Shot mine today. What a day! Started out on the 50 yard range with 2 shots off the bench on sand bags to see where the T-C was sighted. She shot low and right, so I moved the rear left and tried again. This time it hit left and low, so I scooched the rear sight right a tad and called it good.
Stood up on my hind legs and took my first shot at the target - high and right, off the paper. Next shot cut the bottom of the lowest ring. Once again I shot, hit off the paper, low and left. I took my trusty file and worked on the front sight a bit, then tried again. This time I was on for elevation but off the paper to the right. Took a last shot and it cut the lowest ring to the right of the second one.
Then I noticed that the lock was flopping around. Tightened up the lock screw. Figured at this rate, Joe wouldn't mind if I didn't walk down in the mud to change targets, as long as he knows not to count the next two shots. Wouldn't you know it, both were inside the 10 ring!
Okay, I haven't mentioned the other problems. The shots off the bench went great. After that I had ignition problems where I saw sparks from the frizzen but the prime wasn't catching, and when I checked the pan the priming charge was out of it and lying under the hinge of the cover. This happened numerous times. I also had a number of flash-in-the-pan incidents. On one shot I had no spark, knapped the flint three times with the same result when I finally saw that the cock was loose on the tumbler. Tightening the screw fixed
that problem, at least. All very frustrating and time consuming. I don't know why both the lock screw and the tumbler screw loosened, but tightening them seemed to make the problems go away.
Anyway, my target is in the mail to Joe. If he accepts it and ignores the two shots in the 10 ring I at least have a score. If I am disqualified I understand and that's okay too.
~Kees~
