Muzzleloader Buying a Used Gun

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What to look for before putting your money down.

    Anyone who has fired and cleaned a muzzleloader knows the mess that the powder makes after it is burned. The left over residue or fouling, be it black powder or any of the black powder substitutes is very corrosive to the gun metal. If the gun is left unclean it will be pitted and possibly ruined. This is the main concern when buying any used black powder guns.

   This pitting will make the barrel shoot with very little to no accuracy. The pits will tear at the patch during loading, and will destroy it even farther upon firing. This will let the gases blow past the patched ball. Even if you shoot a maxi type slug or a sabot, if the rifling are pitted bad enough, the projectile with skate down the barrel not spinning from the rifling. This will make for an unstable projectile patched or not.

   Besides making the gun shoot with no accuracy, the pitting will ruin the outside finish of any unclean metal. Look for pitting around the nipple drum on a percussion type gun, or flash hole and pan on a flint lock type gun.  The barrel in this area will be pitted as well. Also look at the hammer on a cap lock gun to see if the inside if the hammer and undercut where the nipple is hit has any pitting or heavy rust.

You can see here that there are no pits from not being cleaned after shooting. This gun has been shot a lot and you can see some charring of the wood behind the nipple. The amco nipple has some green on it from some residue. But the steel is all in good shape.

   To check the bore you can use a bore scope. Or just run a clean path down the bore and feel how the patch runs . If you feel any roughness you should be checking the barrel out farther. You may want to remove the barrel from the stock and take the breach plug out so you take a good look through it. You can remove the drum and shine a flash light in the hole and look down from the muzzle and get a good view also.

  Make sure that the lock and triggers functions correctly. If there are any broken springs, make sure you can get replacements for them. Most all old black powder guns used flat springs. More modern replicas will used coil springs instead. Coil springs are easy to get replaced. Flat springs if have to be made are very hard to find some one who can do it.

 

The lock to the left here is a back action type with a piece of steel add to the front. You can see the flat springs used for the main and sear springs.  These can be very hard to replace.

 

   Check the stock out for any cracks or missing screws. Any loose or even striped screws in the wood are easy to fix. Striped ones you can use a good water proof wood glue and tooth picks. Just glue the tooth picks in and after the glue dries, put the screw back in.  

    If you buy a muzzleloader over the internet, make sure that you will be able to get a refund if the gun is in bad shape when you get it. But there are a lot of good used guns out there. They are a good way to get stared out shooting black powder with less money.

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