With the Lyman rear aperture sight your eye automatically centers as it seeks the most light. The front globe sight comes with a number of insert displaying posts or rings. There is one ring, that at 50 yards, is the exact same size as a black 3 inch target. If your sight picture shows only black it means you are very much dead center on that target left and right, up or down you are Right On. If your rifle is tweaked to where you are capable of one hole groups, you will get them with that insert and that target. After a while you get so used to that front globe sight you will enjoy shooting with no inserts at all. I’m not sure if that would be cheating but it’s fun unfriendly competition.

I am having The Killer Angels read to me, which will be the I don’t know how many times I have exposed myself to the words of the late Michael Shaara.   But I think it is the very best rendition of the Battle of Gettysburg ever put on paper.
I have to warn you that it is not historically correct.  It is what is called Historical Fiction.
The true historian has to prove every word he puts down or he will be attacked by competing historians for making things up.  As a result much historically accurate writing comes out stilted and stiff. The stuff that you learned to hate when you were in school.
There were a lot of diaries  and newspaper articles by the participants of that battle.  If you walk the grounds and read everything printed you can find you begin to have a “feel” for what the people were like, the weather, the food and the controversies between the various people, so now you will put words in their mouths.  Speak of their thoughts and worries for which there is no real historically correct proof.
As a result, the reader, you, will get a real feel for the thoughts, words and actions that are as close to the real thing as imagination and careful thought can make it.
As you read The Killer Angels you are there. You see the personalities of the generals on both sides.
When you finish you feel that you did witness everything, felt the worries. saw the hopes rise and fall.

Another example of this kind of writing is
The Red Badge of Courage written by Stephen Crane, unborn at the time of the great conflict, but who depicted what a new recruit would experience so well that veterans swore that he had to have been there.
Read both books and you feel that you Saw the Elephant as those soldiers called witnessing a real battle.

Getting to know all about you, as the old song said.
When you first get your rifle, a great elongated barrel, heavy
awkwardness, particularly so to us under ten footers. As you work up your first loads it becomes more comfortable to handle. It’s probably that your muscles are adjusting to its ungainly structure. After hunting season or the fall zeroing sessions, you can put it away and forget about much of what you’ve learned, or as some do at this time of year, when the hunting seasons are over, you spend some time polishing it up or just letting the natural browning ease into beauty that perhaps only you can see.
If you spend year ’round time taking care of your friend, all that awkwardness is gone. It used to be way too barrel heavy, but that seems to have diminished, and old Smokey has become something of a part of you and is no more weird to hold come spring than your right arm.
I gave my rifles to my grandson who has little interest, as I with my current vision have no reason to be on or near a rifle range or out in the field with them,
But I miss them.

We all know why the big rig trucks have so many wheels. You don’t? It is to spread their great weight on to so many pressure points that none of them would be destructive to either the road surface or the truck itself.
Folks walking by my shooting bench might wonder why I have a somewhat large white glass door knob on my short starter or ram rod.
If you give either one a lot of whacks to extrude the patched lead ball into the rifling of your barrel, you will remember the wear and tear on what I called my rifleman’s elbow..The wide knob makes it easier on the palm of your hand and the weight is a plus when it comes to forcing that resistant patched ball into the bore.
A side advantage is that if you forget and leave the ram rod in the barrel, you cannot aim the rifle without seeing that large knob in the middle of your sight picture.

The ones I used were recovered from the wreckage of an old river steamboat that was revealed by a low water level during a drought. Actually my main ramrod had a solid brass knob recovered from a former elegant building that was being destroyed.

I doubt if many will adopt this practice because it looks a little “DUMB” if you don’t think about it.

On another related topic, it seems you spend a lot of time carrying stuff to the range, to your hunting grounds, and a sling for your rifle is a good idea. I see a lot of them, narrow straps cutting into a shoulder. I suggest making one with a nice maybe 4 inch wide section that lies on your shoulder, Spreads the weight, makes a heavier load feel much lighter.
For hunting in the field you probably just carry your rifle and at most a sling that supports your shooting bag, but if possible, avoid anything that gets in the way of your smooth aiming movement.

