photos: Cutaway of a muzzle-loading breech

Saw this on eBay.  A cut-away of the breach-end of a rifle barrel.  It's interesting that the threads do not seem to cut that deep and only go in about 3/4" into the barrel.

American Pioneer and Corrosion (Broomhandle Part 2)

See my initial rusty C96 Broomhandle purchase here.

Somehow lost track of documentation of restoration progress, but the TL;DR of it was that I scrubbed at it with some steel wool and mineral spirits, cleaned with a dry cloth, applied Casey's cold blue and re-oiled.  I replaced the grip with a $30 red wood grip from India.  Looked good enough to me.

 Here is the result of shooting about fifty rounds of American Pioneer blackpowder substitute through a Mauser Broomhandle for the giggles and forgetting about it for a year just to see what would happen.  American Pioneer is a black powder substitute that is said to be cleaner burning and less corrosive than black powder.

Addendum: This experiment wasn't really trying to prove anything except that I'm lazy.  I still prefer American Pioneer over black powder just because it's easier to clean.  I just never realized that it would get this bad.  I pretty much never clean any of my guns unless I have to.  Used steel wool and oil to clean up the light rust again.  Looks about as good as it will ever get.

Video - Springfield Trapdoor backfire

I thought this should get more attention from Trapdoor owners out there, like me, who reload.  You can see the breachblock fly open and the spent casing jump out.  Not quite as catastrophic as a real 'kaboom,' but I always imagined the shell would go flying backwards like a rocket in such a scenario.  Since the video poster didn't respond to comments I can only guess that he was shooting smokeless rounds reloaded hot.


...And starting now I'll never shoot smokeless through my Trapdoor again!