Since your gun is a break-action, try one of Talley Manufacturings one piece units. I have one connecting my Burris Fullfield II to my T/C encore and have found it to be rock solid...

www.talleymanufacturin...y_recnum=6

BUT...

They aint cheap, I paid around 50 bucks fer mine....

and ya might need to add some kinda hammer "extender" to yer gun...

You can use a bit of aluminum from an old beverage can to shim that up and save the cost of a new mount.

The Federal primers fixed the problem with the Blackhorn powder. Thanks Vint2. When I put the new scope mounts on, i shot from 50 yards. It was 9 inches high and 8 inches left. I put in the correction and it was less than an inch off!. I've NEVER had the corrections come out like that before.

BUT, if I make a small correction, it isn't that correct. Is there some secret to making small corrections? Like going 20 clicks past, then back off 16, if I'm trying to move an inch?

This is a Traditions Pursuit II XLT with the "easy" screw out breech plug. It has a small O-ring close to where the powder sits. It now looks like it's leaking. Is there a standard O'ring to replace that one? Or do I need a new breech plug?

I have not been able to find a 0.035 drill bit. Any idea of where I can find one of those?

I got a decent location for my ground deer blind. 400 yards away from the other hunters, who are all shooting shotguns. Hunting late shotgun season.

For your scope adjustment you will have to live with what ever your moa setting is. Some of my scopes have 1/4 moa and some have 1/8 moa. That is at 100 yards.
I would just repace that breech plug as you don't know how many rounds have gone through the rifle and it should be replaced at 500-600 rounds.
You may have to buy a set of small drills to get what you want, but I would check anyplace they sell tools.

iowafarmboy wrote:

.... I put in the correction and it was less than an inch off!. I've NEVER had the corrections come out like that before. BUT, if I make a small correction, it isn't that correct. Is there some secret to making small corrections? Like going 20 clicks past, then back off 16, if I'm trying to move an inch? ....

The secret is getting a high quality scope that will probably cost more than your rifle....

On cheaper scopes, sometimes you get back lash on the reticle adjustment threads or the reticle sticks and you get "dead" clicks where the indicator moves but the retic;e does not.

I know you are shooting a ML here but you should be able to "shoot the square" by moving the adjustment a few moa up shoot right shoot down shoot and left back to ariginal setting and shoot.

Vint2 - you 1/4 or 1/8 moa adjustments are the same moa at any distance it just correlates to 1/4" and 1/8" at 100 yards . That would be 1/8 and 1/16 at 50 yards and 1/2 and 1/4 at 200.

Right dawgdad. I was making the point that the adjustment is different for different scopes. Not an expert on scopes, so don't know any "shortcuts" for adjusting!

OK. If I didn't say so before, I got the new rifle and put my Nikon scope and stock on it. I couldn't wait and loaded several bullets just to make sure it was better than the original. On shooting, the breech plug (i got one new one with the rifle, I bought a spare, and got a box of 5 o-rings) does not leak at all. What a difference. All I have from my original purchase is the stock. And I put a new decent scope mount on. I could see corrosion under the old scope mount on the old barrel. I also bought one of those magnetic scope things that attaches to the end of the barrel that has a graph to see the cross hairs move. Even cold soaked to below zero, when I adjust 2 clicks down, I can see through the scope that the cross hairs are actually moving. And if I move it 20 up, then move 20 down, it is back where it started. Everything is tight and the blowby from the leaky breech area isn't hammering the scope anymore.

So I load the rifle last night and store it in the trunk outside. 4 below. So this morning I go to the range, put in a Federal primer, and shoot 2 1/2 high and 1/2 left. Because the barrel is still new, I clean it (Blackhorn powder), which is harder when it's still near zero. I shoot again and am now 1 3/4 high and 2 right. Clean and load again and I get 3 high and 1 1/2 right. I think that comes out to less than 2 inches.

My scope is 1/4 MOA (actually it is closer to 3 tenth's of an inch at 100 yards per click) and I put in 12 clicks down, which should be between 3 and 3 1/2 inches down. So I shoot again (same everything) and I'm 2 1/4 up and 1/2 left. So it moved 3/4 down and 1 3/4 left from the previous shot.
I shoot again and it's 1 1/2 up and 1 1/2 left and again at 1 1/2 up and 2 left, which was close to bullet in bullet for the last 2 shots. So my last group is about 1 1/2 inches or so.

I don't want to screw with the scope this close (tomorrow AM), so I aimed my last shot 2 1/4 low and right and hit 1/4 high and 1/4 left. So I should be OK for deer.

After deer season, I'll try and figure out why if I make a large correction the rifle follows, and when I make a small correction it really doesn't change much. But each time I look through the scope at my graph thing and I see the cross hairs move when I make the correction and I'm VERY CAREFUL it doesn't bump anything. This is a new Nikon scope with maybe 20 or 30 shots on it.

After deer season, I'll try that "square" thing. Should I start big, like 20 clicks, which would make it easy to see what's going on? So I could do 10 right and 10 down, then 20 left, then 20 up, then 20 right, then lastly 20 down again. I use that graph program on this site, so anyone could see the results and give advice.

I would recommend that you only make one adjustment for either vertical or horizontal then shoot again. It usually works better that way.

Made an error figuring out the movement at 1/4 minute adjustment. It comes out to 0.262 inches at 100 yards per click, not the .3 that I had originally thought. I did a little too much rounding the first time.

So if I want to make a 10 inch "box" with my scope, it will be 38 clicks, one direction at a time, in all 4 directions. If I shot 5 times, shot one and shot 5 should be with-in an inch of each other if I have this figured out correctly. And it should be in the shape of a box. Each shot should be 10 inches from the other and they should be 14 inches diagonally. And of course, each shot should have the cross hairs on the same spot for all 5 shots.

vint2 wrote:

I would just repace that breech plug as you don't know how many rounds have gone through the rifle and it should be replaced at 500-600 rounds.

Just curious...

What happens to a breech plug after 500-600 rounds that would require it be replaced?

The flash channel erodes to the point of getting excessive blowback which you will notice in your face and loss of pressure, etc.

The breech plug on my Traditions has a rubber "O"ring that wears out. It's the only black powder rifle I've ever had, so I don't know what the others have. When the "O" ring is new (or at least good), no residue gets past it.

Also on this rifle, it takes no tools to remove the breech plug. If I shoot a lot in one day, I can replace the breech plug with a clean one, there-by not having to worry about misfires or hang fires if the flash channel gets stopped up with residue.

I bought this rifle used. The previous owner had seriously neglected cleaning the interior of the breech plug. You wouldn't believe the crud I got out of it.

I saw a piece about scope ring alignment on two piece scope rings. No one around here had a one piece ring assembly, but I did buy a better two piece than what the rifle came with. I see the tool (reamer) to align them is over a hundred bucks. Would it be cheaper to get a good one piece? If the scope is under great pressure and being pulled in two different directions at the same time, it would explain why 'funny things' happen when adjusting the scope. Somehow, I doubt Traditions going the extra mile to make sure where the scope rings attach is at a tighter tolerance than the barrel.

What size rings are you using,1 inch or 30mm? Proper mounting will save you a lot of grief even if you don't ream the rings.

vint2 wrote:

The flash channel erodes to the point of getting excessive blowback which you will notice in your face and loss of pressure, etc.

Never heard that 'afore. I've got better than 750 rounds through my Encore with the original plug and haven't noticed a difference.