The Screaming Viking

I would have to say the majority of modern hunters and folks that own fire arms are generally pretty shitty about cleaning their guns.  With the powder being minimally corrosive today, you can pretty much afford to shrug off most maintenance and the weapon will still fire.  There might be a spot of rust here or there on the barrel, but that can all be rubbed off pretty easily each year.  Anything in the barrel will be blown out with the first or 2nd shot and we’re good to go… with modern weapons anyway….

Enter the black powder rifle.  Unless you actually shoot one of these shoulder mounted cannons you can’t really appriciate what goes in to actually using them.  Black powder is leaps and bounds more corrosive than standard smokeless powder used in todays modern rounds.  Even pyrodex, although less corrosive than black powder, will still fuck up a barrel like nobodies business if neglected long enough.  It’s been years since I’ve had the time to come home for black powder season and even longer than that since I’ve had the money to afford the trip/time off.  This year I have both so I thought I’d give it a go again.  Since it falls on thanks giving weekend as well it’s an ideal time to get back in to it.

My old man and I have/had identical rifles, Thopson Center Hawkin Renegade .54 calibure.  It’s a little beefy for deer but good enough for moose, elk and bear.  Several years ago we had problems with both of them.  I used to loan mine out to a family friend for use and one year it came back with the lock busted.  The old man’s, through years of neglect, has a fucked up flash pan.  The part where the nipple threads in to the flash pan is stripped out.  Since they are identical guns, I figured it was going to be as simple as matching his lock to my barrel to make a working rifle.  Oddly enough, as it turns out our locks are not identical.  They both use different spring mechanisms, which is totally irrelivant as they are interchangable…I just through it somewhat interesting.  In any case, I slapped the “new” rifle together, put a charge down the barrel, slapped on a cap and prepared for flying metal…

Now, if you’re a shooter and never had the pleasure of shooting a good blackpowder rifle, you are really missing out on something.  I think it just feels a little more “bush man” and for some strange reason, that appeals to me.  There is a hammer on the side of the barrel that you cock back, then there is a “set trigger” and the main trigger.  The rifle will fire if you just pull the hammer back and pull the main trigger, but it takes a harder pull.  The set trigger effecivly turns down the pressure required on the main trigger to make the rifle fire.  So, I hit the set trigger, hit the main trigger…POP! the cap goes off but no fire.  SHIT!  I put a new cap on there…same thing.  Now I get the pleasure of pulling the charge out of the barrel.

Pulling a charge from the barrel is not terribly difficult, it’s really just a pain in the ass.  There is a screw attachment that you put on the ram-rod and you push down as you turn to get the screw into the lead ball…then pull it out of the barrel.  It sounds easy enough, but if you take in to account that our patches (the part between the ball and powder, it helps the ball catch the rifling in the barrel and “spiral” like a football for accuracy) haven’t been re-lubed for years, you are suddenly pulling something out of a very tight space with maximum friction.  It took a god damn hammer to get the screw in to the ball, then I was completely unable to pull the fawkin thing out.  It was waayyy to stuck.  I had to use a pair of pliers with a hammer to get it out of the barrel.  The charge finally came out, at this point it’s clear the rifle needs to be cleaned.

Cleaning a blackpowder is different than a regular rifle.  Most rifles you would run a brush down the barrel, oil it up and your done.  With these god damn things, because of the corrosive power of the powder you need to use a method that sounds pretty counter productive.  We fill a sink with very hot soapy water, put a brush on the end of the ram-rod, wrap a cloth around it to make a good seal, submerge the flash pan and continually work the rod back and forth down the barrel.  The vaccuum sucks the water up and down the barrel cleaning out the rust and shit.  I usually quit with the blow back through the flash pan is completely clear.  After that, you run a dry rag down the barrel, then an oily rag.  I cleaned up the lock with a steel brush and oil as well.  Then the gun is reassembled and we always “dry fire” a cap through the flash pan in to the barrel.  It makes a certain sound that indicates the spark is traveling into the barrel and “should” ignite the charge.  At this point I have to make sure it’s going to fire before I’m sitting in a tree stand and guessing…so to speed up the drying process I invert it on the floor of the bathroom so the barrel is pointing down, and turn up the forced air heater.

A couple hours later, I decide it’s going to be now or never and start packing another charge in to the barrel.  I mosey my ass outside and brace myself to try to touch off another round.  I cock it back…and this time I don’t bother hitting the set trigger.  I’m just looking for an explosion, accuracy is meaningless.  I turn my head away and close my eyes…just in case…I yak the trigger…POP!…BANG! everything goes off just like it should.  Shooting a modern fire arm you would never notice that delay, even shooting an inline muzzleloader you wouldn’t notice a delay.  But with the side mount percussion, and flint locks you hear a distinctive “pre-fire”.  The flintlocks is more extreme, it has to ignite powder on the outside of the rifle in the flash pan and that needs to travel in to the rifle and set off the charge.  With the percussion, the cap sends a spark that has to travel down…make a 90 degree turn and go in to the main powder charge.  There is a noticable delay before the main charge goes off.

After all that, the rifle should be ready to go tomorrow.  I’m going to have to clean it up a bit when I get back to town.  I’ll need to use a steel brush to get the rust off, then hopefully there is some place that can reblue the barrel for me.  If I can find that, I might take the stalk to a wood shop and see if they can sand it down and restain it for me.  I would think that should be a fairly simple process for them.  We’ll see I guess!

–update

After the charge finally posted to the account I was able to contact the fraud dept and move forward with things.  There is a rediculous amount of leg work that needs to be done for 23 cents….so I doubt I’m going to go through with all that jazz.  They were able to verify the account was charged from the debt card itself and not the actual account information as it appears on the bottom of a check.  I had them issue a new debt card when I originally saw the charge so that should take care of the issue.

Kind of a pain in the ass really….some other people with the same problem here.

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Anyone ever heard of this freekin place?  I had a charge show up on my checking account for 23 cents for some mail order something or other from this company (92705 MAIL ORDER DDA ADELE SERVICES MELVILLE NY).  This makes absolutly no sense to me because I never use my checking account for mail order services.  I very seldom write checks, over the past year I think I’ve written 3 and 2 of those were for the bar back home that doesn’t have an ATM or take CC, the other was to buy a load of dirt from some dude in Moorhead.

I check my accounts fairly often, probably every couple of days.  I sit infront of the computer anyway so it’s a quick click to take a look at things.  I use my CC for everything possible.  There are some things that won’t allow you to use a CC, which is kinda lame.  So I have to have my Car, Student loans, Insurance, House payment, City bill, and electric bill paid directly from my accounts.  I only use my check card for getting cash out of an ATM.  All mail order is done with the CC.  So, to see a line item that says mail order in my checking account is really strange.  So, I did exactly what anyone would do…I called up the bank, cancelled my card and had a new one issued.  They can’t do any investigation until it is officially posted to the account…which should be tomorrow or something.  We’ll have to see what they can do with it.  I’m not terribly worked up about getting the charge reverse…I am slightly concerned about there being other charges suddenly appearing.

They should quit fucking.

Stories like this are so retarted.  People are starving in these countries but they continue to breed?  Why would you keep having kids if you know you already can’t feed the people that are there?  It’s a simple choice…quit fucking.  Lots of intelligent people look at their budgets and realize they can’t afford a child…so they make the informed decision not to have one.  Not people in these foreign nations though…it’s apparently their god given right to fuck and bitch about it.

That’s right…Total Request Live has been cancelled as of Sunday.  I haven’t watched that show in about a decade, but for around a year or so that was must see T.V. when I got back from class.