Muzzle Loading Nationals

[kyratshooter]

I ran over to Friendship IN this morning to shoot a few sheets of paper during the Nationals.

It was about 100 degrees under that tin roof by 2pm! Humidity was about 95% and not a dry thread on my body.

You had to wipe the goo out of the flashpan between shots before you could reprime.

I hit the merchants sheds before I left and spent more than I should have. I did get some new leather dye and a new camp axe. One thing our ancestors knew more about than the modern tacticool guys is how to make a good every day carry axe.

http://www.redaviscompany.com/1017.html

I picked up a new chopper from the good folks at the Davis company, then ordered a new flintlock mechanism from Mr. Chambers.

http://www.flintlocks.com/locks2.htm

At that point I had already exceeded my weekly allowance when I spotted a big chunk of saddle skirting leather that I had been needing for a long time.

I bought that too, then got in the car and left that place before any other shiny objects caught my eye.

Friendship IN during the spring and fall shoots is not a good place for me to be left without proper supervision!

[hunter63]

Been wanting to get there since the 80's.....always seemed to be a reason not to....
Anyway glad you had a good day......

Hot here at "The Place"...actually quit mowing,.... too freaking hot.....

[kyratshooter]

Hunter you could run down with a small camp and use the primitive area. They also have hundreds of spaces available for that new pop-up you just bought.

The primitive area is not what it was back in the '80s. A lot of the old timers have gone to the big rondy in the sky. There are still a few and they have good camps. We used to have a thousand people in that primitive camp.

I also noted that the merchants were not as plentiful as in the past and when I asked around I found it was for much the same reason the camp was thin. Many of the long term merchants who supported our hobby are passing away. My "leather guy" had to retire due to kidney failure and need for dialysis, my favorite blade-smith passed last year and I noticed Jim Chambers and Davis were looking a bit more gray than I remembered from a couple years back.

Come to think about it, the guy I see in the mirror is a bit older that I expect every morning.

[randyt]

man o man, I've been wanting to go for years as well.

[kyratshooter]

For those that have never been, which if most everybody, the key to an enjoyable event there is to take in all the things that are available. They have a nice little museum, and another area called Gunmaker's Hall which is a nice cabin filled with contemporary masterpieces made my modern gunbuilders. In back of Gunmakers's Hall they keep a running demonstration area where builders show folks how to bore, ream and rifle barrels, inlet stocks and fit accessories to their builds.

They have a fully operating blacksmith shop at the range. One of the things they will do is heat treat flintlock parts if you have built your own lock. They will stick the parts that need hardening in the forge and quench them in oil so you can take them home and stress relieve them in your oven. They will do knife blades for you too if the metal is of simple "take it to orange and stick it in the barrel" variety.

The most amazing thing to the newcomer is the range itself. The Walter Cline Range is almost a mile from end to end. It starts with trap ranges, goes to 25 yard pistol ranges and 25 yard offhand rifle range and stretches for the next mile getting longer ranges as it goes until it stops slam into the skeet range.

They have a special section for every type shooting one can imagine and they run them all at the same time. Pistol shooters, bench rest shooters, buffalo gun shooters and chunk guns are all shooting all the time from daylight till dark and the trap range is lit so it runs in the dark! I would say that 1000 people can shoot on that range at any given instant.

And besides the specialized merchants at the range area, the entire town turns into a huge flea market that is two miles long! You can buy anything from army surplus to soap and I saw several cars of various quality for sale. It has a very "country fair" atmosphere without the hogs, cows and chickens. That really means that you can bring your wife in a camper and while you shoot she can blast through the flea market and not care what you are doing. Then at the end of the day you can retreat to the AC in the camper and not be miserable, except for what has happened to your pocket book down at that flea market.

Friendship IN is way out in the woods, but the roads are good and if you prefer hotel life it is only 45 minutes away from Cincinnati and civilization, of a sort, if you can call Cincinnati civilized. In fact you are only about 30 minutes away from several nice casinos and resorts in Lawrenceburg/Arora, IN, so it is possible to stay in luxury surroundings at night and go shoot during the day.

[Rick]

Just so you don't miss out, it runs from June 11-19.

[Lamewolf]

I was very fortunate to have know Bill Large, one of the founding fathers and only lived about 8 miles from him and acquired one of his fine barrels that I put on a Southern Poor Boy rifle I built before he passed. That man could rifle a barrel like no one's business !

[DSJohnson]

okay okay okay..My father and a friend of his went back in the old days (mid 60's) but I have never been. (hanging my head) It is now written in ink on the 2017 wall calendar in my redheads office! That little axe looks pretty sweet Kyrats....and I know you do not have a single other hand/belt axe to your name....

[hunter63]

Hunter you could run down with a small camp and use the primitive area. They also have hundreds of spaces available for that new pop-up you just bought.

The primitive area is not what it was back in the '80s. A lot of the old timers have gone to the big rondy in the sky. There are still a few and they have good camps. We used to have a thousand people in that primitive camp.

