Made some noise today

[J.D.]

And that's all I did. I had done some work on the lock for my old rifle gun, in addition to receiving a jar of bear grease, thanks to the generosity of Bill Hey, so I thought I would try both to see how they work.

The bear grease proved to be slicker than snot on a swamp, so loading was easy, even after several shots. I know that dry patching is a formula for disaster, but I dry patched the bore twice, with no problems. Did I say that the bear grease is slicker than snot on a swamp?

Gotta do some accuracy work with the grease though, 'cause I couldn't hit an NMLRA 50 yard metal silhouette at 5o yards with even one of the eight shots fired. 

Don't know if it was the bear grease patch lube, or just a bad case of the flinchies, since I haven't shot in a year, or so. Either way, I gotta put some lead on paper to see where it's shooting. 

The lock worked flawlessly, BTW. And even though I literally couldn't hit a bull in the backside with a base fiddle, I still had fun.   

Did I say that bear grease is slicker than snot on a swamp? 

God bless

[Daryl]

I found to recover accuracy of spit or water type lubes, when switching to a slippery oil or grease, the powder charge needs to be increased substancially.  In my small bores, ie: .40 and .45, an increase of 15 to 20gr. was required.  Larger calibres like the .58, needed even more.

[J.D.]

Thanks Daryl, I'll try that. I remembered, once the lock was removed for cleaning, that the tang screw, which had originally been a wood screw had worked loose. I had previously glued in a piece of dowel rod and redrilled the pilot hole, but it worked loose again.

I did notice that the original intent of the maker was to install a through bolt into the trigger plate, but he missed. So, I inlet a small square nut into the stock, above the triggerplate, for an, almost, through bolt. I'm sure that the increased pressure on the tang had something to do with my poor performance, though not everything to do with my poor performance. 

I also found, long after I had received this rifle, that the tang inlet was too deep, so a bit of Microbed, I think, was used to fill that dead space, so I might have to add or remove a little bedding to equal the original  height of the tang.

Gotta spend an afternoon on the range to figure out what changed, and what needs to be corrected to restore accuracy.

What I really need is to do is get off my butt and build a piece that I have confidence in.

God bless

[Daryl]

One further suggestion is to put it on paper at close range first. Point of impact can also change when switching lubes.