Blackhorn 209- Do not be like me

[Pickettpuncher]

What can happen is that after cleaning and lubrication, there is the possibility that some lubricant can leach down into the flash hole and flash channel.
One always wants to dry patch a clean barrel and remove ALL the lubricant possible. Once you patch it, then when firing a couple primers ONLY, you'll burn up/push out any lubricant which may be inside the flash channel or flash hole.
The primers are non-corrosive, so at this point one should have a completely clean of lubricant barrel and breech plug. The residue from firing the primers won't hurt at all.

Now............ when using BH, one needs to use full strength primers. NOT MUZZLELOADER PRIMERS. Actually the Federal 209A and/or CCI209M are the best magnum primers. There are other full strength primers, that work for many, but magnum primers have always been recommended by both Western and now Hodgdon.

The 209 primers will also carbon up the flash channel and has to be removed with a BY HAND drill bit. Just cleaning it doesn't remove the carbon. In most cases a 1/8" drill bit TURNED BY HAND will chip out the carbon. CVA uses a slightly different size, which at the moment I can't remember. Someone else may chime in on that.

View attachment 635874

I think cva is a #32 drill bit but 1/8 works fine

 

[iamthenick]

I think cva is a #32 drill bit but 1/8 works fine

Thank you

 

[Fatcamp]

One last question, i cleaned and prepped my gun last night, but worried i might have put a little too much grease on the plug threads. I plan on unloading and putting a few dry patches through and revisiting the inside of the plug as well.

Is there any harm in re-using a bullet that i had already seated in the gun? Its a hornady .45 cal in a .50 sabot.

Thanks

To hunt? Just use a new one. Don't leave anything to doubt or chance.

 

[Farmingdale's Finest]

I fired it once this year to confirm zero. Cleaned it and put it away, then loaded two days ago.

I shoot a completely differrnt rifle for western hunts, since I can use a scope here in VA. Use Triple seven in that setup because of the potential *ignition reliability issues* with Thors.

Bottom line, it would just be truly insane for me to give BH209 another chance at this point IMO. Yeah it cleans well and you can fire multiple rounds without swabbing, but reliability is #1.

You say you cleaned it, put it away and then loaded it again two days ago.

Did you degrease the barrel and breech plug as well as snapping a cap before reloading? If not that is likely the reason for the hang fire. You had oil in the breech.

 

[MikeDeltaFoxtrot]

Sorry this happened to the OP. A certain amount of unreliability is inherent in muzzle loaders, which is why you get the early season.

I've been shooting two 50 grain Pyrodex pellets over a Winchester 209 primer for 21 years and never had an issue. Have put many deer in the freezer with three different rifles using the same charge. Pyrodex is dirty though.

 

[OXN939]

You say you cleaned it, put it away and then loaded it again two days ago.

Did you degrease the barrel and breech plug as well as snapping a cap before reloading? If not that is likely the reason for the hang fire. You had oil in the breech.

Man I hope you guys did better at reading comprehension on your SATs than you did on this thread. The breech plug and bore were both cleaned thoroughly before loading. I have literally done this thousands of times, and the only issue I've ever had has been with BH 209.

Side note, "snapping a cap" is a very poor method of cleaning the flash hole, almost as bad as not cleaning it at all. As noted by the newbie poster above, even primers deposit some amount of fouling, which can occlude this very small aperture over time. Better is a torch tip cleaner run through a few times and cleaned after each. Better than that is using the torch tip cleaner to run a clean thread (a single strand of the inside of 550 cord works well) through the flash hole and "flossing" it. Compressed air works too.

 

[swavescatter]

Ok guys - nobody use BH209 anymore! This guy has military weapons training and can't get it to ignite, therefore it's garbage.

 

[Farmingdale's Finest]

Man I hope you guys did better at reading comprehension on your SATs than you did on this thread. The breech plug and bore were both cleaned thoroughly before loading. I have literally done this thousands of times, and the only issue I've ever had has been with BH 209.

Side note, "snapping a cap" is a very poor method of cleaning the flash hole, almost as bad as not cleaning it at all. As noted by the newbie poster above, even primers deposit some amount of fouling, which can occlude this very small aperture over time. Better is a torch tip cleaner run through a few times and cleaned after each. Better than that is using the torch tip cleaner to run a clean thread (a single strand of the inside of 550 cord works well) through the flash hole and "flossing" it. Compressed air works too.

