July has been a busy month with the Norwegian nationals and the Nordic championship.

Norwegian nationals
It started very well for me during the Norwegian nationals with one silver and two bronze medals. The silver came in the 18 bore kammerlader competition where I scored 88 points. I learned a new trick two days before the competition which proved very useful and diminished my groups dramatically. The trick was a kind of 'gas check" which is used between the powder and the ball. The pictures should explain the principle. I used the bullet from the group buy here at svartkrutt.net and 90 grains of Wano Fg. No grease in the grooves, but a bit of bore butter over the bullet.

The bronze came in the Remington replica competition where I scored 98 points out 100 with the Shiloh Sharps. Three other shooters also had 98, but my group was larger than the other two. The second bronze was secured in the Minié original competition where I equalled the current Norwegian record at 85 points. Because of the low number of shooters in Minié original I was transferred to the replica class where I got the bronze.

I was also very happy with being number four in the percussion revolver competition (Mariette) with 86 points and the black powder cartridge handgun replica competition with 83 points.

Nordic championship
A week ago Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish black powder shooters met in Åsheim, Norway to compete in the Nordic championship.

On the first day the clay shoot was held, in which I participated as a scorer. The video below shows Per Zachrisson from Sweden shooting and loading his shotgun.

The second day I shot one competition, the fairly new Lamarmora, which is basically Minié original shot offhand at 50 metres. I won this class with a mediocre 88 point score, but I was transferred to the replica competition and finished at 9th place.

The Sunday started with Remington match and Remington original, the black powder cartridge rifle competitions. I did really badly in Remington match, using my Sharps. I ended up with with 85 points, far away from my 98 score from the previous nationals. In Remington original I used my 12 mm Husqvarna rolling block and scored 81 points, which is a personal best. However, I think I ended at 10th place or something like that in the end. Despite my poor result in Remington match I won a silver medal in the team competition for Norway's second team together with reldor and qualibra.

Left to right: Me, reldor and qualibra

The great drama for me was to take place in the Minié original competition where I had announced my plans to shoot a new Norwegian national record. Since I had touched the record during the nationals and shot some encouraging training targets, I considered my chances to be fairly good. It opened quite well, and then I messed things up a bit in the middle, but finally secured a new record with a 10 in the last shot. The new record is now 88 points, three points better than the last one.

Me with the record targets.

The two targets merged together.

Because at least three nations have to compete in a class for the shooters to get a medal, I was once again transferred to the replica class. I ended up as number four out of 29 shooters in the merged Minié competition with my sturdy Pattern 1856 Tower Enfield, made in 1858, beaten by two Swedes and two Finns, all shooting replica rifle muskets.

The video below shows me training with the P-1856 two days before the championships:

In this competition I was also in the Norway's second national team, and here we also secured silver, only beaten by Sweden. Norway's first team took the bronze.

Some pictures from the Nordics championship:

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Øyvind F. - forum admin
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