Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Flintlock Q&A

As the powder gets finer, it soaks up moisture quicker because it has more surface area. So when wet I go with 3F. I also use a powder coating that was originally used to keep natural feathers from getting wet on arrows. Most call it fletch dry. It slows ignition, but you can pour water on the powder and it runs off like a ducks back.
https://rmcoxyoke.com/product/rmc-wonder-powder/

I have a custom smoothbore flintlock. The best advice I got was from Jim Chambers. He said to drill the flash hole to 1/16" if all I am doing is hunting with it. He also said that if you can see powder granules in the touch hole you will get ignition. He also noted that in testing the location of powder in the pan it makes no difference where it is. I used 4f for a time but have moved on to 3f and as long as the flint is producing a good spark I get consistent and fast ignition.

There is a 45 caliber Slow twist TC Stone Swingin Hawken in my safe that will never leave since it came from my Dad. He never fired it. And when I first started with it I was about ready to shelve it on the mantle also. But along the way about 8 or 10 yrs ago I stumbled on the article Ross Seyfried wrote on getting a factory flinter to go.
There were a few key points he made that others here have covered. The two that helped me most after getting rid of all but true Black were the pan depth and touch hole. His advice to bore out the inner side of the liner really made a huge difference in the Clack-----Boom to a swooshboom. Definately a huntable proposition.
Still darn exciting to have a fire in your face with that 4F pan charge going off.
Really wanted this gun to shoot the Conicals, but that has never played out. Spray and pray describes all attempts with the longer heavy "Bullet"
But .440 round balls with .010" Ox-Yolk patches are quite accurate(at crossbow range for me). If my memory is correct the twist in mine is closer to 1-60 vs the more common 1-48.
Still would like to run a round ball through a whitetail with this rifle. Just to complete the circle. A squirrel or three with a light charge would be a close second, But my recurve Bow is in the woods way more these days. However the recent 10" of snow right in the middle of our Black Powder season has me cleaning the barrel and looking to get out to the range to re verify the zero.
Thanks to all that posted on this, a lot of good tips and some up to date links to good stuff that works. Best I can tell Ross's article is not on line any more.

I like the french amber flints plus the black english ones.