Bess is on the way!

[greggholmes]

 

[greggholmes]

I'll be shooting this weekend

[Stormrider51]

Here we go.  I must say from the outset that this attempt to see how much accuracy the Bess is capable of has already taken an unexpected turn.  More on that later.  The musket came in a cardboard box filled with styrofoam peanuts and another box inside.    Inside the second package was the Bess, wrapped in bubble wrap.    And finally, here she is in all her glory.  

My initial impressions were good.  The inletting wasn't as tight in a few places as I'd have liked but that tends to be true of many factory made muzzleloaders.  I liked the fact that there were no mold lines visible.  I was holding something made the way the Bess was in her day, forged and filed.  Overall polish was good and the brass pieces didn't show any sand casting roughness.  The vent is in the correct "sunset position" in relation to the pan.  Having noted Greg's statement that the breech plug extends too far forward on his gun I used a small punch to probe the vent.  The plug on this one seems to end just behind the vent.

One of the things I wanted to know concerned the diameter of the bore.  I miked the muzzle and got a reading of .755.  Pretty much dead on specs.  I used my longest down-hole gauge to get a reading about 3" down the bore.  Still .755.  So much for precision measurements.  Now I had to go primitive.  I ran a tight patch on a jag down the bore and then began to extract it slowly while feeling for loose places.  I do this on the way out because the patch bunches up and becomes tighter.  I'm happy to say that there were none.  While I can't guarantee that the bore is exactly .755 all the way down it at least doesn't have any obvious wide spots.

Shouldering the gun gave me a reminder that the British did not encourage aimed fire.  I have a fairly wide face and try as I might I couldn't get my eye down low enough to not have an eagle's view of the top of the barrel.  This may be interesting when it comes time to shoot.  On the other hand, that bayonet lug/front sight doesn't look all that wide perched way out there.  I did note that the lug is brazed on with yellow brazing metal visible all the way around.

Did I mention that Bess is a BIG girl?  There's nothing petite or delicate looking on her.  She looks every inch a military musket.

[Stormrider51]

My next step was to install a flint in the lock.  No surprises although the cock (hammer) and the frizzen don't line up all that well.  I've seen this on locks from other makers but this one is pretty far off.  The end result is that the flint looks a little wampyjawed when aligned with the face of the frizzen.  Not a big deal provided it sparks well.  That's where I hit the snag.

In their defense, MTV says in the manual that comes with the gun that the shooter should "Smoothly but sharply, pull the trigger rearwards".  That's a bit of an understatement.  I don't know what the weight of the trigger pull is because it is completely off the scale of my trigger gauge.  Way off.  Not only is it extremely hard, once the sear releases it will often fall into the half-cock notch.  The rest of the time the cock will fail to push the frizzen fully forward.  I had originally installed the flint using leather to hold it in the jaws of the cock.  I pounded a lead ball out flat and then shaped it to replace the leather.  My thought was that the additional mass might overcome the inertia of the frizzen.  No dice.  I had everything adjusted correctly in terms of the flint to frizzen relationship.  I was getting good sparks but the cock would stop about 3/4 of the way down the face of the frizzen.  I was also feeling like I had sprained my finger from yanking on the trigger.  Problems like these are often as simple as wood inside the lock mortise rubbing and binding on lock parts.  The lock works fine outside the gun but fails when installed.  It was time to remove the lock.

[Stormrider51]

Removing the lock did not solve the problem.  The cock still either falls to half-cock or, when it does make it all the way, it fails to kick the frizzen fully back.  Attempting to push the sear bar up to release the cock involved a lot of pushing along with dancing around my bench while chanting incantations.  The problem is an overly strong sear spring.  It's on the far right side of the lock in the photo.


There may also be an issue with the clearance between the sear and the tumbler.  The half-cock notch does not have a fly in it to prevent the sear from entering.  So what this lock needs is tuning.

At this point I'm going to remind everyone that my original intent was to evaluate the accuracy potential of the Bess from a hunter's point of view.  Given that MVT says each gun is bench checked for function prior to shipping, I really didn't expect to run into these problems.  So now I have a choice to make.  MVT has an excellent guarantee.  I can return the entire gun for a refund or I can send the lock back and I'm confident Peter Plunkett will tune it and send it back to me.  On the other hand, I began working on muzzleloaders in my dad's shop when I was a kid and I'm now approaching 63 years of age.  I have all the necessary tools including spring vise.  I'm confident of my ability to fix this.  And if I do I will have voided the warranty.  I'm going to think about this for a while.

[Stormrider51]

The lock is tuned.  I carefully filed the sear spring making it narrower by using the "2 file strokes, install and check" method.  Slow but it beats taking off too much metal.  That corrected the falling to half-cock problem and lightened the trigger pull.  Unfortunately, the cock would still fail to kick the frizzen all the way forward.  A careful examination of the tumbler showed a slight hump that the sear was making contact with as the tumbler rotated.  Could that be enough drag to cause the problem with the frizzen?  What the heck, do the job right!  I once again completely disassembled the lock and out came the stones.  I polished every contact surface in the lock until it was smooth, reassembled it and it was like I had a different lock.  It's very smooth and throws a very nice shower of sparks.  Now about that trigger dragging in the mortise....

[TallTexan]

I think you did the right thing in fixing it yourself, given your skills as a gunsmith.  However, it shouldn't take a trip to the gunsmith to make a brand new lock work correctly.

[Stormrider51]

The trigger drag was even simpler to correct.  The mortise was full of sawdust and wood chips and one side was rubbing on the trigger.  I used a very small and sharp chisel to clean things up then blew it out with compressed air.  I'm going to note that teak requires very sharp tools to work.  I learned this while doing repairs to a couple of sailboats I owned.  Anyway, I put the trigger back in place and it works smoothly now.  I'll attach before and after photos of the trigger mortise but you may not be able to tell the difference given that I'm taking the pics with my phone.

