stainless steel pin tumblers

[dromia]

No BP shooting a muzzle loader is a lot less faff on, for a start there is no brass preparation required after that the only difference is you do your reloading at the firing point instead of at home, unless you use paper cartridges, gun cleaning is about the same at most it takes me maybe 5 minutes longer to clean a BP gun as opposed to a smokeless one.

BP cartridge is a bit more of a faff as the insides of the cases need to be cleaned well as the build up can reduce case capacity and drive up pressures, for years I used a brush on the insides of the cases, I like the black patina on the outside. When my hands packed in I moved to ceramic media which like any wet method starts to get faffy however the media is infinitely easier to manage than the damned pins however as the ceramic cleans so well I only need to wet clean every 5 or 6 firings so not too bad. Much as I don't like the ceramic it is far easier to manage than the pins which are indeed a faff too far for me.

Dry tumbling in corn cob is more than adequate for my smokeless cases and is far quicker and easier to manage than any wet tumbling but gives me results that are more than adequate for my needs, shiny brass isn't a requirement for me, clean brass is.

Aye some things are a faff but I like to keep my faffs to a minimum where I can, you get to a point in your life when you have had more than you are going to get and you realise that time is getting too short for wrestling with water and stainless steel pins, which is why I'm shooting black powder muzzle loaders more than anything else now.