Lee Loader

I think I should also write down the technical bits:

I used Wano "Jagdschwarzpulver Nr1", which equals about Fgg. I used the recommended starting loads from the manual, which was 12 gr in the cylinder chambers behind a .451 ball. The recommendation was .454, and after the chain fire I immediately ordered correctly sized balls. Don't want that to happen again.

The shotgun barrel was a bit "underloaded", according to the manual you should use 72 gr, but I started with 48 gr (four cylinder loads), some plumbing hemp as wad, one ounce of 3mm birdshot and another slab of plumbin hemp.

Ther performance of the cylinder loads was poor, I guess I have to at least double the charge. Even if it was a .44 it felt like a .22lr. Because of the chain fire I did no accuracy tests, But I did hit the 40cm steel plate that was 7 meters away with all but the first shot.

On the other hand, the shotgun load was OK, nice sound, great puff of smoke, and I even hit the steel plate, too. No need to fill 70+ gr of PB into that barrel. That most likely would only create a large fireball anyway.

Small update:

We finished the German championship, and we had a LeMat side match. My gun performed surprisingly well, I used up one complete bag of balls and one pack of primers, so everybody could try his best with this four pounds of smoking fun. We had seven competitors who did a total of about 20 runs.

And I won first place and now I'm officially German champion in LeMat shooting. Whoo hoo!

I'll give a round of free German beer to everybody who comes around

Did some work on one for a shooting buddy.
He had a lot of misfires on the shotgun barrel.
There is a lot of nooks and crannies for the spark to navigate from the cap to the powder.
I spent the best part of an afternoon before it was 100% ok. I did a lot of Dremling in the bottom of the powder chamber (frame).

You dismantle it and unscrew the stubby barrel then there is plenty space to work.
If you want i can lend it and take some pics of the shaping.

How would you take off the shotgun barrel? I didn't want to damage anything when I first tried to disassemble it as completely as possible.

It is normal right hand thread, and the one i mended was no tighter than i could unscrew it by hand.
Maybe a piece of leather and use parallel grip pliers gently.