This is your quote "I fired it once this year to confirm zero. Cleaned it and put it away, then loaded two days ago." not much reading comprehension going on that could be interpreted incorrectly. So there is no need for a personal attack.

As far as snapping a cap that is literally in the instructions from the manufacturer of my Muzzy and all of their video's so there may be something that gets rid of the oil better but it is considered best practices by the company.

 

[ENCORE]

Well, maybe this is just one less person that'll be buying BH and leaving more for shooters/hunters.

I've fired 10's of thousands of rounds of BH, and don't have hang fire, or ignition issues. I compete with it and don't know of another modern inline competitor who doesn't use BH209, especially at long range. One CAN NOT afford a hang fire during a competition.

BH WILL ignite if the ignition system is designed for it, the correct primers are used, the barrel and breech plug are clear of ALL lubricants, and the propellant isn't wet or compromised. PERIOD.

SOMETHING was done wrong, or incorrect to cause the hang fire.

 

[thrower88]

Good idea on using the drill bit to clean out the breech plug.

 

[JakeT]

One last question, i cleaned and prepped my gun last night, but worried i might have put a little too much grease on the plug threads. I plan on unloading and putting a few dry patches through and revisiting the inside of the plug as well.

Is there any harm in re-using a bullet that i had already seated in the gun? Its a hornady .45 cal in a .50 sabot.

Thanks

Try using pipe thread tape instead of grease. Then you don't have to worry about that.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[KChunter71]

My gun goes bang with bh209 and I like it. No issues following encores method.

 

[FredIII]

I absolutely will not use any grease on a breach plug. A couple wraps of pipe thread tape and good to go. I also store the gun oiled but before I load it I shoot tce from Brownells throw it to get all the oil out. Once the tce dries I make sure no oil is on my plug inside and out then wrap the threads with pile tape and install. Pop a cap load and tape the barrel to seal it with black tape.
Let the killing begin. Not once have I had a misfire with BH209 and it's been in rain that makes a guy think about building an arc

 

[ElDiablito]

I also store the gun oiled but before I load it I shoot tce from Brownells throw it to get all the oil out.

What’s “tce?”

 

[FredIII]

Trichloroethylene - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It makes sure that grease is gone.
Brownells's sold it as a cerekote prep.

 

[cornfedkiller]

Had an issue with BH209 once a few years ago. I keep my spare charges in small plastic clear test tubes with screw caps. I had 4-5 charges sitting in those tubes from the season before, and I wanted to confirm 0 before I went out hunting, so I prepped my gun (the same way Encore described) and went outside. Dumped the charge from one of the tubes in the gun, and when I fired, it sounded/felt like a half charge and the bullet only traveled about half way to the target before falling to the ground. Thought it must've been a fluke so I reloaded the gun from another tube.. same result. Went inside and got the powder jug and measured out a charge and reloaded the gun and then it fired just fine. Still using the same jug and have never had another issue.

I no longer store the powder in the plastic tubes for anything more than just a week or two during the season..

 

[dsotm]

OP is clearly an expert, stop trying to help him

 

[OXN939]

OP is clearly an expert, stop trying to help him

Nobody asked for help in this thread. It is simply intended to share information to help other people avoid this situation.

What does not add any value is people continuing to suggest things that were very clearly addressed in the original post. Look at the first three posts on page one. Just a waste of everyone's time, and make the thread harder to sort through for anyone interested in learning something from it.

Example. Post #2:

To get ahead of any questions. Flash channel cleaned with drill bit, flash hole cleaned with torch tip cleaner.

Post #3:

Have you cleaned the carbon out of the flash channel of your breech plug? You have to chip it out with a drill bit

Hope everyone had a great rest of their season and a good start to the new year.

 

[ENCORE]

When you wrote the original post you were complaining about a propellant problem that you had.

Others who are very familiar with that propellant and don't have your issues, replied. They either tried to help or made suggestions. Most of the time you neglected to respond. Until today, your last response was back in December.

Its not the propellants fault.

 

[OXN939]

Until today, your last response was back in December.

True. Apologies for having a life outside the internet.

I would appreciate your suggestions if they were legitimately meant to help. It is clear, though, that you only want to validate your own bias towards this product. In addition to the example shown above where you tried to blame the issue on a "fix" immediately after my post explaning that it was already in use, you've followed my thread to keep voicing your opinion that it cannot be the propellant's fault... eight times now. Absolute statements like that about any product are silly at best.

Best of luck in your future endeavors.