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I did some filing on the breeches - to redcue the height of the metal arond the nipple seats, which were set down fairly well, however the metal rising around the rear and outside of the nipple seats made it difficult to get a wrench on the shorted nipple flats. This is now aleviated, and re-blued with birchwood Casey's cold bluing creme. Oops, I see I didn't get the filing even on the sides - oh well. Might get around to fixing that some time.

Shot the gun yesterday on the bush trail course (7 degrees - 12 shooters turned out) - close to 100 shots total. Made many rights and lefts on the targets. I found 100gr. 2F so shoot well enough to obtain rights and lefts on the fox, paint can turkey targets ranging from 92 yards to 109yards as well as to split my playing card into 2 by holding 1" to the right of the target as it's close and the barrels are not under the sights, as they are on single guns - of course.
Although the bore on this gun is rough with reamer marks, loading was easy all day- no wiping and using a 3/8" custom made hickory rod - good grain structure. Load ended up at 100gr. 2F, a .022" ticking patch and a .562" pure lead ball. Ramin is a very, very poor second choice for ramrod material.

Here are the muzzles, re-crowned for easy, non-patch -cutting, loading. Note the rough bores due to reamer marks. I find a lot of Italian guns bored very similarly. BUT - do note, there never was any fouling buildup over the entire 90 to 100 shots fired on the course. Cleaning the gun with the bucket-flushing method, pumping water into and out of the tubes, left the 3 pound coffee can of water only slightly grey - not black, which indicates the ball/patch combination I used, although loading easily, effectively wiped the previous shot's flouling from the bore each time I loaded. The only real fouling in the bore was from the last shot fired in each tube, along with any buildup in the breeches from roughly 45 to 50 shots per tube during the day. I like this gun. Prelininary testing on the 'tie-breaker' target showed a 1" groups with both tubes alternatly, offhand at 20 yards using 3 drams of 2f GOEX. Rising to 3 2/3's drams made the bores shoot quite parallel. I like this gun - oh yeah, I said that. Too bad it isn't a .72!
Oh yeah - new nipples that need to be shortened 1/16" to the same height as the original ones so modified.

Edited by Daryl_S (03/01/10 09:00 AM)

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