Barrel Coning

[Winter Hawk]

I bought a couple of Joe Wood's barrel coning tools a while back, one in .50 caliber and one in .45.  They have been on the shelf for a couple of months. Saturday I did the .50 barrel of the Pennsylvania Hunter.  I had done this once before on a .54 Lyman GPR with mixed results.  It worked fine for cut patches, but I went a tad too deep so the balls would pop out if I tried cutting the patch at the muzzle.  I made sure that I didn't do that this time; I can always go a little deeper if I have to.

I hope to get out to the range tomorrow morning before the 90*+ temperatures hit and burn some powder, and I'll see how easy it has become to load the rifle.  Then the plan is to cone both the Hodgepodge Rifle and Bobcat barrels.  After that, if someone wants to borrow the tools I can loan them out, provided they come home again.

~Kees~

[RobD]

I've had and used bbl coning reamers on different muzzleloaders and my takeaway is that unless one knows Precisely what one is doing with regards to muzzle coning, there's a better than 50% chance of ruining the muzzle crown.  I know there are folks that swear by muzzle coning and more power to em, but I've learnt that process is not necessary for either faster/better loading or for increased accuracy.  And no, I've never boogered a muzzle crown by coning.