The first time I addressed a class at Washington University, a student asked me a question and, telling the truth, I said I didn’t know. The next class, half the students were gone and they never came back. “Why should they listen to some jerk who didn’t know everything?” That, of course was a stupid reaction to my honest answer. From then on I opened my first lecture to any new class saying essentially. “No one can know everything.” Imagine carrying all the wisdom of the Library of Congress around in your head. What one can learn in any university or learning situation is some facts. quite a few in fact. Where to locate other facts in libraries. other classes or by just asking around. How to think about those facts using logic and general understanding. And finally how to put all that thinking to use and create new facts of your own and maybe discover something all together new.

College graduates usually get a break as people assume they must know something to get that title. I think in many cases a college education is a considerable handicap. The graduate who thinks Aha! I now know it all and stops learning will remain pretty much stuck in where the world was the day he graduated. The graduate who knows he doesn’t know but a wee bit of the world’s knowledge, but also knows he has the key to explore the world for the rest of his life always is expanding that knowledge. The first man has an education. The second man has wisdom.

In the very fine art of muzzleloading you can be educated by the good people you run into at the rifle ranges or you can use what knowledge they have given you and continue to explore, always paying attention to details you learn from your rifle and investigating why things happen the way they do which can be pretty mysterious at times, but its fun learning and usually your enjoyment increases along with your knowledge.

I have a college education. My course of study was English Literature. I believe the only advantage that gave me was an increased vocabulary. Lots of extra words I never use in daily life or in my study of muzzleloading and accuracy
I have a friend whose course of study was anthropology. With that degree they send you off to live with the Indians. With his degree and my degree and a dime you can get a nickel and five pennies.
While we were learning our narrow studies, the non college student is learning all sorts of things that apply to his daily life. Where now is the real advantage of a college education unless it’s in training for a specific skill such as medicine or surgery?  It was probably a waste of time. I am tired of the put down of the non college graduate and the advantages given the graduate. I repeat the real advantage is that you learn how to find facts and how to think about them. 

When I was writing for a magazine, I was sent to interview a man who had been pulled out of school around the ninth grade to earn enough money to help feed his family. He was and still is the most brilliant man I ever met. He missed his formal education and began to educate himself by reading things of interest and when he came up against something new, he would study that until he understood it. So as the years passed his knowledge spread in all directions. He was way ahead of any of the formal education he had missed.

If you look into the things life presents you to understand them rather than letting them pass by as “being above your pay grade” you’ll be self educating yourself.

Louis Pasteur discovered how germs affected beer brewing and a variety of other life saving ideas. His discoveries were rejected for 10 years because he didn’t have a college degree. Think of how many lives were lost because of that stupidity.

I was doing some some research on my late brother who was a Vice Admiral and who went by the same name as I, and stumbled across a lot of posts on The American Long Rifle Forum regarding my efforts. They were not uncomplimentary but a tad short sighted. They all objected that I was interested in teaching bench shooting. If that’s your interest perhaps I’m your man, but bench shooting will show you how well your rifle shoots.

When you buy a modern rifle it will shoot as well as it will ever shoot right out of the box with the ammunition you are using. Not so the muzzleloader. Out of the box or off the table, with no instructions, using a guessed at powder charge and a grabbed at piece of cotton cloth, your new to you rifle will not give you a group worth talking about. Daniel Boone and David Crocket couldn’t shoot any better than that rifle is doing out of the box. You should, and I try to help folks make the adjustments in powder, patch thickness and lubrication to bring that bench rest group a group tight enough to bring a smile to your face. That’s a number of step ones.

THEN, WHEN THE RIFLE HAS DISPLAYED GOOD BEHAVIOR, YOU BOLDLY STEP UP, PUT ASIDE YOUR BENCH REST EQUIPMENT AND STAND TO TRY YOUR LUCK OR SKILLS SHOOTING OFFHAND.

You will not shoot anywhere near as well as you did toward the end of you bench rest tuning. Why? Because you have taken a perfectly accurate rifle and added your personal weaving and possible shaking into the procedure. How embarrassing. 

Now it is time to work on your stance. You are the gun emplacement and that front sight has taken on a life of its own. Whizzing from left to right and back with maybe a shift of up and down thrown in for punishment. Slowly you learn how to control some or even a lot of that and your offhand groups begin to narrow. Don’t hold too long, it will only get worse etc. In time you may begin to win prizes and become regarded as a pain in the lower lumbar areas by others at competitions.
But you will never do well with a rifle that has never been tamed to acceptable behavior shooting at the bench unaffected by an argument with your bride or the results of a hangover. If you never do well offhand you can always go back to bench. There is something rather grand about the rifleman who loads aims and fires and hits rather exactly where he aimed.

Something most people are unaware of.   

I have two identical rifles but they are not.

