Muzzle loading shotguns don't seem to get a whole lot of play which is actually kind of good, it means the guns are generally pretty cheap.
A few months ago I picked up a "Ward" side by side 12ga from an auction. It was one of the cheapest guns in the auction and I think I got it for the minimum bid. With shipping I paid slightly more than I did for my other side by side but not a lot.
The first job with any new gun is to clean it and have a look at the barrel for proof marks.
This is the best picture I could come up with and while there are marks they're hard to see. You do get a good view of the figure in the barrel here. Toward the muzzle the quality of the barrel degrades significantly, it's badly pitted.
Job number 2 is to remove the old nipples, or cones if you prefer the old term. The nipples hold the percussion caps which provide ignition for the powder. They're threaded into the barrel and since the previous owner almost certainly didn't use any anti-seize on the threads they're probably frozen in place.
These two gave me a real challenge. The trick here is to know when to walk away. I spent 2 months working on these which actually meant filling the barrels with oil and leaving them alone.
I always try a nipple wrench first, sometimes the old nipples can be salvaged, these could not so I quickly moved to the vice grips and torch. The heat does a lot of the work here. It's important to not try to hurry the process, heat and wiggle, heat and wiggle, then refill with oil and let it be for awhile.
It's always a happy moment when the old nipple finally comes free.
Gross... It took a lot of scrubbing before I was satisfied that this gun would shoot.
I always wish I had more pictures from the range. Here you can also see my new shot pouch, I'm really pleased with that, it makes measuring shot way easier.
There was a strange time at the range though. First thing off I snapped a cap in each barrel, the barrels appeared to be clear, a leaf on the ground moved when I snapped the cap with the muzzle near it, some rust even came out. I loaded the left barrel but then the dang thing just would not go off. I finally unloaded, which on a shotgun is pretty easy, I had brought my range rod and a screw attachment, just screw into the wad and pull.
Anyway with the charge pulled a cap wouldn't ignite the powder left in the barrel even though it would push it out onto the ground. Finally in desperation I switched from the 2F Goex powder I had been using to 3F Swiss I happened to have with me. The dang Swiss powder went off! The right barrel also fired but took a couple caps to do so.
Since this was a first trial run I hadn't brought any patterning paper so I mostly shot at trash on the range. An open choke gun with only 1oz of shot isn't going to make a really tight pattern but I thought this was adequate. Pellets went in one side of the box, through the plastic inside and out the other side.
I did eventually try some shots with Goex 2F and that went off too. I think there must have still been rust inside the ignition channel and the repeated firing blew it out. I should have blasted some compressed air through there before I left home.
Anyway I'm still working out a load, I used 1 1/8oz of shot as my maximum, the barrels are kind of thin so I don't want to push the gun. I'll probably stick to 1oz loads. I tried square loads where the volume of power is the same as the volume of shot, and an under square load where the powder load is less than the shot load. I generally like under square loads, the old rhyme is:
Less powder, more lead, shoots far, kills dead.
More powder, less lead, kicks hard, wide spread.
My 11ga "King" shotgun illustrates this beautifully which you might remember from a
previous post. In that gun I use 3 drams of powder and 1 1/2oz of shot which, on my shot dipper works out to the powder being 2 settings less than the shot.
The gun cleaned up pretty well after shooting, I think the best thing for getting rust out of a gun barrel is to fire it a couple times and the barrel looks a lot better now then when I started.
Anyhow I'll certainly be shooting that gun in the future. Next step will be patterning.
