magnum Cape Gun Range Report

Today I got the chance to shoot the Euroarms Magnum Cape Gun percussion shotgun that I picked up last week at Dixon's. Like last week, I shot it over at a friend's place, this time after we installed a trailer hitch on my Nissan Xterra, so I can mount a bike rack or cargo carrier. That took about 45 minutes and afterwards we drove to the back of his yard where he has a short range for pistols and black powder guns.

Earlier this week I'd ordered some .690 cast lead round balls, 0.020" thick patches, and a few other items, from Track of the Wolf. I'd also ordered a 10 lb. bag each of Lawrence copper plated No. 5 and No. 7.5 birdshot from Rotometals, via their Amazon shop. Both orders came yesterday.

I patterned both sizes of shot at ~15 yards. The birdshot loads were 80 grains of 2Fg Goex and an equivalent volume of shot (i.e., a "square load"). On top of the powder I put a corrugated cardboard wad and a 1/8" thick lubricated felt wad. The shot was secured in place with a second corrugated cardboard wad. The wads were punched out using a 3/4" arch punch that I got from Amazon, which I chucked in my mill, with a piece of wood held in the mill vise under the wad material. I put the mill on a low speed, and the wads were cut out easily. Beats using a hammer!

We used IDPA paper targets for patterning. I put some blue painter's tape in the middle for a well-defined aiming point.

First, the No. 7.5s, used for informal trap shooting:

I pulled that shot a little to the left.

Next, the No. 5s, which I'll use for upland birds and small game:

(The bullet hole in the top right was from my friend's .45 caliber Euroarms Kentuckian flintlock carbine. The hole in the left of the -1 ring is from a wad.)

We then took some shots with patched round balls on the above target from ~25 yards, but I forgot to take pictures. My load was 80 grains of 2Fg Goex, a 0.020" patch lubed with Bore Butter, and a .690" lead round ball. At that range, the gun shoots a couple inches high but is easily minute-of-whitetail.

I took three more shots, recycling the target I used when I patterned the No. 7.5 shot.

You can really see the difference in the .45 and .69 caliber holes. I yanked the first shot, which is the one to the left of the tape. Point of aim was 6 o'clock on the blue tape, so it shoots a little high with this load at 50 yards.

I recovered a couple of my patches, which show a perfect fouling pattern with no cutting, as expected.

This load looks like a winner for close range deer hunting. It's accurate enough to 50 yards and even after 11 shots with no wiping, seated easily. In fact, the balls can be started in the muzzle with only thumb pressure.

I noticed that fouling was starting to build up in the breech after about 9 shots. I could've continued shooting after 11 shots if I wiped the bore, but by then it was lunchtime and we called it quits.

One thing that helped make loading easier was that last night I'd measured out all my powder and shot loads, and put them in speed loader tubes from TOTW. Likewise, I'd prelubed my shooting patches, which saved a lot of mess, since Bore Butter gets runny when it's 90 degrees out.

Aside from preparing my powder and shot charges and lubing my patches, I'd prepared a Ziploc bag of cleaning patches by soaking them in water with a little Windex squirted in. I used a few of these after shooting, then completed cleaning once I got home. At home I took advantage of the gun's patent breech and dunked the breech end in a bucket of hot soapy water, so I could pump it through the bore. I then followed up with some dry patches, and then a few with WD40 to make sure that there wasn't any water left inside. Finally, I left the bore with a good coat of Ballistol to prevent rust.

I am really looking forward to carrying the Euroarms Magnum Cape Gun afield this fall.

Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States

Edit: Welcome Twitter users! Please poke around the blog. If you came here because of this post, you'll probably find something else of interest.

Back in 2004, I posted Percentage of Adults With Carry Permits in "Shall Issue" States. It's been probably the most popular post on this blog, and several times I've been asked if there's an update. Well, now there is.

Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States is a new scholarly paper by John R.Lott, John E. Whitley, and Rebekah C. Riley. Here's the summary:

Since President Obama’s election the number of concealed handgun permits has soared, growing from 4.6 million in 2007 to over 12.8 million this year. Among the findings in our report:

• The number of concealed handgun permits is increasing at an ever- increasing rate. Over the past year, 1.7 million additional new permits have been issued – a 15.4% increase in just one single year. This is the largest ever single-year increase in the number of concealed handgun permits.
• 5.2% of the total adult population has a permit.
• Five states now have more than 10% of their adult population withconcealed handgun permits.
• In ten states, a permit is no longer required to carry in all or virtually all of the state. This is a major reason why legal carrying handguns is growing so much faster than the number of permits.
• Since 2007, permits for women has increased by 270% and for men by 156%.
• Some evidence suggests that permit holding by minorities is increasing more than twice as fast as for whites.
• Between 2007 and 2014, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.2 (preliminary estimates) per 100,000. This represents a 25% drop in the murder rate at the same time that the percentage of the adult population with permits soared by 178%. Overall violent crime also fell by 25 percent over that period of time.
• Regression estimates show that even after accounting for the per capita number of police and people admitted to prison and demographics, the adult population with permits is significantly associated with a drop in murder and violent crime rates.
• Concealed handgun permit holders are extremely law-abiding. In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors or felonies at one- sixth the rate that police officers are convicted.

Well, that sure doesn't fit the president's or Bloomberg's narratives, does it? Especially the points about women and minorities.

Digging into the data, the state with the largest numbers of permits is Florida with about 1.4 million, followed by Pennsylvania with about 1.1M. C'mon PA folks, we're slacking.

If you look at percentages, the top five states are

• Alabama 12.64%
• South Dakota 12.3%
• Indiana 11.62%
• Pennsylvania 10.64%
• Tennessee 10.21%

From my post of 11 years ago, the top five states in 2004 were :

• 7.45% South Dakota 
• 6.79% Indiana 
• 6.76% Pennsylvania 
• 5.23% Connecticut 
• 5.12% Washington

If the Democrats are upset by this I have two things to say:

1. Good.
2. You have only yourselves to blame. You've been simultaneously beating the drum for more gun control, fanning the flames of racial tension, and tearing down our country's institutions. Don't be surprised when people decided they need to take affirmative steps to preserve their own security.

First Shots With the EOA Magnum Cape Gun

Yesterday I was able to shoot a few rounds through the Euroarms gun at a friend's place. I don't know where I have my stash of 12 gauge wads and shot leftover from when I had my Pedersoli 12 gauge double, so I just tried some of the .662 balls I'd bought when I got my MVTC .69 caliber M-1717 musket. I used 80 grains of 2Fg Goex and pillow ticking patches lubed with Bore Butter. At about 20 - 25 yards I kept 6 shots inside an 8" bull, with POI = POA.

Not bad for a way undersized ball and a gun with only a bead front sight.

For 3 of the shots I used a single patch, while the other 3 I double patched it due to the small ball. POI at that range seemed the same but I was definitely getting a better gas seal with the double patch, based on slightly more recoil. For my last shot I retrieved a patch, relubed it and shot it again.

While I was reloading in between a couple shots, a fawn came barreling out of the woods and screeched to a halt about 15 feet away. We stood still and he hung out for about five minutes, trying to figure out what we were. Eventually, he took off and we went back to shooting.

Tonight I put in an order with Track of the Wolf for some .690 balls, .020" cotton shooting patches, a 12 gauge jag to fit my cleaning rod, a spare nipple, and a few other accessories.

This looks like it'll be a really fun gun to shoot and useful for anything I can hunt in PA.

Muzzleloading Single Barrel Smoothbores

One of the most common (possibly the most common) types of civilian arms from the 1600s up through the beginning of the 20th Century was some kind of single shot smoothbore gun. They were highly valued as meat getters and weapons for both defense and offense. Such guns were traded in large quantities to the Indians as well as other indigenous peoples around the globe. Probably the best known of these guns in North American was the Northwest or Hudson's Bay gun.

(Pic found on the 'net.)

Another well known muzzleloading smoothbore was the French Fusil de Chasse. I have one in 20 gauge from Middlesex Village Trading Company.

(Pic borrowed from MVTC.)

Being smoothbores, they can shoot birdshot, buckshot, or a single ball, making them useful for any game from birds and squirrels on up to moose. They also saw a lot of use as fighting weapons. The modern equivalent would be a single shot shotgun like my old H&R 20 gauge.

