woodnbow
Member
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2007
- Messages
- 2,102
No, it didn’t just happen to me. But it’s been discussed recently and I got to thinking, how many of us have had a chain fire? What happened when we did?
Obviously I would have preferred never to have even one but in 60 years of cap and ball revolver shooting I had two. Both from the same gun, and on the same day, within minutes of each other. Neither gun nor shooter was harmed and once I began using the correct .465” sized ball (no grease, no wad just a .465” ball in a .456” chamber as recommended by Pietta) all was well and it’s back to normal 100% ignition, no failures, no drama. I’ve not had another.
Most of my shooting is with various bullets 195-240gr. over maximum charges with a small amount of lube in the grease grooves and an oversized .465” x .030” fiber wad. Short of the chambers being badly scored there’s just no where for a chain fire to begin. Even when using round ball, in most of my guns that would be a .457” ball, no lube, maybe a card wad or maybe not but again, thousands of rounds per year with a chain fire rate of .0001% or less. Not sure anything needs to be changed unless it’s just for the sake of change.
I checked the powder stores and so far this year I’ve burned 8# of 3f Swiss, my last pound of 3f Old Eynsford and that’s almost exclusively burned in revolvers. I shot up my last open jugs of Triple 7 and Pyrodex this year too. No chain fires far and as we close the books on 2022 I’m feeling lucky… what’s your experience with chain fires?
Obviously I would have preferred never to have even one but in 60 years of cap and ball revolver shooting I had two. Both from the same gun, and on the same day, within minutes of each other. Neither gun nor shooter was harmed and once I began using the correct .465” sized ball (no grease, no wad just a .465” ball in a .456” chamber as recommended by Pietta) all was well and it’s back to normal 100% ignition, no failures, no drama. I’ve not had another.
Most of my shooting is with various bullets 195-240gr. over maximum charges with a small amount of lube in the grease grooves and an oversized .465” x .030” fiber wad. Short of the chambers being badly scored there’s just no where for a chain fire to begin. Even when using round ball, in most of my guns that would be a .457” ball, no lube, maybe a card wad or maybe not but again, thousands of rounds per year with a chain fire rate of .0001% or less. Not sure anything needs to be changed unless it’s just for the sake of change.
I checked the powder stores and so far this year I’ve burned 8# of 3f Swiss, my last pound of 3f Old Eynsford and that’s almost exclusively burned in revolvers. I shot up my last open jugs of Triple 7 and Pyrodex this year too. No chain fires far and as we close the books on 2022 I’m feeling lucky… what’s your experience with chain fires?