thanks for the reply Hanshi.
The first person I was around with a Muzzleloader was a good friend 32 years older than I was and would have been 68 years old. He sent and got a kit and we put a 36 caliber percussion together. It was too small of a caliber for deer, so he decided to sell it to another old fellow and ordered a 45-caliber Percussion kit. he bought the powder down at the local hardware store Along with the balls as we didn't have a mold so we just had them order a pound as we not did know anything about what we were doing and that's what he got us. My memory being what it is, it had to have been 1975 so I thought it was probably 1960 but when I stop and think about it I know I was married and I wasn't married in 1960. I remember it was brand new powder as we didn't have any gun stores here at that time, anyway not within 50 miles of where we lived. The hardware store where he bought the powder from was where I bought my first reloading equipment in 1959. I believe the rifle was made in Japan and there was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn't really accurate we at least didn't know how to make it accurate. He must have had a scale that we used or a decent measure, I don't remember anymore but we never did blow anything up and I borrowed it once to hunt antelope along with about that same time though I didn't get one. He did succeed in shooting a deer not long after we built the gun the only thing it ever killed. He passed away in 1983. It was 14 years later that I got my first one, a TC 50 kit left hand.
Squint