After spending some time in the hospital, I was told to go home and relax. Wife had me all propped up and made me promise to get some rest,...don't overdo it, don't go anywhere... So, dutifully I agreed. Sigh.

Then she went to work.

She forgot about the backyard range. Grabbed my .32 limb bacon gun and blasted off six shots at 25 yards, fast as I could. Offhand.

Best Medicine in the World.





Back to the easy chair for the rest of the day.....

But man, I am feeling better.

Giz

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That's great shooting sir.

I have been shooting flintlockmuskets for some time
so i know what it takes

Is that a musket or a rifle?
Either way - Great shootin' with a flintlock!
And pretty darned fast too.

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In dog years I'm dead.

You are a NCP!

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Still Running Against the Wind

...so then.....soup's on???

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Dum vivimus Vivamas

Non Compliant Patient

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Still Running Against the Wind

NCP .....

Yeah, that about sums it up.

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I am the worst, plus you have me worried now. I have to go in the hospital next month for a "minor" surgery and am now thinking of this super bug.

I am bringing my own can of Lysol and spray myself!

Actually read somewhere that the CDS (center disease control) uses Lysol as it's primary disinfectant.

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Still Running Against the Wind

You do realize that when she finds out how much trouble you are going to be in, don't you?

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Why duck?? It's a 9mm!

Yep,

But it was so worth it...

Giz

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Giz - Hope you continue to ENJOY your recovery.
Better hide that paper-plate from the wife............you'd been smarter puttin' a phoney date on it

giz,
They had some re-enactors doing that on TV a couple years ago.
Their accuracy was on a par with yours, but they Were slower.
Will-power is the answer to most of life's difficlties. I can see
that you got your share. Happy recovery and good shooting.
TACC1

A little sideways tale, about the gun.

I picked her up a couple of weeks back. She is a early Dixie GunWorks .32 cal flintlock in a Tennessee Mountain gun. Made simple, iron mounted...

Turns out she is Iron Willed, too. Never have I had such trouble dialing in a rocklock. On a bench she did fine. Offhand a totally different POI. Regulate different ffg or fffg....different POI. Change the patch and another POI. each time I got closer off the bench something changed. At the end of my last shooting session, a week ago, I made some adjustments and then snapped a ramrod loading her. She bit me...

I drove home, seated the ball with a range rod.....and fired it it into a stump. I was mad as the gun had fought with me all day. Last I knew it was 2" low and 1 1/2" left at 25 yards. She didn't deserve it, but after a thorough scrubbing, I oiled the stock and buffed her out, before putting her away. I truly think she was Wildcat mad about never being shot for all those years.

Sunday we were socked in by the Hurricane. Monday was the day I started in with MRSA. Today I grabbed a six shot loading block and dragged the wench outside. As the pics show, she purred like a kitten.

Gonna call her Irene.... Lots of pent up energy, this one.

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Glad you are doing better.
Fine shootin'.

6 shots in 3 min & 10 sec- a veritable "hail of lead".

Giz,
a thought I've often had-
What possessed armies to even switch to the earliest firearms in the first place?
The arquebus was such a clumsy, slow, unreliable weapon, I have to wonder why the whole world did not copy the English longbow?
It was extremely fast, more accurate and even more powerful and had more range than some guns, easy to run and maneuver with, worked in the rain, did not mind if you forded a creek or swam a river, and even had the advantage of indirect fire! (ask Custer about that)

I'm serious- how did the clumsy early guns ever replace bows?

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

I think it was because they were shiney and new, Lee. Also, it would take about 10 years for an archer to master the bow, but just a few weeks training for a musketeer to figure out how to send a ball down range. And they did punch through armor, whenever they actually hit something.

Lee
Funny you should ask. I shot English longbow for a while mine was 6'6" unstrung. It only pulled 60 lbs. The real deal would be 100 or more. The archers would about deformed their bodies from years of practice. In a open plane, they are superb. In thick and heavy cover, not so much. A English sparrow point attached to a properly shafted, feathered, and nocked arrow is much more expensive than a piece of lead.

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I saw a show on the English Longbow on PBS a few years back and it was a real Dreadnaught in it's time. However, 2 seperate issues put it in the history books. One was that improvements in Armor greatly reduced it's effectiveness. The second was that it was a VERY demanding weapon to master. IIRC training started at about 8 years old and damage to the shoulder basically put the retirement age for a longbowman at around 25 years of age. BTW, I doubt they actually got retirement benefits, they were just no longer capable of drawing the bow. The draw weight was also considerably higher than today's bow, as I remember it the draw weight for a true English Longbow ranged between 180 and 220 lbs. Firearms must have seemed like a real magic answer to the generals of the day, even if they were unreliable, inaccurate, and quite heavy to carry.

BTW, 6 rounds from a flintlock into any kind of grouping in about 3 seconds impresses the heck out of me, especially when it's a rifle that takes a good deal more force to load than a smoothbore.

My bullet block holds six and hangs from my neck. I keep my 30 gr charger on a leather whip tied on my right wrist. Pour from my horn on my left side. I load with a Range rod leaned near my shooting position. All aid speed.

If I had the barrel coned, it would shave off more time...

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If you cone the barrel, will there be pics? TACC1

Hey giz... great shootin! That's a fine group. ...and great medicine for being chair bound and recovering. I'll keep ya in my thoughts and prayers for a complete and speedy recovery.

Hog

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Isaiah 55:8-9
Phil. 4:13

Don't you hate when that happens? Nah, I've never fired black powder in my life.

As for the longbow, there were complicated rules/proclimations concerning it. It was the class III assault firearms of its day. They spent a lot of funds on training, feeding, housing, equiping a knight only to have one arrow from a long bow penetrating his armor.

TACC1,



Pics really can't show the effects of coning a barrel. It is a gradual tapering of the muzzle down into the barrel, for a short distance. It allows you to thump start the parched and ball, then go to your ramrod - without having to use a short starter.


Giz

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