Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Al-Muzzleloader Forum Weird failure

So I just had one of the oddest failures hat I cannot figure out. I've have a Hawken Style 50 cal that I shoot regularly. I recently switched to Hornandy 250 grain sabots. Fired about a dozen yesterday getting my load and iron sight dialed in. Cleaned it well this morning. Headed back out to the range to finish the job. Shot 3 nice shots everything looked good. Went to fire the fourth and got some ignition, but not the full boom. Figured it was some type of misfire. I would compare it to firing a squib load.

Got home and water, air and light move through the barrel and and out the nipple hole fine. I don't have a bore scope so best I can do is look down the barrell and and get some light in the nipple hole. I see no obstruction but when I put my ball puller down there it does grab on to something.

Can the powder go past the sabot? Is this what they call a blown sabot? So confused. Working on finding something to grip this ball puller so I can yank and a borescope from Amazon. But in the mean time, what do yall think?

Do you have your Ramrod marked for a loaded gun? If so, it should be easy to see what if anything is still down the barrell.

As you probably know, one of the fixes for a dry ball scenario with a flint or percussion gun is to get just enough powder through the flashhole or nipple (behind the ball) to push the projectile out. For my flint gun, it probably takes 5 or 6 grains. When it goes off and pushes the ball out, it sounds just like you described. Anyway, is there anyway you didn't get the full charge in there? Would explain the off sound and yet still could have pushed the sabot out.

Bad primer maybe-kinda like a hangfire type incident??

Tex did you get it figured out?

So after my borescope arrived and I got the stuck ball puller out (which was a different drama), the barrel was empty. I must have had some weird half-ass ignition at the range that did push the sabot out. Starting to wonder if my pyrodex went bad on me. I purchased a new bottle last weekend, so I will go with that next trip to the range tomorrow and try to get through this muzzleloader hunt this weekend before messing with the old stuff.

The best I can figure out is the culprit is:

Bad pyrodex
or
I cleaned it that morning (usually do the night before) and I also didn't clean the breech as well. Perhaps some gunk trapped some moisture and that caused the partial ignition.

Either way, I got a borescope now and know for a fact the projectile is not in the barrel.

Glad you got it worked out,

with sidelock percussion guns I always pop 1-2 caps before the first load of a range session. I like to put the barrel close to the ground/ leaf or something else that will move/ blow away to verify the blast made it through the barrel.

Also, I like to mark the ramrod for both loaded and unloaded so I can be sure either way

Good ideas. I just acquired a .50 cal Thompson Hawkens myself. I gotta round me up some supplies and get started shooting it. My dad has a .54 cal just like it, he’s had it my whole life so now we match lol

I'll try to put up a link to the video from my bore scope. I'd like to hear what you guys think.

Here is the link, hopefully this works

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/sx10...rlkey=zqpgipdqawhjyzq9j46a8iba7&dl=0

Theres definitely no obstruction in there, can clearly see into the reduced diameter section in the breech plug and can see where the hole from the side lock enters the breech plug. Other than your barrel being kinda crusty, everything look ok. I've seen worse rusted bores still shoot pretty good though.

I fired a dozen or so rounds at the range. Used the same powder. All I can think is I didn't clean the breech well or something. Still a mystery

It looked like fresh rust to me, I assume where it had set while he was waiting for the bore scope to come in, I don’t imagine it stays that rusty.

yes, definitely some fresh rust in there, but there was a lot of old rust pitting in there as well.