First shot - Massive Flyer... Why

[Michael Bodner]

Ok gents... I've been shooting in N-SSA for 20 years now and have never heard an acceptable answer to the following question:

What is occurring that could cause the first shot out of a musket to be a terrible flyer?

The musket in question (a Zouave) will put shots repeatedly inside a half-dollar at 50-yards on 46gr 3Ffg (Hodgdon RCBS bullet). BUT the first shot after cleaning (or the first shot in a shooting session) will be a nasty flyer: As much as 1 foot off and in Lord knows which direction...

WHAT is going on inside the gun that might cause this? Yea, yea - It needs a fouling shot. But WHAT occurs differently with a clean barrel that doesn't occur with a fired barrel?

Be as specific as possible and if there is a method to mitigate this...

Thanks!

-Boots

[Kevin Tinny]

Hello:

Are the first shot flyers point-on or tipped, please? That's a clue.
If tipped, they could be on the edge of being undersized and are gas cutting until fouling builds.
Gas cutting produces erratic flyers.

Otherwise, hard to question the good groups from a fouled bore.

My first shot or two from ANY clean bore is generally a little high but where I expect, maybe from less friction. I just hold for that displacement.

For my rifled muskets that did throw first or second shots unpredictably, the minie was loose and presented tipped holes, if they even hit the paper at 50. Going to a slightly tighter minie solved the tippers/flyers.

I now use ones that barely touch the grooves. Any minie in my several musket tests that is more than .001" undersized won't shoot as consistently as tighter ones that still load without much resistance.

If tang screw and bedding ok, maybe something wrong inside breech area. Just a guess.

Until I began using tighter minies combined with a good lube that allowed 30 shots with no wiping or brushing, clean barrel flyers drove me silly.

I suggest trying tighter minies until first clean bore shot is in the black.

Respectfully,
Kevin Tinny

[Michael Bodner]

Thanks Kevin!

Bullets are tipped..

Barrel takes 576 gauge, no on 577.

Sizing 576, but more likely, it's a 575 die...

I'll take some of my 578 and size then NO SMALLER than 576 and see what happens


Thx again!

Boots

[John Holland]

I agree with Kevin Tinny. I have been shooting military muskets since 1961, and I am not of the "size down to one to two thousandths under bore size" school of thought. I have always sized a Minnie Ball to where it just sits in the muzzle when inserted. And, if pulled out, there is just traces of the lands on the bullet. To load the projectile, I have to manually push it down the bore to seat it on the powder charge. Using this method, I have NEVER had a flyer on the first shot, and before I passed 70 years of age, I never missed having a hit with the first shot. I never wiped the bore ahead of time, all I ever did was snap 2-3 caps to dry out whatever oil may have been present in the breech chamber. My late Father subscribed to the same school go thought as me, and he experienced the same results.

[Kevin Tinny]

Thanks, Bootsie:

Will be very interested on how the slightly larger ones perform.
And be SURE your lead is pure. Any harder seems to cause erratic skirt expansion issues.

My frustration with sizers is they can off-spec. Plus/minus a thousandth is not good.
I have several that are off a thousandth from the stamped figure.
Regardless of the measured dimension, try for an unsized minie that barely goes into muzzle without engraving.

Howie Brenner showed me that simple test after I realized something was very wrong.
Howie SMMAARTT!

Dip lube it, instead of sizing, and see how it does. If no initial tippers, then find out how many shots the lube will allow. Once can load 25/30, retest your charge with plus/minus a grain or two to reconfirm all ok.

One musket team match a year or so back, we found our previously used 50-yd frame had its upper left corner boards peppered with tipped holes. It was a striking thing.

"Keep up the skeer."

Kevin

[Lou Lou Lou]

I had some sizers made up a half thousandths larger for this reason. Eg .5755

[Michael Bodner]

Kevin,

GOOD STUFF! THANKS!!

Why dip-lube? Will excess lube help seal?

Boots

[Kevin Tinny]

Hello, Bootsie:

I don't think lube has much to do with sealing. Rather, the correct size and then expansion seals. Undersize minies will expand, but not before some gas cuts a furrow up one side and ruins stability, hence flyers.

A correct size minie run down a softly fouled bore should push almost all the fouling so I don't see how fouling seals, either. Ideally, even in a fouled bore, the minie should have ample lead to steel contact with a film of lube in between.

I barely finger lube the as-cast bullet with the thinest coating to make "dry" sizing easier.
The sized, unlubed bullet is placed nose first for only the first band into a charged red tube. THEN lube is applied by dipping the rear end of the minie and upper 1/8" of the red tube into molten lube.

I do not use a lubrisizer to fill the grooves.
Diping is fine and the excess is pushed away during starting into the muzzle.

With your reported good groups, I wouldn't suggest doing it my way. But so you know.

Regards,
Kevin Tinny

[Don Dixon]

This question has arisen periodically on the board. Assuming that you have checked the tang screw and the barrel bands, and that the first rounds you fire are consistently going into the same point of impact before the group settles at a different location on the target, I have two questions.

1. Have you patched the cleaned barrel of the musket to ensure that it is clean and dry before strarting a string of shots?