This is mostly intended for folks not on the ML Forum.
I doubt many riflemen would happily sell a deadly accurate rifle.
Reasons for selling a rifle:
Have a more accurate rifle
Cannot get accuracy out of this rifle
Reasons for no Accuracy:
Ignorance of any idea what is required to produce any good performance
Barrel ruined because of ignorance
Barrel ruined by carelessness
Bulged barrel caused by not seating a patched ball before firing

Fastest way to ruin a barrel?
See line above.
What is a slower way to ruin a barrel?
Not cleaning at the end of any firing and letting corrosion prosper.
What is the usual reason for selling a rifle?
Can’t get any accuracy for the above variety of reasons. And there you are.

“Boy, I have gotten a great deal on a Whizzer Bang Bang .50 Super Deer Killer hunting rifle” made by an unknown gunsmith.

HOW TO PREVENT JOINING THE PARADE OF FOLKS TRYING TO ACHIEVE ACCURACY OUT OF THIS GREAT DEAL.
All a rifle is is the barrel. Nothing more. Nothing less.
All the rest is just an apparatus to make it fire and to hold it steady while aiming.
Pretty appearance is nice and frequently inspiring but is most appreciated about wall hangers.
A good unbelted barrel is about all you need. It can handle a surprising amount of pitting from old uncorrected corrosion created by the prior owner. It CANNOT handle a bulged barrel. There is seldom any sign of the bulge on the outside of the barrel so how do we check the inside of the barrel?
Place a couple of patches on the jag end of the ramrod thick enough to keep the patched ramrod sliding effortlessly down the length of the barrel. Preferably it will slowly slide down the length of the bore with just the weight of your arm.
Observe closely. Does it slide down at the same even speed the entire length OR at one point speed up for two or more inches and then slow down again? No speedup, you might very well have a good barrel. If it does speed up, you may have the greater part of a crowbar. It will never shoot accurately. Don’t buy that rifle. If the person selling won’t allow this test just walk away. He knows what’s wrong and doesn’t want the buyer to find out. He is a thief. Never buy anything from him.
I have had too many people come to me with a “great deals” that turn very sour when the hidden bulge is discovered. Wonderful as you are, you can’t work around this. If you can, please let me know how you did it.

This is the great controversy. I doubt it will ever be settled. The idea I have been insistently told. is to supply enough oxygen down to the breech area to hasten the burning up of glowing residue left in the breech. This precaution is taken to prevent a major explosion when the next powder charge is dropped into the breech. In quite a few 
years spent at a busy range I never witnessed this happening. True, but it could happen they insist!

Most of us have owned a bicycle and put up with their habit of sneakily going flat in the tire area and we would fetch the old pump and slam in a number of pumps to bring the tires up to the desired hardness. Think about that. If you are a normal human being, the source of air with the least amount of oxygen in your immediate neighborhood is your lungs which have been grabbing it and using it to keep you ticking. This what you are using to make that unknown stuff burn to extinction. It might be better to force fully oxygenated air down your barrel with a quick wipe.

I witnessed an odd thing one day when a gent had a very tight fitting jag and patch get forced down a thoroughly plugged barrel. He actually was compressing the air in the barrel. He let go on the down stroke and the ramrod shot up and out of the barrel with enough force to hit the roof of the shelter.

Another reason given for blowing down the barrel is to clear the ignition channel. Usually the preceding firing of the gun has done that. In some percussion rifles, the hammer, when fired, will hold the expended cap tightly on the nipple and the back pressure of the explosion won’t open that nor will your breathing moist air down there.

The practice will continue, there is just no stopping it. In some of the cruder sections of Pennsylvania showing up with a lot of black powder residue is called Blowing the Coal Miner.

Some of the allegedly very best muzzleloading riflemen do not pour their powder charges down the barrel where some of the powder might not fall all the way to the breech, but due to static electricity, might adhere to the barrel side not all the way down. To avoid this problem, they insert a long tube down the barrel and pour the powder down that so that all the powder collects neatly in the breech ready for the firing spark. What puzzles me is the fact that the powder might stick to the side of the tube and remain there and never get to the breech at all. I don’t know what the tubes are made of, but in most cases, as they pass through your hands, the static electricity will really build up. That’s really the second lapse in logic, the first being that if in pouring the powder down the actual steel barrel some flecks or more of the powder adheres to the steel partway down, won’t the rather tight fitting patched ball sweep if off the bore wall and into the breech where it and all the other powder are waiting for the firing spark?

This practice continues in spite of my thoughts and so. one might figure. there remains a good reason for doing it. Many have but I remain puzzled.