I also noted that the merchants were not as plentiful as in the past and when I asked around I found it was for much the same reason the camp was thin. Many of the long term merchants who supported our hobby are passing away. My "leather guy" had to retire due to kidney failure and need for dialysis, my favorite blade-smith passed last year and I noticed Jim Chambers and Davis were looking a bit more gray than I remembered from a couple years back.

Come to think about it, the guy I see in the mirror is a bit older that I expect every morning.

I don't think it's just at Friendship......Shoots and Rendezvous have been going down hill for a while....
As guys and families got older, some kids kept it up....most didn't .....so we are kinda going back to the old hard core shooters and builders.

We quit going often back in 1999, when DW and I both lost jobs and most importantly...."vacation time"....then a few friends passed, and a few of the local events we normally attended shut down.

We attended Prairie du Chen for 28 years........then stopped.

There was lots of the bigger venders there .....Jas. Townshend, Fred Dyer, being a couple.....

Was a guy that set up the blacksmith shop for repairs....but made guns ......
You ordered you rifle, or what ever, picked out the fitting and wood, got measured....left a $100 buck deposit.....and sent him $100 bucks a month....and next year you picked up your rifle, shooting bag and horn....and the mold for the bullet or ball.

Always wanted a Bedford County flinter...never did it.

[kyratshooter]

You know better DS, I have a milk crate full of hawks and hatchets of various kinds and a dozen more scattered through the kits and trailers!

That is one of the reasons I am not in the "big knife" support group.

I have already polished the hawk and applied plum brown, sanded the handle, stained and applied linseed oil to the wood.

Ii is one of those hawks that when you pick it up you want to throw it at somethin'.

Hunter I don't think I have a Bedford County rifle. I have built an early Lancaster, and a late one. Got one Lehigh Valley rifle and one long Jagger. Got a Dickert Smooth-rifle and a southern Mountain rifle which is my favorite, all of them in flint. I don't think that is all of them but it is all I can remember.

I don't know how many percussion rifles are in the pile. I have only built one percussion rifle on purpose. I have rebuilt several of them by accident when I inherited half built kits.

This weekend I ordered wood for a new squirrel rifle. I have been wanting a .32 long squirrel rifle for 20 years and finally decided to build it next winter. It will be a North Carolina style with junk trim to duplicate a frontier made gun.

Nice thing about building ML rifles is that you can order the wood, work on that a while, then order the barrel and finish it up, then order a lock kit and work on that for a while and $100 at a time and over the course of 18 months you can finish out a nice rifle.

[DSJohnson]

Hunter,
I agree 100% with you and Kyrats about events dying out. I have seen it big time in the Civil war reenactments as well. LOL most of the "soldier"s are closer to 60 than even 30. I guess the younger folks don't see what we do or get what we get from our hobby/sport. The last time I went to the Southwestern (last year) the horse camp was less than half of what it was in 2010. I have neven been back east to a "National" event. What do y'all recommend? About as early as I have ever done is 1815 as a mixed blood Choctaw.

I love my .32 flinter. It is my favorite "woods" gun. I have never done it, because it is not legal here in Oklahoma but I am 100% sure I could kill a whitetail very quickly, efficiently, effectively and more important very humanely. It is a Bedford County gun made by a gentleman (Fincher) from Lawton, Oklahoma about 30 years ago. I have killed a couple of small hogs and many squirrels with that rifle. I hope you have a great time building one Kyrats.

Kyrats,
I carry a hawk/axe most all the time when I am in the woods. For years I carried a little axe that Joe DelaRonde made for me during a living history program at Bent's Big fort on the Arkansas. I traded him a string of blue Padre beads for it. I used the daylights out of that little axe, then I had a bad river crossing one time in northern New Mexico during a ride with some friends and lost it and a belt knife that George Ainslie had made for me when he was working at Philmont at the Kit Carson Museum and Living history program. I think that is where he first started smithing. Now I carry a little axe with a hammer poll. Dave Kroier made it. I have um..several "back up" hand axes/hawks myself!

[hunter63]

Always wanted a .32 or even a .36.....Maybe some day.

My rifle builder is in his late 70's and is the armorer for our R.R. Company....is making 2 more "somethings" then quitting building for hire at 100.

Don't know if he has any commissions coming up. ....Hummmmm

[kyratshooter]

DS if you ever come east to a rondy, especially a national sanctioned event, you will find that they are all mostly pre-1840 and very loosely judged. The Eastern National and the Southeastern are good events. Pretty good sized, with the Eastern having a thousand people or more. If you are already in the west I would visit the western. That was something on my bucket list a couple of decades back, not so much any more with the hobby dying out.

Historic sites are another matter and they set their own frozen moments in time. I do/did a lot of historic site work and find that the youngsters are more likely to be there than at rondys. Judging is much more strict at the historic sites, especially on camp gear and shelters. Not so much artsy-craftsy stuff going on and it takes more than a pair of painters pants and a feather in your hat to pass for historic. I have done as early as the 1650s for special museum programs in the past. When you go earlier than that you have to redo your entire gear list, so it is easier to strip a camp and "go native" with the most simple clothing, an oilcloth tarp and nothing but a tin pot to cook in, and you have to be careful about having the right tin pot!