2. Are your bullets no more than .002 inches under bore size?

If the answer to both questions is yes, then we have the problem known as the "Sniper's Zero," because the sniper has to know exactly where the first bullet he fires is going to go out of a clean, cold, dry barrel. Many firearms will shoot the first round out of a clean, cold, dry barrel to a somewhat different point of impact than the remainder of the shots fired out of the gun. Because the rules permit them to fire sighting shots before going for record, knowledgeable competitive smallbore rifle shooters will often fire several fouling rounds to warm and foul the bores of their rifles before starting a string of record shots. When I shot with the All-Army Reserve Rifle Team one of my National Match M14 rifles - built by Army Marksmanship Unit gunsmiths - fired the first round out of a clean, dry, cold barrel one minute high at 600 yards. The remaining 19 rounds went in a very tight group one minute lower. Once I understood what the gun was consistently doing, I started a match 600 yard string - no sighting shots in military high power rifle competition - with the sights set one minute low and then added a minute to the sights for subsequent shots. I shot a lot of 199s and 198s with that particular rifle. It was otherwise a very good gun.

For N-SSA individual competition, you can fire a fouling round into the butts before starting an individual match. I do this with all of my guns.

For N-SSA team competition, you can't fire a fouling round. Assuming that your musket is consistently putting the first round into the same point of impact, hold off on the first shot. Then go to your normal point of aim for the remaining shots. Don't clean between stages of the team match. If you are using good lube and properly sized bullets, there is absolutely no need to clean between stages. With the condition that you have described, cleaning between stages is counter-productive.

Why do guns do this? Bedding. Manufacturing issues with the barrels. Internal thermodynamics within the barrels. Etc. It is much easier to deal with it as a sighting issue than as a mechanical issue.

Regards,
Don Dixon
2881V

[Michael Bodner]

Don,

First shot is a complete, wild-ass flyer. No idea where it's going...

But good information and story!

Thanks for the input.

Boots

[Greg Ogdan 110th OVI]

Boots, I shoot a custom '42 with a deep rifled barrel. when I went to the Hodgden, I found I had to size right at bore. Remember, the Hodgdon has a thicker skirt so it takes more energy to get obturation. If you're loading FFg powder, try going to FFFg.

Greg

[bobanderson]

I have a different approach.
Measure the thickness of the skirt. In my experience, a thick skirt won't completely expand into the rifling in a clean barrel. In my gun, the first shot landed about a pigeon low at 50 yards. It got so predictable that I would break the second bird in the row while aiming at the first one. Once that fowling shot was done, the gun shot true.
A friend on my team suggested bouncing the ram rod hard on the ball for the first shot. It actually improved things but didn't completely solve it. BTW, this won't work for every gun. A Mississippi rammer has a flat tip. Bouncing a Springfield style rammer wouldn't work because the profile is different.
I ended up making a new base pin with a thinner skirt. Exact size escapes me, but now the first shot lands where it is pointed.

Of course, where it is pointed when the shot breaks is still all my fault.

[Rick R]

I used to have the same problem. I found that by giving the first round an extra hard bounce of the ram rod I all was good. I experimented with technique on a barrel loading ball over powder and pulling the breach plug between attempts to develop a feel that assured expanding the ball into the grooves without excessive deformation. Then I moved to the range and I shot a bench rest target with five all first clean bore shots and got a great group. Problem solved. That was with a PH Enfield 3 band. With my PH 2 band I had the same issue but it liked being dirty and I never cleaned between events, used the same technique for that first pigeon. Perhaps a different sizing die would have been an answer, even a .001 larger size for the first round.

[Michael Bodner]

Made it to the range today with a slightly larger bullet, 0.0015 thousands bigger. All shots inside the pigeon.

Guess bigger bullets are the answer!

Thanks everyone for their input.

Boots

[Grandpot]

Mike "Bootsie" Bodner recruited me. It is my Zouave he has been working on. He got her dialed in by using experience, tenacity, and advice from you folks. Thank you.

Don't worry about my handle, Grandpot. I'm not a pothead. It's a funny story I'll tell you when we meet.

[Michael Bodner]

Well, you hang around with a guy named Bootsie. How much stranger can it get? LOL

[Joe Plakis, 9575V]

Why not just do what I do.... Take the first round out of your cartridge box and throw it on the ground..... Then pull out the second round and load and shoot it ...... problem solved. :p

[Mike Rouch 07791]

Joe is right, I do the same thing.

[efritz]

Just so I get this right? Do you use that same round over again from skirmish to skirmish to throw on the ground or do use a different round? I know consistency is important and you guys seem to know what you?re doing. Can you pick out your 10xs too? That would be worth sharing.

[Grandpot]

Those last three responses are interesting. I can follow the train of thought, it's similar to mine. When I bought my pickup truck brand new, I took a key and scratched the heck out of the bed. The salesman was astonished and asked what I was doing. I simply told him, now I don't have to worry about getting that first scratch anymore.:D

[ms3635v]

I size my minies to .5765 for a .577 bore.

[Muley Gil]

Those last three responses are interesting. I can follow the train of thought, it's similar to mine. When I bought my pickup truck brand new, I took a key and scratched the heck out of the bed. The salesman was astonished and asked what I was doing. I simply told him, now I don't have to worry about getting that first scratch anymore.:D

I bought a new '77 Ford F150 4x4 when I was a senior in college. My previous vehicles had been a 1952 Buick Super, a 1960 Pontiac Catalina and a 1966 Chevy C10. Me and a buddy went off into the boondocks and I drove down a little dead end dirt road. While turning around, I snagged a small sapling between the bumper and fender. I jumped out, ran and looked at it, cringed and then let out a sigh of relief. I didn't worry about scratches anymore. :D