My first gun purchase was a T/C Hawken kit on my 18th birthday, bought at The Log Cabin in Lodi. Dad helped me with the plum brown, but I did the rest myself. Now retired, that rifle is part of my brother’s frontiersman’s kit as a prop. We sure ran a lot of lead down that pipe.

Get one, Haz—you’ll enjoy it. Just be mindful of the flame & sparks whenever you tech her off in your dry climate, don’t wanna see your name in the news for burning down the neighborhood…

I use a modern inline muzzleloader with a threaded breach plug–which is where you put your primer. And I use standard shotgun primers which are readily available almost everywhere (even sporting good stores because people use them for muzzleloaders). I like the inline design because it makes cleaning pretty easy. You can remove the barrel from the receiver, remove the breach plug, and pour all the hot water and soap down through the barrel to your heart’s content. Speaking of the breach plug, that is easy to clean as well with hot water, soap, and standard pipe cleaners (along with a nipple pick or any small diameter metal wire that you can press through the tiny primer hole in the breach plug). Pro-tip: used compressed air to ensure that your primer hole is dry after cleaning and rinsing.

There is another aspect to muzzleloaders that I like: there are wonderful and good smelling lubricants and protectants available which are basically food-grade shortening with added scents. I use Thompson Center’s “Bore Butter” in evergreen scent. (And it true/authentic evergreen scent which is natural to animals in the woods.) Bore Butter comes in large tube that is convenient to use.

Last but not least, a huge advantage of muzzleloaders is that you can easily increase or decrease your powder quantity to accomplish whatever you want. As the author stated, you can start with 50 grains of powder. If that is too slow, you can jump up to a “Magnum” load of 100 grains of powder. And if that is too much, you can drop down to 70 grains or whatever you want. Powder measures seem to have level marks every 10 grains so changing your amount of powder is as easy as filling up your measure to whatever you want. If you can fill a clear glass measuring cup with water to the level that a recipe requires, you can fill a black powder measure to the level that you want.

I should also mention: my CVA Optima inline muzzleloader is an absolute tack-driver with the right bullets and powder loads. I can shoot a one-inch group at 100 yards. If you like to hunt and live in a state that does not allow center-fire rifles for hunting, a muzzleloader is arguably the next best choice.

Thank you for the honest and thoughtful comment.

The kit was straight forward. The hard parts were done, all that was needed was fitting the metal to the wood and staining the stock. I chose to cold blue the barrel, used 15 layers and came out decent enough. Next kit will be plum browned and that one will be a long rifle that is more historically accurate. Maybe some nice brass furniture.

I have mine as well and will keep them, but I’ve been considering a DIY kit for a Hawkens rifle…