There are two very different groups doing activities here in the east and they do not communicate much. Our history is farther away from "buckskinning" than out west.

I know a lot of folks that do 4-5 historic sites each summer, some of them two or three times each, and never go to a rondy. Many of us demonstrators at sites do more events in a summer than many buckskinners will do in a decade.

I have a couple of friends that claim to have been buckskinning for 30 years. Fact is they did one event a year for the past 30 years! My late wife and I did 20 events in one season back in 2007 with most of them being historic sites holding us to 1790 or earlier. We claimed that the first 13 events were all done in the rain!

What will it take for the "sport" to have a resurgence? Used to be a real good movie would do it! Jerimiah Johnson started the first round, Last of the Mohicans revived it in the early 1990s with The Patriot giving a boost late in that decade.

Sadly I do not think Leonardo Decaprio did Hugh Glass well enough to kick-start the preset generation.

I do have a .32, but it is a Traditions short percussion rifle which I inherited. It has impressed me greatly over the years. That is one reason I want to build a long .32 flint rifle. Like you said DS, I believe it would kill a deer with no problem. A 40 grain ball at 1700fps is equal to .22mag ballistics, and that little rifle is really accurate. One of the only sidelock muzzleloaders I have ever scoped, just to see what it would do. Scary accurate with a scope.

[Lamewolf]

Always wanted a .32 or even a .36.....Maybe some day.

My rifle builder is in his late 70's and is the armorer for our R.R. Company....is making 2 more "somethings" then quitting building for hire at 100.

Don't know if he has any commissions coming up. ....Hummmmm

Build it yourself Hunter ! Dixie Gun Works did have a 32 Tennessee Mountain Squirrel Rifle kit at one time, I built one from parts purchased separately back in the 80's and love it ! Once finished, you will have something to be proud of and even hand down through the generations !

[Lamewolf]

I do have a .32, but it is a Traditions short percussion rifle which I inherited. It has impressed me greatly over the years. That is one reason I want to build a long .32 flint rifle. Like you said DS, I believe it would kill a deer with no problem. A 40 grain ball at 1700fps is equal to .22mag ballistics, and that little rifle is really accurate. One of the only sidelock muzzleloaders I have ever scoped, just to see what it would do. Scary accurate with a scope.

My 32 is my favorite ! It has a 42 inch Green Mountain barrel, small Siler percussion lock that can be swapped out for a Flintlock if wanted, but I sold the Flintlock much to my disappointment ! But with 20 grains of 3fg, a .319 round ball with a .010 pillow ticking patch it will shoot much better than I am capable of and is deadly on squirrels and rabbits. And with 40 grains of 3fg, it has taken groundhogs and coyotes out to 100 yards ! Would it kill a deer ? No doubt in my mind, but here in Ohio the minimum caliber for a muzzleloader is 38. But I do have a half stock 40 and a Southern Poorboy in 45 cal that I built. The 40 is patterned from a rifle seen in a picture that one of my ancestors built back in the 1800's and has a Montana barrel, actually found his grave in an old family cemetery too, and the Poorboy has the Bill Large barrel on it.
rifles.jpg

[kyratshooter]

You used to see Bill Large barrels all over the place, back in the day. They have about dried up since he passed away and most of the ones I know about have been freshed out at some point.

There was a time when if you wanted a premium barrel you had to buy one of his. There were all kinds of mass produced barrels from Numrich, Davis and Dixie Gun Works but they were all shallow riffling and mostly 1/48 twist no matter what caliber you bought. I still have some odd ones floating around here. I have a 1 1/8 across the flats .577 Numrich barrel I have been saving for a Jagger build some day, and that rifle will weigh at least 15 pounds, if I ever get around to it!

Green Mountain came along and spoiled us with cheap high quality deep riffled barrels and then Cholrain stepped in with swamped, tapered and octagon to round barrels, but that was after Bill died.

[Lamewolf]

You used to see Bill Large barrels all over the place, back in the day. They have about dried up since he passed away and most of the ones I know about have been freshed out at some point.

There was a time when if you wanted a premium barrel you had to buy one of his. There were all kinds of mass produced barrels from Numrich, Davis and Dixie Gun Works but they were all shallow riffling and mostly 1/48 twist no matter what caliber you bought. I still have some odd ones floating around here. I have a 1 1/8 across the flats .577 Numrich barrel I have been saving for a Jagger build some day, and that rifle will weigh at least 15 pounds, if I ever get around to it!

Green Mountain came along and spoiled us with cheap high quality deep riffled barrels and then Cholrain stepped in with swamped, tapered and octagon to round barrels, but that was after Bill died.

I pass by Bill's home place twice daily, and the sign still stands in his yard "JJJJ Ranch", no one could make or rifle a barrel like Bill could ! He refreshed my 45 barrel not too long before he passed and he also made that barrel originally. I've actually been in his shop and watched him make a barrel, and he had what he called his museum upstairs with various rifles he has built and used in the past. Once while there, he handed me a rough looking cows horn and grinned and told me I needed to learn how to make powder horns. So I scraped it smooth and made me one from it and still have it ! Sure do miss him !