Going to try and maintain a somewhat conventional muzzleloader appearance. Underbarrel metal chamber and a quick dump valve. By going with a comparitively smaller in volume tank and single-shots per fill with higher PSI, I'm hoping to get and 600 FPS at the muzzle and tin can accuracy at 10 yards, but I suspect those both will require a bit of fine tuning. If I can get 400 FPS and onto a pieplate I'll consider it a victory. I've got some wood for a stock/grip, the ram rod materials, and a rifled steel barrel rated for blackpowder pressures and I'm only out 33 US dollars. Got a lot of loose springs and screws and metal bits in the junk drawer for making the various small parts as well. I'd like to get this operating around 70 dollars but I doubt it.
At this point its still on the drawing board and the big hurdles are largely in execution, specifically constructing a metal valve and chamber with only a power drill, files, and hand tools. I'm considering mating the barrel, chamber, and valve into one assemble that I can just drop into a stock with some screws as that seems like it would be simpler than trying to fit the seperate components together with the right tolerances on a seperate piece of metal IE that will also fit into the stock. One thing I'm completely puzzled on and open to suggestions is how to route air into the barrel. The simplest way would seem to be removing the percussion nipple and sending the air directly through the flash channel, though I'm afraid that would be too much stress on the metal as the flash channel is not meant to contain pressure. I could possibly bore it out to a wider diameter and sleeve it to be pressure safe. Otherwise I'll have to mutilate the barrel which I'd like to avoid as much as possible
Pics are the bore and the barrel next to my S&W 10-5 for comparison
