Testing loose fitting balls

No loose balls

I think the balls have to be tight in order to stay in the chamber under recoil. Mine shave a ring every time.

If you want to purposely cause a chain fire, use the correctly sized ball and cut a slot in one side allowing direct access to the main powder charge. Then sprinkle some powder on the exterior part of the ball.

I think you're crazy and it will be dangerous but they're your eyes and hands.

Why???

A few weeks back I was shooting my 1860 Colt Pietta when I ran into a problem while reloading. I tried to put 2 balls into 1 chamber. I ramed it in a little over 1/2 way before I saw my mistake. I had to take off the nipple push them both out with some small dia. brass tubing. I still had 1 chamber ready to fire. When I took the shot flames from the chamber I just unloaded must have had some powder left in it. Flames shot out of both ends of the chamber. I was quickly a bit out of my comfort zone.

Getting my gun to chain fire, no problem! (At least with no ball in it)

The trouble is that an artificial chain fire (as Patocazador describes) would not do much toward understanding what causes chain fires under other conditions. I have never experienced a chain fire myself, but I am sure those who say they have did not cut any grooves in the bullets.

It would be interesting to hear from folks who have had chain fires about what they were able to learn as to the cause. Barring a relic so badly rusted that there were holes between chambers, I have not been able to determine a condition that would reliably cause chain firing.

Jim

Balderdash

OK, but which post is balderdash?

Jim

Lunie:

How many of those .440 balls do you have?

I will buy them from you and recast them for my own revolvers and you won't have to risk injury.

Gimme a good price, Pard.

I am utterly amazed by the fascination some folks have with chain fires. Really - intentionally shooting a revolver with balls so undersized they leave huge gaps?

All that is necessary (AND sufficient) for a chain fire is for a small, even tiny, leak into the chamber where there is powder and a gas hotter than the ignition temperature of the powder. This isn't rocket science. That leak can be anywhere, at the back from a loose or out of round cap or at the front from a void in a ball that's uncovered by swaging during loading. Sometimes that tiny leak and a very hot gas is all it takes. Sometimes the gas cools enough that it's below the powder ignition temperature and no chain fire occurs even with a huge leak. There's no guarantee that it will happen every time or even 10% of the time, and there's only one guarantee that it won't happen: a complete seal at both the back and front.

Barring a relic so badly rusted that there were holes between chambers, I have not been able to determine a condition that would reliably cause chain firing.

Click to expand...

First of all, there's no such thing as a reliable chain fire. You need high temperature gas. There's no control over how that gas flows or how the heat profile is maintained; it's a random event. Having a reliable, repeatable path, like that in a combustion chamber, is what's needed, and you don't have that between the mouth of a revolver chamber and the inside of another chamber. However, assuming the gas gets into the adjacent chamber and is still hot enough, is there a way to get by a round ball that shaved a complete ring? How about this: I've weighed hundreds of round balls, both cast and swaged. I've found lots of them with internal voids (lots more in cast than swaged, but neither is completely immune). All that's necessary is for the swaging process during loading, which peels a ring of lead away from the surface of the ball, to uncover one of those voids, and now you have a gap between the cylinder wall and the ball. A gap is a path for a hot gas to make it's way to the powder behind the ball. All you need is a few molecules at a high enough temperature and you got a chain fire. How often does that happen? Rarely. How often do we have chain fires? Rarely. Oh, and don't forget about the back end: a pinched or wrong sized cap can also allow a leak.

Darwin award. Go right ahead be my guest.

Years ago, when I first got my cased 1860 with brass mold I got to experience chain fires. The mold cast undersize balls.
You will have the balls coming loose and may even fall out.
You will have a very smokey mess, but with the powder burning "backwards" there was not as much pressure build up.
I would skip one chamber, the one that lines up with the loading leaver.
Do wear eye and ear protection but I never had gloves on.
You going to do a you tube video?

I use .44s patched in my .45 squirrel rifle and Kentucky pistol.

I tried to provoke chainfires in an Uberti .44 calibre Remington New Army back in 2007. The results are available here:

Multiple Discharges in Percussion Revolvers

Do you believe the odds of this happening are minimal from the front? I don't understand the point.

Another thing you might want to test is if a 45 degree bevel on the edge of the chamber mouth has an effect on chain-fires. I read about this on the forum some time last year and remembered it while reading this. Samuel Colt originally came up with the idea reasoning that the gases would be directed away from the cylinder face at an angle, rather than expanding and running parallel to the cylinder face and getting into the chamber mouths.

That said, please go about this unintelligent thing as intelligently as possible. I am always interested in this sort of destruction testing.

This could be very bad since the other 5 loose fitting balls will likely dislodge when you fire the first and spill powder and give you a bigger chain fire than you are expecting.

Lunie, would using blank loads give you the answers you seek with a lot less hassle? You could use a thin cardboard wad prepared with one or more small nicks in the perimeter (to mimic a loose-fitting ball) in each chamber. Just a thought.

Have you tried this yet?