This past weekend at an estate sale I purchased a Thompson Center White Mountain Carbine in .50 caliber.  It's a very handy little carbine, with the shortest barrel I have ever seen on a ML. It's in pretty good shape, with just a few small areas of surface rust.  It has the look of a traditional sidelock, but the iron sights appear to be modern, with a white bead front and a fully adjustable rear.  I don't know if these were factory, or an aftermarket addition by the previous owner.

I will be the second owner, as the original receipt for the purchase was in the case.  However, other than the ML and the ramrod, nothing else was included.  I asked if the previous owner (deceased) had a ML range box or kit, but none of the people involved in the sale were familiar with firearms or shooting. It would have been handy to have everything I needed all together, but now I need to build up my kit from scratch, and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I don't know how much (or little) kit I'll need to start, and I have a lot of questions:

1) I'm unsure on what BP substitute I should start with.  I know the rifle uses #11 musket caps, so does that rule out using Blackhorn 209?

2) Should I start with a saboted projectile as used for the inlines, or a conical solid bullet?

3) How do I measure powder for a proper charge?

My first goal is to assemble what I need to fire this thing safely.  My ultimate goal is to develop an accurate load/projectile combination that will be suitable for Eastern whitetail in next year's ML season. If anyone is interested, I can throw up some pictures.

Cleaning supplies. Lots of them. And anti seize for your breech plug. I bought a cheap muzzleloader from someone as my first and in order to get it apart the first time I had to use an air hammer and a torch to get the breech plug out it was so rusted in. Muzzleloaders can never be maintained enough in my eyes.

a round ball starter
patches
bore butter
bullets
powder
brass powder measure
powder horn or something to conveniently fill your measure.

That will get you shooting

You'll need the following when stuff goes wrong
patch pull (worm)
ball puller

Cleaning stuff
thompson #13 bore cleaner

convenience stuff
cap holder/dispenser
pre-soaked #13 patches

That's most of what I use.

you should be able to find the pdf user's manual on Thompson's website.

I just use liquid dawn, hot water and a good brush to clean, then hot air dry and a light coat of CLP, within 2 hours of shooting.


Works great.


I also shoot Hodgedon 777 powder, not pellets. Can't remember which size flake. Works good with less corrosive salts IIRC, and cleans up easy.


This is in an 1863 Remington percussion rifled musket replica.  (Known as the "Zouave".)

I prefer traditional muzzleloader without breech plugs.

I think all muzzleloaders have breech plugs, threaded in from the back of the breech tang, which is usually part of the breech plug, unless the gun has a hooked breech? Perhaps breech plug is confused with the drum for the percussion cap nipple?

I ask, as I've seen a lot of utterly rusted-on drums on the breeches of barrels of other people's guns, many of which snap right off, if you try to remove them w/o penetrating fluid and or heat and time.

What somebody else said is sooo true: Maintain these guns and they will take care of you.

Unfortunately, most people either maintain them wrong, using modern smokeless power cleaning agents and lubes, or they don't maintain them at all.

Pretty much all the advice here in this thread is good advice, OP. I use black powder to shoot with, but that's just my preference. You will get excellent results with Pyrodex, Hodgdons or any other good quality propellant.

Congratulations, I've always liked those. Nice little rifles.
There are so many variables it is hard to get solid answers.  Here are mine, though, for what it's worth.
1.  I'd go with either Goex FF (real black powder) or Pyrodex RS.
2. For starters stick with a .490 round ball.  Plenty deadly-plenty fun!  learn on that then move up to TC maxiballs.
3. use one of these to measure the powder.  it measures by volume.  Set the plunger to the correct graduation, pour in powder (from a flask-never the bottle it comes in), close that little funnel thingy and pour it down the bore. simple.  Start with a volume of about 70 grains of RS.  you can move up or down to "tune" the load but that'll get you going.

Your barrel twist will determine whatcher supposed to shoot out of it (ball or conical).

What happened to FFg blackpowder?  It still works in ML.

When you review the existing black powder propellents and the black substitutes on the market, you will need to settle on one.  When you know what projectile you want to launch (round ball or conical or saboted bullet), and have settled on a propellent, the propellent mfg. will have the appropriate, published data for your caliber.

The gun mfg. should have included some suggested data in the owner's manual.  Dinna shoot yer ramrod downrange  It recoils too much, and then you can't reload.