Shock the FRIDAY

[Philippe]

That looks like a lot of fun. 

What would be even more fun would be a firing range where you could shoot matchlocks.

I wouldn't mind loading (and winding) and firing a wheel lock, but I would imagine that it's a lot like a flintlock, except for having to use a spanner.

[JasonPratt]

"Good grief, what happened to your eyebrows?!"

"Heh, you should see what's left of my sleeve!"  <:-)

[Barthheart]

^

[bbmike]

My wife and I are taking the train to Williamsburg this weekend.  I won't visit the new revolutionary war museum that opened earlier this year near there, but my wife signed me up to shoot a flintlock rifle, and I'm looking forward to that, besides the usual things to do there.

Damn, that looks like fun!  O0

[jamus34]

My wife and I are taking the train to Williamsburg this weekend.  I won't visit the new revolutionary war museum that opened earlier this year near there, but my wife signed me up to shoot a flintlock rifle, and I'm looking forward to that, besides the usual things to do there.

Damn, that looks like fun!  O0

My father in law has a black powder rifle we've shot occasionally. It's fun but requires a lot of maintence

[Toonces]

You're going to shoot your eye out kid.

[Sir Slash]

Damn, that looks like fun Nefaro. If I had tried that when we were at Williamsburg, there would've probably been blood and ambulances involved.  ;D  How was the kick on that thing?

[trailrunner]

Damn, that looks like fun Nefaro. If I had tried that when we were at Williamsburg, there would've probably been blood and ambulances involved.  ;D  How was the kick on that thing?

Actually, I was the one who shot it.

The kick was pretty light, but they didn't give us full loads.  I asked them about that specifically, and I heard something like they had given us 70 something (grains?) of powder, but in 1775 they would have used 200 something (grains?) of powder.  So that sounds like we used about 1/3 of the actual load.  One of the instructors described it as shooting a 20 gauge with a target load.  I shoot some sporting clays, but use a 12 gauge with target loads, and the kick from the musket was definitely less than my 12 gauge.

I found that the hardest thing about shooting the flintlock was the delay from pulling the trigger to the bullet leaving the barrel.  One of my shots (I think it's the one from the photo) actually had a momentary hang fire, which made the delay even longer.  The photo I posted is a still from a video that I recorded from that shot.  When I view the video, I can see that I dropped the barrel slightly before the bullet came out.

The flash in the face wasn't bad.  I really didn't notice it, to be honest.  One of the instructors told us that a simple innovation was to put a small lip on the back of the primer pan to keep the flash out of the shooter's face.  They didn't always have that, however.

We shot two guns.  One was a common musket, and the other was a fouling piece.  My only disappointment in the class was that I wanted to shoot a gun with a rifled barrel to see if it was more accurate.  I've often read that the disadvantage of a rifled gun was that it was slower to load, so I also wanted to load a rifled gun and a smoothbore musket so that I could feel for myself the difference.  However, besides shooting the gun, the only other thing we were allowed to do was to put some powder in the priming pan.  We weren't allowed to load the ball or charge ourselves. 

Speaking of the ball, those things were big!  I think mine was .69 caliber.  It may not have the range of a modern round, but I wouldn't want to get hit with it.

[JasonPratt]

The rifling did make it harder to muzzle-load, but worse the black powder tended to clog up the barrel grooves. The rifled grooves also made the barrel harder to clean out than a smoothbore. So things compounded until there was significant risk of a backfire.