A Customer’s Story
Lawrence of Gastonia’s Letter:
Dutch,
I have been trying your system for about the past two months. I put it through the hardest test I could think of. I took my least accurate rifle, A T/C .45 Hawken, and started from scratch. It would keep almost all the shots in a washtub at 50 yards. The only changes I made to your method, was to use Ballistol as a cleaner, and also as a water soluble oil for the dry patches. If you were still shootin, you’d use that stuff. After I weighed the balls, and found the proper compressed thickness for the patches, the rifle shot better.
It would keep all the shots in a dinner plate. And that was with the same grease lube I have used for years. Then I got a new cleaning jag, and cut cleaning patches out of new, consistently sized and thickness material. Saucer size groups. Then I started on the dry lube, using ballistol. 20 test shots per mixture. I was a little concerned, at first, about using dry feeling patches, but I had to go all the way. And I found that mixture the rifle liked. The right mixture, some of my groups could be covered with a QUARTER! And ALL of them could be covered with a fifty cent piece. This from a rifle that I was ready to sell, if I could find anyone I disliked enough to sell it to. And as an aside, to show you how foolish people are, some of the other club members ASKED to buy my light balls… Even after they saw how much difference weighing mine made. Yep, sold them to em. If they were that foolish, who was I to deny them the opportunity to get worse. And then listened to them complain about their rifles shooting poorly… And I gave a strip of my patching to another shooter who watched his group size shrink from 8 inches to 2 inches, just with the patching, and he still didn’t want to know what I had done.
Then I attended the biggest shoot here in North Carolina, Kings Mountain Pioneer Days, and came in first in the 50 yard 6 bull with a 49,2X… In their scoring, over half the ball has to be in a ring to count as that score. The 10 ring is the size of a nickel and the X ring is 1/2 inch. I was rather proud of your teaching ability. Especially since that is the first time I’ve come in better than 4th in any match. My wife, using your methods in her .32, for the offhand events, and that rifle for the cross stick 50 yard event, totally dominated the women’s category. She came in first, in all three women’s events, and first in the Women’s Aggregate, of course. The other women weren’t even close. But after shooting my Hawken she has decided that I need to build her a rifle so she can retire her .32. It’s a CVA and is cantankerous as a mule. Even using your methods it won’t shoot consistently. One day it’ll shoot 1 inch groups, the next it won’t keep them in a dinner plate. Then suddenly it’ll start shooting right again. My 14 year old daughter came in 3rd in the “16 and under Aggregate” with the .45 also. Those boys she out shot had fits. My wife and I also got drafted to shoot in the Interstate Match, Offhand, 50 yard 6 bull, 6 shooters, 5 shots each, add the score… Kings Mountain Longrifles (us) came in second by 7 points. But next year…
A couple of things I did discover… Two of my wife’s friends came by and wanted to shoot, just to say they had shot a gun, so I let them shoot, once each. I didn’t wipe between shots and it was extremely difficult to load the rifle. I thought about that for a second and then decided that was good, it meant I had a really good fitting patch and ball combination. The fouling made it too tight to load without pounding the ball. I also found that my rifle worked best if I waited until the next match started, to wipe the bore from the last shot in the match before. If I wiped the bore, and let the rifle sit for the ten minutes or so between matches, the first shot was out of the group. But if I wiped it right before I loaded, it kept the first shot in the group. Make any sense?
So, now it’s time to go to work and make my flintlock do as well. The formerly, poorly shooting T/C with the stock barrel is outshooting the flintlock I made, with the custom competition barrel. But now I know how to fix that.
I’ve been competing in that shoot and others for many years, and nothing has made as big a difference in my shooting as your methods. Thanks!!!!!