Jezail

mooncoon

mooncoon

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Vancouver Island
I traded for a jezail a few months ago and finally had time to take it to the range. This one has a 45" rifled damascus barrel about 53 caliber. Somehow I succeeded in forgetting my powder measure and had to use an improvised one. Principle charge was a nagant rifle shell of 3F which turned out to be about 55 gr. That seemed kind of wimpy (because a lot was leaking out the touch hole) so I increased that my charge by an additional sks shell of 3F which brought my charge up to about 72 gr of 3F. When I realized that the touch hole was a bit Reubenesk, I plugged the hole with a vent pick and cut back to 55 gr.

I used a .515 ball and .019" patch and the gun seems to shoot fairly accurately. In the target below, my first two shots were aimed at 6 o clock on the bull and struck slightly low and 4" left. I changed my aiming point to the top right corner of the bull and put 5 shots in roughly 2 1/2". Final shot was way low and left again, I think because I chafed through the patch in loading. After shooting I found one intact patch and several that were totally destroyed so today, after cleaning the gun I ran a tight patch coated in coarse valve grinding compound up and down the bore and hopefully that has smoothed some of the rustiness down a bit. I am most curious how well the gun will perform on the next go around

cheers mooncoon

RifledJezailb-1.jpg


RifledJezaillockb.jpg


jezailTarget.jpg
 
DEZ said:
Very interesting nice to see one in good enough cond to shoot
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Wow mooncoon, ... and in the black too!:eek: ... "the touch hole was a bit reubenesque" ... LMAO. Must have torched yer eyebrows to a fair thee well. G:

Picked one up in a Moroccan souk for 120 durhams back in '73. Got married soon after. Hauled it round from apartment to fireplace to bedroom wall 'till the wifey baled.
Finally tossed it at the Scarborough Transfer Station, still unfired, while living rough in the van for a spell.
Thing is .... never was quite sure if it was real, 'cause them Arabs are awfull good at fake's.

Then again, I still have intact eyebrows. :cheers:
 
vviking said:
Wow mooncoon, ... and in the black too!:eek: ... "the touch hole was a bit reubenesque" ... LMAO. Must have torched yer eyebrows to a fair thee well. G:

Picked one up in a Moroccan souk for 120 durhams back in '73. Got married soon after. Hauled it round from apartment to fireplace to bedroom wall 'till the wifey baled.
Finally tossed it at the Scarborough Transfer Station, still unfired, while living rough in the van for a spell.
Thing is .... never was quite sure if it was real, 'cause them Arabs are awfull good at fake's.

Then again, I still have intact eyebrows. :cheers:
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Eyebrows grow back, but a clatch moment with the lock...can damn the world.

Dont spare that prime, check the flint face and the the frizzen.....and dont you spare that prime.
 
the lock on this one is not too bad; appears to be a locally made copy of a bess lock. The stock is broken right through ahead of the lock but I intend to fill in the last couple of inches of the ramrod hole and epoxy a dowel in there to tie the two halves together.

cheers mooncoon
 
Musketfire said:
I really like acraglas for heavy stock damage, Ive fixed some baffling breakages with the stuff.!
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I think that this one is broken beyond the capabilities of acraglass. I have been using an epoxy called G2 for a lot of repairs but with very thin stocks, I feel you need a bit of extra wood added.

cheers mooncoon
 
mooncoon said:
I think that this one is broken beyond the capabilities of acraglass. I have been using an epoxy called G2 for a lot of repairs but with very thin stocks, I feel you need a bit of extra wood added.

cheers mooncoon
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Heres a example of a "small" repair Acraglas helped me with, I think you'll appreciate this

Before
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After

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Musketfire said:
Heres a example of a "small" repair Acraglas helped me with, I think you'll appreciate this
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Wow impressive, if this was a featured product demo on the home shopping network I think I would scrambling for the phone and my credit card. Nice job.
 
Thanks for the Jezail write up. I have seen that one on EE for months and always wondered what that was all about. Not enough to want to buy it, but it was so different it piqued my interest.

cheers!
 
Since my last post, results have been a bit disappointing. After slightly polishing the bore and using a proper powder measure at 50 and 60 grains of 3F, group size was terrible and patches were blown to smouldering bits of fluff. The problem seemed to be with the last 2 inches or so of the barrel (breach end) so I tried again today with 60 grains of 2F followed by the same volume of corn meal and then with 70 grains of 1F followed by the same volume of cornmeal. My reason was so that the ball would be seated farther out where the rifling was less eroded. The corn meal worked in that regard and all patches seemed to be more or less intact. Group size was less than stellar but still better than day 2 with no cornmeal.

I think there may be at least two problems yet to overcome. First is that I noticed while shooting a over the chunk of wood match, locking the butt to your shoulder is extremely important --- far more so that I would have thought. With the peculiar stock on this gun I may be running into problems with the stock not being securely and consistently against my shoulder. The second is that I am finding the peep sight to be difficult to see, perhaps because it is an integral part of the breach plug and is a lot farther away from my eye than with a conventional peep sight on the tang. I find I can move my head around and the front sight does not remain centered in the aperature. There is no stock to lock my cheek against.

Going to 1F powder allowed for faster ignition to some extent because it was coarse enough that I did not have to plug the vent hole while loading.

My next efforts will be shooting standing with a single staff for support. I tried one shot today, offhand, and while the gun does not seem that heavy, the 45" barrel makes it seem so to my fragile frame.

Jezail2F.jpg


Jezail1F.jpg


cheers mooncoon
 
I really like to see someone bring new life into old guns so that they can continue to do what they were made to do. Well done..and I think your 2 stage ignition is a good solution to the pitting near the breach . Mooncoon what was the distance to the target....I am just getting started with black powder rifles and have much to learn. Most of my shots will hit a 14X17 inch target at 50 Meters but they are all over the paper.
There was a guy next to me at the range today that was shooting 4 inch groups at 7 meters with one hand using a 1911 .45 ACP without any "flyer's"...I was impressed..the point being that this guy was more accurate with his handgun than I was with a rested rifle.
To be considered a good shot what kind of grouping does it take???
 
Skinny 1950 said:
Mooncoon what was the distance to the target....I am just getting started with black powder rifles and have much to learn. Most of my shots will hit a 14X17 inch target at 50 Meters but they are all over the paper.
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The targets are all 25 yards and the gun was bench rested. I wanted to get the gun accurate before I started trying to shoot offhand. The staged photos I have seen showed these guns being shot while the shooter crouched behind rocks and the barrel was rested on the rocks or in another case was shot from a bipod.

Relative to accuracy for a modern flinter, I would expect to shoot into 1" or better at 25 yards and under 2" at 50 yards with my better muzzle loaders both modern and antique. It sounds to me like you might be using too light a patching or perhaps need to start by benching the gun and shooting 5 shot groups at say 25 yards and start with around 30 grains of 3F and go up in jumps of 5 grains to around 60 grains. If your rifle is a stock modern gun, odds are it has a 1:48 twist and may be fussy about what charge it likes. The patches by the way should be made from new material and take a bit of a thump with your hand to get the ball started. Not hard enough to give you a sore hand after 5 or 10 shots but you should not be able to simple push the ball down the barrel in one long push. I also would use 3F powder and a water based lube such as moose milk which you can make from water soluble cutting oil (around 20% oil).

cheers mooncoon
 
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