When the muzzleloading single barrel shotguns were state of the art, most were produced in smaller gauges -- 24 to 20 gauge. They were cheaper to load, requiring less powder and shot, important when you are weeks or months away from resupply.

Most of the currently produced muzzleloading shotguns are 12 gauge doubles, and most of the single barrels are flintlocks. Pedersoli lists a percussion version of their Mortimer 12 gauge shotgun.

One percussion single barrel smoothbore that was imported for awhile but is no longer was the Euroarms of America "Magnum Cape Gun." Normally, a cape gun is a double with one rifled and one smoothbore barrel, but I guess EOA thought the name sounds cool. The gun was made by Investarms* and is still listed on their website as the "Gallyon," but doesn't appear to be imported into the US at present.

One of the Magnum Cape Guns has been on my want list for awhile and I found one in excellent shape yesterday at Dixon's for a reasonable price, so it came home with me.

Closeups of the lock and breech area:

It's a 12 gauge percussion smoothbore shotgun with a cylinder bore, i.e., no choke. The bore appears to be chrome lined, which will help cleanup. The barrel is fitted with a hooked patent breech, so if you remove the ramrod, drive out the barrel wedge, and put the hammer on half cock, you can lift it out of the stock. You can then dunk the breech end in a bucket of water and using a wet patch, pump water through the bore to clean it.

The Magnum Cape Gun is very well made with a nice polish on the metal parts, and a deep, beautiful blueing job on the barrel, but, and trigger guard. The lock was left in the white. The wood is fairly plain but serviceable, and the checkering was well executed. The inletting of the buttplate could have been better, though. This specimen was well cared for, with only some wear on the buttplate where it rested on the ground while being loaded, and only a few handling marks on the wood.

My plans for this gun include small game, upland bird, and maybe even deer hunting. For deer I'll use a patched round ball. For shot, I plan to get a punch and make felt wads from the same felt I use to make wads for my percussion revolvers. (According to this article, felt wads perform better than card and fiber wads.)

Once I get the chance to try the gun out I'll post some more thoughts.



*Investarms makes the Lyman Great Plains Rifle, Lyman Trade Rifle, and Lyman Great Plains Pistol. They also make the Cabela's Traditional Hawken, one of which I have.

Pole Lathe

This morning I went up to Dixon's Muzzleloading Shop in Kempton, PA, for their annual Gunmakers' Fair. Among the more interesting things I saw was this pole lathe, which was being used for turning the wooden ends for powder horns.

Back of the lathe, showing some of the linkage:

Closeup of wooden spring:

Closeup of the mandrel, which holds the piece being worked on. The wooden block visible behind the work and the mandrel is the tool rest. You can also see the wooden bar the operator steps on to run the lathe.

And finally, a gratuitous shot of some old farm machinery.

Gun Training in Nasty Weather

Over on gundigest.com, Dave Morelli has an article in which he advocates gun training in bad weather.

I see nothing in the article with which I disagree. The author isn't advocating going out in crappy weather to learn the fundamentals. He's telling you to get out there in sub-optimal conditions to learn what your gun does -- and what you do -- when it's windy, rainy, or cold.

Based on my own experience in shooting practical rifle matches at my club, operating your gun in extreme weather conditions stresses the shooter in ways not experienced when it's 75 and sunny. If it's humid, lenses (both eye glasses and scope lenses when you accidentally breathe on them) get fogged. If it's snowing ice can form on your gun while you're waiting to shoot, rendering it slippery. When it's hot, your sweat gets in your eyes and on the gun.

Or step in a 10" deep puddle of ice water while your waterproof boots are only 8" high, then go on to finish the stage.

In cold weather your clothing limits your movement and makes working fine controls more difficult.

Get the basics down in good weather. Then go see what happens when it's shitty out.

It was about 12 degrees out when this pic of me was taken back in January.

Under stress you will default to the level of your training. If you train easy, you will fail get life gets hard.

New Scanner

This week I got a Uniden BC396XT scanner from Amazon. I have a couple posts up about it over on Survival Preps, here and here.