Last Hurrah For Musketry
Re-enactment season's over for the year but Rawdons got asked to provide a musket fire display for the Bonfire Night bash at Royal Gunpowder Mills and they duly extended the invitation to various other regiments, including Norfolkes (Rawdons are a pretty good bunch, especially for Royalist scum ;-)). Alas, of the London Norfolkes, I was the only one to attend (the other London musketeer a) was working over the weekend and b) has her mnusket stored in the South-West).
So, headed up on Saturday with aeshna_uk. Actually had a bit of time to explore some of the Mills I don't normally have time to peek into and to introduce aeshna_uk to various members of Rawdons. Lots of gunpowder available so we did three separate bits of firing, along with one of the cannon. The muzzle flashes got progressively more impressive as it got darker but it did make it trickier to reload. I am therefore rather glad I chose to use the flintlock! Even then, trying to establish I'd primed properly got harder and I did get a few misfires towards the end as it was hard to see the crud building up on the frizzen.
Still, firing muskets is always fun!
Fireworks were pretty good too. Only problem was people badly parked on the access road meant it took some 45 minutes to get back to the main road afterwards. By contrast, it took about 35 minutes to drive there from home!
End result was I decided not to go back again today. Also, now the muskets live here, today was my first experience with cleaning out a musket myself. God, a lot of crud builds up in them. aeshna_uk also commented that I reeked of sulphur last night. She has a point. I guess I never noticed much at a muster as I was in the company of people who also reeked of gunpowder residue.
Also noticed this weekend was another zero insertion fee weekend on eBay so I've been listing more tat to dispose off. Fingers crossed...
So, headed up on Saturday with aeshna_uk. Actually had a bit of time to explore some of the Mills I don't normally have time to peek into and to introduce aeshna_uk to various members of Rawdons. Lots of gunpowder available so we did three separate bits of firing, along with one of the cannon. The muzzle flashes got progressively more impressive as it got darker but it did make it trickier to reload. I am therefore rather glad I chose to use the flintlock! Even then, trying to establish I'd primed properly got harder and I did get a few misfires towards the end as it was hard to see the crud building up on the frizzen.
Still, firing muskets is always fun!
Fireworks were pretty good too. Only problem was people badly parked on the access road meant it took some 45 minutes to get back to the main road afterwards. By contrast, it took about 35 minutes to drive there from home!
End result was I decided not to go back again today. Also, now the muskets live here, today was my first experience with cleaning out a musket myself. God, a lot of crud builds up in them. aeshna_uk also commented that I reeked of sulphur last night. She has a point. I guess I never noticed much at a muster as I was in the company of people who also reeked of gunpowder residue.
Also noticed this weekend was another zero insertion fee weekend on eBay so I've been listing more tat to dispose off. Fingers crossed...