I have been told not to wear the same shoes every day or my feet would soon cease to resemble feet. Sitting in my bedroom this morning, which resembles a small terrorist after action scene, I noticed I had nine pairs of shoes sized nine and a half D. Seven appear to be identical and were probably made in China to American standards. They must all be alike.  Right? Well they should, but some are almost too tight fitting to wear and others are much more roomy and comfortable. What could possibly be the difference? They were all made to “be in the neighborhood of 9.5 D” but there is that obvious variation. That slight variation exists in everything that is manufactured and is of particular importance in all rifles including the wonderful muzzleloaders.

Charley has a gun barrel just like yours. If you load a patched ball using one of his balls cast from a single ball mold using his patching material and carefully calculated lubrication, the two rifles may shoot exactly the same, but often in this experiment may shoot a little bit different because of tolerances allowed in the making of the two barrels. His barrel may be a very slight bit bigger than yours or vice versa. Now if we change the lead ball to one that came labeled to be the same size as Charley’s we now have added another variable to increase the possible difference. Charley says his shooting patch material is .015 when measured the correct way with a micrometer and so does yours, and here can be a much greater variable because Charley’s patch material, when measured using a compressed method, will shrink to .0135 when crushed between ball and bore and yours will crush even further to .095. So you and Charley think you are loading and firing the same load in two identical rifles and getting surprisingly different results. Maybe now you can see how this happens and how Charley is getting better results doing exactly the same thing you are. or so you think. This is where the micrometer comes in to play.

To shoot well you must try to eliminate those variables caused by the teetotal sum of all those variations. Use balls all cast from the same mold. Use patching that fits exactly to form a perfect seal around the ball and keep all other elements exactly the same and you should have consistent satisfactory results.

Sometimes you can correct a small variation by using a “shim”. I used cigarette paper which is very thin  placed between ball and the patch you are currently using to add that very small extra thickness to see if it has a positive effect.  If not, then try two sheets of this thin paper to increase the total thickness even further. In my experiment I found that three sheets of this paper made a noticeable and positive difference, so off I went to the fabric store. micrometer in hand, to find an all cotton denim whose compressed measurement is the same as that of my old patch material plus the three sheets of thin paper. It was surprising to me how such a slight difference could have such a big effect on target.

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This and That

Just to show you I can write on other subjects, I would like to begin with some important truths as I have come to believe them. People scramble eggs by whipping a few eggs with some milk and then drop them in the pan. This is a cold practice foisted on us by the British who try to pay for their crimes by eating tasteless foods. The better way is to break a number of eggs into a pan with  dab of butter. The whites of the eggs will begin to turn white. When that is about two thirds accomplished you then begin to mix them with yolks. This gives you a different flavor made by a combination of the flavors of both the whites and yokes.

My daughter is a source of the following: Non stick frying pans become very sticky shortly after you begin using them. To continue the nonstick ability never heat the pan much past medium heat. This will allow the non stick quality to last much longer. Slows things down but if you like the non stick ability it’s well worth it.

The cure for a lot of natures painful  problems, an Indian women told her, was usually nearby. Poison Ivy ’s cure is a weed called Mullen which frequently grows quite close and whose large leaves when blanched and placed on the affliction will bring  some relief. An interesting drawback is that it will turn your skin green.

I went to the local pistol club range this afternoon to continue development testing of your accuracy system.

What a waste of a day.

I set up my target at 50 meters. “You are wasting your time” The guy with the new Dakota in 7mmDakota said. “You will never hit that ” from the guy with the scope sighted 7mm08. “I can hardly see that target in my scope” laughed the guy with the 4×32 topped 10/22.

Down went the powder, 80gr Goex ff. On went a dry lubed patch. The pre weighed Speer round ball was seated. The patch cut ( “Strange knife handle ” says Dakota, “Lions tooth” says I,”Oh” says 7mm08) ball rammed home. – the idea for your ball seater is worth the $14 alone- Hammer cocked, Remington cap snugged home. Aim taken. Trigger set. Boomff.

“Smack in the flaming middle” says Dakota.

“Fluke” says 10/22.

This was repeated with a lot less smartass comments for the next 4 shots. I used the Dutch Schoultz method of bore preparation between shots, and combined with your dry patch lube system, found that there was a lot less fouling than usual,( I think the waxy lubes combine with the powder residue to form a gluey varnish of crud).

The result was a shot out center of the target, -50- a group of guys all wanting a go. “You can have 5 shots with mine, if I can have 5 shots with yours” I got to shoot two more groups all afternoon, different lubes, different groups.

Your accuracy system works, the rifle I shot today is a very accurate .54 Uberti Hawken with which I have won several major shoots, but it has never shot as well as it does now.

Look out Pilgrims the next trail walk is mine.

Regards, Duncan