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My interpretation of a long hunter knife. I made it out of an old gang saw blade and it has some pitting but I like the look of it and it's sharp enough to cut paper thin tomato slices. The blade is 11 inches long and 1 3/4 wide. The handle is elk antler and it's a handful but it feels good in the hand. The bolster is poured pewter. Mike116 made the sheath and it's a perfect fit.

As y'all well know I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to flintlocks. I've been doing a lot of reading and watching videos. Mostly trying to find out the do's and don'ts. I keep coming across people talking about polishing the pan. Some say it speeds up ignition. Others say it doesn't but it does make cleaning the pan easier. I figured what the hey, if it makes cleaning easier I'm all for it. I was somewhat worried the slick surface would make powder slide around and since I use very little powder in the pan it might be a bad idea but I did it anyway. I twisted the gun this way and that and the powder didn't migrate much. It just leveled out. In a hunting situation it might migrate further but I'm not up to that anymore. I must say it improved ignition speed. It's not as fast as a cap lock but it's close, dang close. I am well pleased with it. I'll clean it in a day or three and see how easy it is to clean. From what I've read just one swipe and it's clean. We shall see.

Kinda/sorta. I only got three shots off before it started raining out of the blue. Range was 25 yards. Load was 90 grains of Swiss 3F with a patched .530 round ball. Patch was part of an old T shirt cut at the muzzle and lubed with olive oil. First shot was wide to the left. There was a slight delay between priming charge and main charge I wasn't expecting so I may have pulled it off. I was more prepared for the next two. Red square is 5 1/2" high X 4 1/4" wide. Ace is 4 1/4" high X 3 3/8 wide. Holes at the bottom are 1 1/2" center to center.

Who'd a thunk?

I got started on it. It took so long because I had to make room for a small desk I could use for a bench and I'm lazy. I cut about 4 inches off the big end and started filing flats on the tip. It's 10 inches long measured across the inside curve. I don't have much solid horn to work with on the tip and it looks funny with flats because it's so short but I've still got to file another groove for the strap. I'm probably just going to round off the flats. The tip was already cut off when I got it. I wouldn't have cut it off that far back but it is what it is. The tape is on it to protect the polished part if the file slips. The big end is 3 inches inside diameter.

 



This is the part I cut off.

This is the stuff I got from mike116. Thanks Mike. The middle horn is my biggest powder horn.



I've got a lot to learn about horns. It's hard to tell how big a horn is in a pic. Cows around here don't have horns that big so I tend to think bigger is better. My big powder horn is about how big horns are here. I bought a horn from The Leather Guy and it's only a few inches bigger than my big horn so I figured it was good to go. This thing is massive compared to mine.



The two horns I got from Mike are big. The biggest one is just as big as the other one I bought, it's just shorter. The other one is a good bit smaller. This is it next to my powder horn. It's a more reasonable size.



This is the base of all three horns I just bought. Mike's are the two on the right.



I'm going to use the two biggest ones to practice on and hopefully the smallest one will turn out to be a usable horn.

This guy tries to blow up a Damascus shotgun barrel. I think you will be surprised.