Muzzle Loaders: Buying a Used Gun

Black Powder and Pyrodex is very corrosive. If a black Powder gun is left dirty for any time after use, it can start pitting the steel that the residue is left on. It will eat away spots in side the barrel and also around the nipple or touch hole if the gun is a flint lock.

When looking over any used muzzle loader look closely at the nipple or touch hole area. If you find any pitting you will want to pass on buying the gun unless you want it for spare parts like the lock or stock with all the trimmings. The barrel will more than likely be bad with pits inside.

You can check the barrel with a bore light and scope. If you do not have one take a clean soft patch and run it down the barrel with just a little oil. If you feel any snags running the patch down you are feeling pits inside the barrel. If they are bad enough, they can strip the patch off of the ram rod on the way out.

Another thing to watch for is if the patch runs tight down from the muzzle end and loosens up towards the breach end, the breach area might be burned and eaten out. Again this is a bad barrel.

Bad pitted barrels will not shoot with any accuracy at all. The pits will tear the patch on the way down the barrel during loading, and also tear it up when fired. This will let some of the pressure of the powder burning run past one side of the ball. When the ball leaves the barrel the blast running out of the side of the ball will blow the ball off course.

Pits can also tear up any slug or sabot you might want to shoot. Of this happens when you fire the gun, the slug or sabot will skate down the barrel not picking up the rifling. It will not have the spin that it needs to fly true. Again accuracy will be bad.

Make sure the lock and double triggers work. More modern guns will use coil springs, but some still have flat springs that can be very hard to find replacement ones for. It would take a highly skilled gun smith to make a new spring from scratch. Especially the main spring in the lock. But on some of these older guns you may not have any other way to get it fixed.

Muzzle loader type guns do require more care then there smokeless powder brothers. Always look the gun over very well before buying one. A good cared for used gun will give you a lot of years of good service if taken care of. Buy one with a bad barrel, and you will have a hard time hitting the target all of the time.

With all of the used gun sites on the web today, you will not have any trouble finding a used muzzle loader. You can find in lines and also a more traditional type gun like a Thompson Center Hawken or a number of the other manufactures of older style long guns. Make sure you can return the gun and get your money back if it does not check out. Try to get pictures of areas that would have pits if not cleaned good after shooting. This should tell you if the gun is clean or not.

If you would like to learn more about muzzle loaders, go to BlackPowder-Shooters.com.

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