My handgonne entry . . .
I wish I could say I killed it, but not really. I kinda sucked at gonning, as will be seen.
This begins yesterday. I set up and took two practice shots, and the ignitor on my butane torch failed. Wind was pretty stiff, the little butane lighter I had for backup was not going to work.
Packed it in, went back today. This time I brought my linstock that I use with my cannons and mortars. Once the slowmatch is lit, it would remain lit in spite of the wind and would easily light the fuse.
The only way to put it out without dunking it in water is to snip the burning end off.
The gonne is .50 caliber. Shot with patched .490 round balls over 50 grains of FFg ignited by about 2" (roughly, cut'em as I went) pieces of visco fuse.
The target I would use was 14" x 18", even so shot 3 hit about 2" below the bottom edge, into the foam backboard.
There was something "off" about that shot. It didn't sound or feel right, and I did brush out some unburned powder afterward.
But it was a shot so it counts as a miss.
Something else odd happened on shot 5 (upper left hit), looks like something hit the paper to the right of shot 4 with enough force to tear it. The foam board behind it was not hurt.
There is also a stain there, only thing I can think of is the greased patch, but at 5 yards I wouldn't think it would have enough energy to tear the paper.
I have the target still taped to the backboard out in the truck, I'll study it more when I have time.
The stand is 5 yards from the chair back. The chair does double duty as a firing line and it held the linstock upright so my hands are free. There's enough of the lit match hanging out to use it as a fuse lighter.
I measured 7-1/2" extreme spread on the 4 shots that scored. Estimated the center of group about 4" from POA. You can look at the pic and adjust if necessary.
The miss was 11-1/4" low, I am not including it in my measurements. Off the paper.
Time was 4 minutes 19 seconds. I started the timer before I started loading the 1st shot and stopped it after the 5th was fired.
Things I took away . . .
Shit happens. When it happens you pack it in and try again later.
I should have started the shoot with a clean bore. I took several test shots before setting up for the shoot.
The third shot that didn't go just right was actually about the 8th shot for the day. Even running a brush down the bore between every shot (slowed me down but I might not have finished if I hadn't), the gonne was getting pretty hard to load and this was affecting it and me. Accuracy went out the window, only shot 1 & 2 really hit close to POA. I'm lucky I only threw the one shot off the paper.
I may try again and see if I can better my score.
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(cross posted from GD thread)