In the 18th century and the early days of the 19th, the seagoing war ships had a problem of what appeared to be a perfectly fine cannon that would with a normal load blow up, destroying the gun and a few bystanders who loaded it correctly. The problem was caused by some water getting into the metal of the cannon and starting to rust. The rust would eat in a number of directions causing greater weakness in the metal that was thought to be solid.

On page 80 of my book I have printed a picture of an iron molecule enlarged 50,000 times. It looks like something in a playground that is far from solid. If you short start a patched ball  6 or so inches down the barrel of your rifle and fire the rifle you will very often create a bulge in the bore. The bulge seldom shows up on the outside of the now ruined barrel. If the steel is so solid, where did the steel that used to occupy that space created by the bulge go? It got squished into all those steel molecules.
We often hear: “I cleaned my barrel with good hot soapy water and wiped the barrel clean with white wiping patches that came out spotless. Then a few days later, if I run a dry wiping patch down, it comes out a rust colored orange.
I know that water will rust steel but that bore was bone dry. Where did that water come from?” It came from all those spaces among the steel molecules where you put it. If you finished with a nice light coat of oil after your cleaning procedure to seal out any outside source of water or just humidity to stay out, you are also sealing in the water you put there with the hot soapy cleaning method.

I think you could  put up with this small rust problem for quite a few years BUT on the other hand, that small rusting isn’t strengthening your barrel so why put up with it?

What I accidentally developed was a system minimizing the use of water as much as possible.  Wiping the barrel with a wiping patch only damp with your favorite Moose Milk. Squeezing that patch in a vise could not produce a whole drop of liquid. The dampness will penetrate the residue which bakes on the corrosive residue and sweeps it from the barrel. Make sure you are pulling a snow white clean wiping patch before you then coat the bore with patches wet with WD 40, making sure all surfaces are coated. If you have a barrel protector on your ram rod, leave the ram rod with its WD 40 patches in the barrel till the next time you go hunting or to the range. Drop 30 grains of whatever down the barrel on the new day and fire that bank down range to burn off the WD 40. Give it a wipe and load for your first shot. By storing with this water displacing oil you will soon fill all those molecular spaces withWD 40, and water and residue just can’t get in there. If you have a better penetrating water displacement oil it should probably work as well
Sometimes you will pull black residue a few days after cleaning. Treat it the same way as water caused rust.

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Quite a few of us will live forever because of the makeup of our genes which include a small touch of West Canadian husky. But this is intended for the less fortunate whose days are numbered and in the process of running out.

When I was still in grade school, Bob Patterson, a classmate, secured 50 well maintained rifles that puzzled our young minds because there was no place to insert any cartridges. They were old time European muzzleloaders that he bought from a widow for a dollar each. This was some gentleman’s valued collection and his widow who knew nothing about them, cared little and sold them to a kid for $50.

I have a friend who avidly attends gun shows and other sources and buys guns that he fancies. Every so often he’ll report installing a new and larger gun safe to contain in locked safety of what must have become quite a valuable collection. He recently had a near death experience that looked a lot like a stroke but turned out to be a treatable brain injury. Should he have died, how was this collection to be dispersed? Sell them all for a few dollars a piece? Or what?

Those of us who are not going to live forever and have a well maintained collection of 4 or maybe 20 twenty such rifles should admit their weaker hold on life and prearrange a method of dispersal that won’t leave the widow cheated of the greater part of the value. This won’t be easy. A live forever purchaser should be found and some understanding of the value of each piece determined before the owner is surprised by time. I gave mine to my grandson who I think values them not at all.
Think about it.

Which is what the Brits used to say when advancing an idea contrary to the popular ideas at the time.

But women can and often are better shots than men. A gentleman of one of the Carolinas first tipped me off to this when he told me he had a muzzleloading rifle that was so bad he didn’t hate anyone enough to sell it to them. We quickly straightened that out and his wife and daughter used it to win all sorts prizes along the Atlantic seaboard. It has nothing to do with how they are built or glands or any of that funny stuff.

Actually, men are born with the idea that they have an edge when it comes to shooting and the other manly arts. Women come on the scene like a blank sheet of paper. They listen to the advice, they follow instructions. Men will edit the advice and perform the instructions their way. That’s the difference. So if you want to shoot as well as the ladies, forget what you thought you learned in the movies, shut up and follow instructions closely. It’s not really cheating, it’s the smart way.