Okay, at this point I'm ready to do some shooting.  I do feel that I should point out that the Bess sent to me may not be an average example.  The next one on the rack could have been fully functional from the start.  I'll also say that this one could have worked had I been happy to point and yank the dickens out of the trigger but that is not my intent.  I want to see what this girl will do as a hunting gun.  After thinking about it, the Bess was better out of the box than some of the Spanish and Italian muzzleloaders I saw back in the 1970's.  The springs in the Bess are properly tempered and so is the frizzen.  That's more than I can say for some of the CVA products I tangles with back in the day.  I do not advocate anyone attempting to fix or modify any firearm unless you are an experienced and adequately equipped gunsmith.  MVT has an excellent warranty.  Use it.

Onward...

[1Poet]

Sooooooooooo...Have you "danced" with her yet??  Gotta know, gotta know!!!!

[1Poet]

Sooooooooooo...Have you "danced" with her yet??  Gotta know, gotta know!!!!

[Stormrider51]

I did this afternoon.  More to come later this evening.

Storm

[Stormrider51]

I took time this afternoon to shoot the Bess.  Some of my results were what I expected and some quite frankly surprised me.  But first, the details.  I was shooting from a very steady rest.  The temperature was 86 degrees F.  Humidity 56%.  Wind was variable from my left at 6-8 mph with gusts to 18 mph.  All weather data was taken from a hand held unit I have.  MVTC recommends a powder charge of 75 gr FFg so that's what I decided to start with.  I used FFFFg as priming powder.  The lead balls are .735 diameter.  I was using a mixture of 7:1 water and Ballistol as a solvent to wipe the bore between shots.

Civilization has been crowding me out here until I have only one direction I can safely shoot.  I used a tape measure and found that my maximum range was 21 yards.  That was fine because I didn't have a clue of where the balls were going to fly.  I considered going to 10 yards as a precaution but given that I'm shooting slightly downhill into a pile of fairly thick limbs backed by a dirt berm I felt 21 yards was safe.

My first attempts were with the traditional paper cartridges.  I had received a sales flyer from Dixie Gun Works along with the tow I ordered so I used the newsprint to make the cartridges.  I swabbed the bore with dry patches to remove any residual oil, then I loaded the first shot.  I was feeling very British as I tore the end of the cartridge with my teeth.  I broke with tradition in that I did not prime the pan before loading.  Ain't happening.  I dumped the entire 75 grains down the bore, and shoved the paper wrapped ball after it.  The rammer smoothly pushed the ball down to meet the powder.  Then I primed the pan with FFFFg and closed the frizzen.  I leaned the gun up against a tree to put on my ear muffs and picked Bess up for our first shot.  In being pointed upward most of the powder had escaped  from the pan.  Let's just say that the fit of the pan to the frizzen isn't the best.  So our first dance ended with the "Clack" of the flint hitting the frizzen and a deafening silence.  I saw what had happened and reprimed the pan being careful to keep the gun more or less level.  That time I was rewarded with a definite "BOOM".  My wife, who was inside a well insulated metal building about 30 yards away, later told me "Bess has a BIG voice!"  Apparently our Rottweiler was so startled that he jumped up barking at the sound.

The first shot was the lowest and rightmost in the photo.  It was fired from a clean bore and as such shots often do it landed a distance away from the main or "dirty bore" group.  I should have fired a fouling shot.  I wiped the bore with a patch moistened with the Ballistol solution.  One pass down and back out.  I wiped the pan clean with the same patch and then wiped the flint and frizzen with a dry rag.  I repeated this for four more shots.  The results were about what I expected given that the ball had a lot of room to careen around inside the barrel on the way up the bore.



Not anything to write home about but sufficient to take down a deer or hog at that range.  This is especially true if we don't count that first shot.  The shots were consistently to the left but the gun does not have a rear sight.  This is a problem I caused, not the gun.

Storm

[greggholmes]

Fantastic

[TallTexan]

Hurl some of those RB's towards those encroaching developers the next time; LOL!

[Stormrider51]

My next try was on the same day under the same conditions but using a flannel patch around the ball.  The fit was such that I could start the ball with my thumb and pushing it down to the powder are fairly easy.  I'll also note that I did not lube the patches.  There was really no need given I was wiping the bore between shots.  

I loaded and fired the first shot.  Nice big hole exactly where it should be on elevation but again to the left.  As I said, the windage thing is the shooters fault.  I was trying to use the screw in the barrel tang in my lower peripheral vision as a sort of rear sight.  At least I was consistent.  I wiped and reloaded.  When the smoke cleared from the second shot I found myself wondering where the ball went.  I wiped the bore and set it aside while I walked down toward the target.  It was soon obvious what had happened.  The second ball passed almost through the hole left by the first.  Now I'm really interested!  The third ball opened the hole a little bigger and formed a cloverleaf.  Then the wind gusts increased in frequency and were strong enough to push me around as I tried to sight.  The next shot went when a gust hit and was far to the right.  I decided to call that as a flyer.  I know I moved as the shot went off.  The next shot went where the first three were.  I'm starting to smile.  The next shot also coincided with a strong wind gust so I discounted it and loaded again.  The last shot opened the existing hole a little more.  Five shots into just over an inch center-to-center.  Now that's a meat-getter!  All I have to do is bring those shots to the right.



At that point I had to call it a day.  I had a gun to clean and then I needed to build a fire and grill a steak for dinner.  I'll do the testing with tow on Monday.  I avoid shooting out here on weekends because more neighbors are home.  For now let me say that Bess is sort of like the not-so-attractive girl who grows on you.  I'm sure seeing her in a different light tonight.



Storm