Rammer pulling ball back out?

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Caliper_Mi

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I've been shooting my cap and ball pistols a far amount recently. Molding my own balls with a Lyman .451 mold. When I ram the ball in, it always shaves a thin lead ring but now several times during a shooting session I've had the pressed in ball come back out of the cylinder with the rammer. There is definitely a shiny ring where it's been pressed in, but in these situations the rammer has pushed into the front side of the ball and grabbed there. I am loading a prelubed wad under the ball so there is some lube on the sides of the cylinder. Does this indicate I should switch up to a .454 ball, or something else?
 
Is it a .44 "navy"? The .44 cylinder on a Navy frame has a flaw, they keep using a .36 cal bullet ram. If this isn't the gun, then I'm lost. But I have seen this with soft lead balls in the Navy "Reb" as Pietta calls them.
 
If it just started doing it i might try to degrease the end of the ram real well.

Possibly break the sharp edge of the face of the ram.

If all else fails contour the face of the ram with a radius slightly larger than the point of the projectile it is ramming???
 
This has happened with my Dragoon and 1860 Army. Both Ubertis, but made decades apart.

Projectiles are round ball, so reprofiling the Colt rammer would take some extensive work! I'll have to take a look at smoothing the edge though.
 
Does it take a lot of pressure to seat the ball while it shaves a small ring of lead? Are you using pure lead from a know source? The ram would use a lot of force if the ball is an alloy thats harder, making larger balls.
Caliper_Mi said:
loading a prelubed wad under the ball
Click to expand...
I always put lube on top of the ball, nothing under, but black powder.

Changing where the lube is applied, may let the ball grip the cylinder walls better. Not as easy to pull out with the ram.
 
Malachi Leviticus Blue said:
Maybe not. A short session with an appropriately sized cone grinder might be all it takes. Avoid over heating it.
Click to expand...

The Colt rammer is profiled for some sort of conical bullet and is reasonably deep. Rough guess is I'd be removing the bottom 1/4" of the ram to get the profile down to something like the Remington profile that is flatter than a round ball? I'll try starting with just rounding the inside edge of the bottom of the rammer.

243winxb said:
Does it take a lot of pressure to seat the ball while it shaves a small ring of lead? Are you using pure lead from a know source? The ram would use a lot of force if the ball is an alloy thats harder, making larger balls.
Click to expand...

It does not take a lot of pressure, the ram goes down easily by hand (not using a loading stand or anything else). Lead wise, it's about BHN 8-9, so not quite pure lead but they can still easily be gouged with a thumbnail. Source is recovered lead from the other muzzleloader and cowboy action shooters at my club.

I always put lube on top of the ball, nothing under, but black powder.

Changing where the lube is applied, may let the ball grip the cylinder walls better. Not as easy to pull out with the ram.
Click to expand...

Fair point, there is lube on the cylinder walls when I ram the ball. This is what made me think of .454 instead of .451. A bit more surface area to grip things. Of course, this has only happened a total of three times out of a fair number of cylinders worth.

OTOH, I switched to the lubed wad because I found that after the first shot all the lube on top of the balls had gotten blown away and just made a mess. Cleaning the bore is also easier with the lube under the ball.
 
Those who have recommended blunting the edge of the rammer are correct. I had the problem with both Uberti and Pietta revolvers. DO NOT flatten the end of the rammer. Just remove the rammer from the gun, rub the end on some sandpaper held flat on your workbench until the edge is less knife-like, then polish with steel wool and finish with a dab of cold blue. Using pure lead balls reduces the amount of force required to seat the ball in the chamber, so the rammer is less likely to dig into the ball itself. Grossly oversized balls and/or wheelweight balls which are harder to seat will contribute to the problem if the rammer edge is too sharp. Your .451 mold might actually be causing this problem; I never cast anything smaller than .454 for mine. In fact, I use the same .457 ball that I use in my Ruger Old Armies in my 1860 open tops...they seat just fine as long as I stay with pure lead. You might cure your problem by casting a .454 ball; it would grab the chamber sides more firmly, harder to drag back out. I don't think the method of lubing is a factor. I use over the ball myself.

Edit: After blunting the edge of the rammer, but before buying a new mold, buy some .454 and /or .457 pure lead balls and see how they work. You should be able to tell which one your gun likes. You can always dump the ones you don't like into your casting pot.
 
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I, too, use my .457" ball in my Pietta, though the chambers have been reamed to .449" and chamfered.

I've read that many competition shooters prefer a .457" ball. It will often increase the velocity a bit with the same load as well.

http://poconoshooting.com/blackpowderballistics.html

I understand the reasoning behind lube over the ball but not the mess it typically makes. However the lube isn't meant so much to lubricate the bullet as it is to keep the fouling soft, which is behind the bullet.

Some of the rams are designed with the original conicals in mind.
 
IF you're using commercially swaged ball in .451 from Hornady, they might vary a tad, and the Italian chambers in that cylinder might be off a bit too. Noz is right..., try .454's or try some .451's that have been hand cast, or try swaged from SPEER.

LD
 
So, I finally got smart and measured the cylinders on my Colts... .450-.451 holes. Guess that makes sense now... Funny but I still remember seeing a thin shaved ring when I shot it. I guess that ring shaved off all the press fit though!

The Remmies (Pietta's, as opposed to the Colts being Uberti's) are .446-.447 and have never had a ball pull back out (the Remington design rammer couldn't pull the ball out anyways)

I've got some .457 Speer balls left. Have shot up all the .454's I bought at one point. I suppose I'll be tracking down a .454 or .457 mold. Maybe invest in a reamer as well and bring the Remington cylinders out to the same size as the Colts so I don't have to worry about differing fits in each gun.
 
I had a similar problem with my ASM Walker, rammer wasn't the problem, lead was definitely being shaved, but 2 chambers kept creeping upon recoil, I beveled the edges of all chambers and the problem ended. Try the rammer, and larger ball 1st, but if all else fails a beveled chamber mouth should end the problem, as it did with mine.
 
All of my chambers are already beveled. The Ubertis seem to come that way?

Have a four hole .457 mold on the way from eBay that should be here next week.

Cookies sound great! I run a wool wad under the ball that has been soaked in a wax/grease lube. Not sure the exact makeup since I bought the concoction used. Keeps the fouling soft and the gun running through 6 cylinders without a cleaning at a CAS match recently however.
 
you got two options
take a dremel to ball end of rammer and open the curavature a bit so it doesn't stick to ball
Or get a new mould for a .454 ball
most of the italian replicas prefer a .454 ball and shoot better with it
 
When I ran into that, I switched to a larger ball.
Problem solved, very simply.
Denis
 
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