I finally got a chance to have some quality time with ‘Bess, just her and me. Up until now, there have always been Moose and Angus sharing the firing line, and all sorts of other constraints. Saturday, I had a chance to sit down with the Pedersoli Brown Bess Musket and really dig in. Even then, I had to hold off a couple of hours as a series of rain showers passed through starting at sunrise.

The bulk of my load development centered around the .69 caliber ball. I have a Lee Mold and cast up a dozen or so to try out with paper patching. This is a rough analog to the standard British Army paper cartridge. I used a truncated pattern to cut the parchment paper, simulating a cartridge with the top torn off. I loaded mostly 90 grains of Schuetzen 3F as opposed to the historical 120 grains. I tried up to 100 grains and decided it was too much recoil for repeated shooting.

After giving the .69 cal ball a good working over, I brought out the .715 cal balls and had a go with Crisco-lubed .020 round patches. I actually liked the grouping of the .69 caliber paper cartridge to the patched round ball. The former gave me a grouping that would fit on a pie plate when fired dead-on at 40 yards. The latter required quite a bit more elevation, and also gave me some wild fliers. I guess you can’t argue with over 300 years of experience.

When I look back on this session, this is easily the most I have shot with actual Black Powder in 40 years. I started out with BP when first bought my caplock Hawken, but switched to alternatives. Real Black Powder is incredibly dirty by comparison, but it has no peer when it comes to usage in flintlocks. I had a hard time dealing with the buildup of crud. Luckily, I had thought to bring along a homebrew bore cleaner made of equal parts Simple Green, Murphy’s Oil Soap, and Hydrogen Peroxide. I also had a Fouling Scraper jag that I used a few times to scrape crud off the bottom of the barrel. I used Crisco to lube the barrel. It worked, but I’m going to switch to Moose Milk before my next session. It is another homebrew concoction. The recipe I’ll use is Cutting Oil, Murphy’s Oil Soap and water. Some folks use Ballistol and water.

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