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First shots with the "new" Hawken
Some 35 years ago I worked for Navy Arms Co. in Ridgefield, New Jersey under the company's founder, Val Forgett. Mostly I was trying to make enough money to sneak out of NJ and get home to God's Country, but Navy in those days was sort of THE PLACE to go for muzzle loading reproductions. I heard a few years ago that Mr. Forgett had passed away.
Anyway, I was looking around on Gunbroker back around the first of the month and found a Navy Plains Rifle made in the early 80s. It was in good shape and the price was okay, maybe a bit high, but I got sort of nostalgic, so I bought it. When I went to contact the seller, I found it was none other than Val Forgett, Junior, and that the business had moved in 1990 down to West Virginia. Mr. Forgett shipped my rifle promptly, and I was able to find everything needed for loading it already here, except bullets. I got 500 .490" balls in another auction, and I got them before the rifle came, so I did some needed maintenance on a rifle that had been in storage for 25 or more years, then fired a few rounds just to work out the kinks.
Today I finally got a powder flask that would throw a charge approximating what I thought worked best in my testing, and I set up a target at 40 yards. It's an 8-inch Shoot-n-See, as you can tell.
No idea where that first round through the clean bore went, but offhand, kneeling, blind in one eye and can't see out of the other, I think the old smokewagon did okay. I'll give it another try tomorrow, I think, after adjusting the elevation just a bit.
I got the Navy partly for nostalgia, and partly because it was about as traditional as I could find in a reproduction. And I'm pleased. It's a light little carbine, almost zero recoil, and the 75-grain load gives a nice CRACK when it goes off.
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Some 35 years ago I worked for Navy Arms Co. in Ridgefield, New Jersey under the company's founder, Val Forgett. Mostly I was trying to make enough money to sneak out of NJ and get home to God's Country, but Navy in those days was sort of THE PLACE to go for muzzle loading reproductions. I heard a few years ago that Mr. Forgett had passed away.
Anyway, I was looking around on Gunbroker back around the first of the month and found a Navy Plains Rifle made in the early 80s. It was in good shape and the price was okay, maybe a bit high, but I got sort of nostalgic, so I bought it. When I went to contact the seller, I found it was none other than Val Forgett, Junior, and that the business had moved in 1990 down to West Virginia. Mr. Forgett shipped my rifle promptly, and I was able to find everything needed for loading it already here, except bullets. I got 500 .490" balls in another auction, and I got them before the rifle came, so I did some needed maintenance on a rifle that had been in storage for 25 or more years, then fired a few rounds just to work out the kinks.
Today I finally got a powder flask that would throw a charge approximating what I thought worked best in my testing, and I set up a target at 40 yards. It's an 8-inch Shoot-n-See, as you can tell.
No idea where that first round through the clean bore went, but offhand, kneeling, blind in one eye and can't see out of the other, I think the old smokewagon did okay. I'll give it another try tomorrow, I think, after adjusting the elevation just a bit.
I got the Navy partly for nostalgia, and partly because it was about as traditional as I could find in a reproduction. And I'm pleased. It's a light little carbine, almost zero recoil, and the 75-grain load gives a nice CRACK when it goes off.
