Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders so it begins....

But where does the story go?

a 54 cal on a 42" colerain barrel, 15/16 straight octagon.

Thinking a stock style similar to a Lyman Great Plains, but I haven't made my mind up yet. We got a fair amount of black walnut lying around.


Getting stuff together for a fast twist 45 as well.

Of course, the only thing worse than waiting a week for your barrel, is receiving it and realizing they sent you the wrong caliber.

dammit.

Nice!

What's the "wrong" caliber?

50.

I would have seriously contemplated keeping anything other than a 50 and considering it providence.

The beauty of simplicity .... Love it!!!

.50 ain't bad. Actually works well on helicopters as I recall. 16" twist will work on 800 grains of lead...if you got the courage.

Ever since the tragic electric fence incident, and the boys were replaced with brass, I'd say I got the moxy, but the 50 is a slow twist.

Nothing against the 50, but I have a bunch of 54 moulds at the shed. Be a shame not to put them to use.

My 54 should be waiting at home, now.

The black walnut has been planed, and I have dug through my box of goodies to recover my 90* router bit. Should make the octagon channel a little easier.


I know its cheating - but I don't care.

Well, the barrel finally came yesterday. I'm stoked. 42" of 54 caliber rifled glory.

I was wanting to use a lollipop breech/tang, but the wider dimension won't be long enough to be able to get screws into both the action holes. Putting a tang sight on might be a little tricky.

Although I can get the front action screw through the tang to, then hide the back action screw under the narrow part of the lollipop. Decisions, decisions.....

What would be good is if I can find a tang sight setup without holes, so I can drill it and the tang to fit the spacing on the action.

OK, I got some woodwork done today, started with roughing in the barrel channel, pulled out the router, along with a series of bits, and got to it.

Pics were cropped to reduce the size, but so far it looks good. Need to chisel out the breech so its flat and flush, but the overall fit is good.







Width, and height along the barrel will be trimmed later. I like a wide base when using a router, and likely will pull out the dremel with a router attachment and guide to start the action inletting

You're making it look too easy.

I won't get into the ugly details, as there was one mishap to take away the "too easy" status, but suffice it to say, "measure twice, rout once" isn't fool proof.

I violated my own rule and didn't test each cut on a test board. It's essential when your doing finicky work.

What lock are you going with?

looking Good RWE .

I was going to do some rough contouring and start the action inletting this weekend, but my wife mentioned something about making her a matching night stand to mine.

Well, I'll tell you right now that I put my foot down......







on the gas pedal, and went to the store to get the lumber for her nightstand....

Allan Foundary underhammer action.

Nice....

I won a good looking piece of maple once at a shoot. Took it to one of the members who thought he was a decent shade tree gunbuilder.

He had a jig all set up with his router. He dug around and found the proper hex bit. Affixed the wood in the jig,..got everything nice and square and lined up.

Put stop marks in pencil, went thru the motions with the power off,..everything perfect.

This time for real...power goes on...bbbBBBBBrrrRRRRRRRRRRRR,..chips flying, sawdust everywhere..down the barrel channel we go...

Flip power off,...finished......

Only problem was he forgot to tighten up his router depth fence....

I ended up with a rifle/barrel channel that shot uphill....



Got a good laugh outta that...

Ended up making a couple tomahawk handles out of it....

What make of barrel did you end up with and is she swamped ?
I have a Burton made swamped on my J�ger that I'm pretty happy with.