I am new to muzzle loading and have only fired about 400 shots through one. I have been reloading and shooting for over 40 years, so am reasonably experienced in firearms. My buddy is getting into it also so we had a bullet test day recently. We were pretty careful in our loading procedure. He had a insane shot that had pressure through the roof. The recoil was so bad it it bruised his entire shoulder and upper arm for over a week. He could barely move his arm that day, and the muzzle blast was so loud I thought he had blown his gun up. We thought about it and he was sure the bullet was seated. We were using pre-measured powder charges individually packaged.
Then yesterday I was shooting mine and verifying zero. I really feel I was being as consistent as possible loading and seating bullets. Needless to say I had a huge pressure peak shot also. I have shot large bore guns up to a 460wby. I thought I had blown up the gun, and the recoil was easily more than a .458win.
Has anyone experienced this and or what are we doing that is causing this. Needless to say I dont want this to continue.
Wow! my first reaction was a 'double load' either the powder or the bullet... but I am just not seeing you make that error.
So I would ask:
1. Which powder were you shooting?
2. Which ignition system?
3. What was the load - volume or weight?
4. What was the weight of the projectile?
4. Which sabot or was it a full bore conical of some type?
6. The shot you experienced the how did the projectile load - how much pressure to get it down the barrel?
7. Is your ram rod marked for that load?
8. Where did the projectile hit the target compared to the normal shots?
Another question that I would ask... do you or your friend have any more of those pre-measured loads left? If you do I would dump them individually.
1. Look at each load to verify that the powder granules all look the same size
2. Does the volume of each dump appear to be the same?
3. Re-weigh or reload volume measure to verify that you have what you think you have.
I have some other questions but they are way out there - so I will wait for your and others responses...
Glad everything seems to be OK