Correct load for 44 cal. Revolver

G

GED

Inactive
Hi, this is my first post here. My name is Gary and I just bought a 1851 Navy and a 1858 Army Pietta revolver. I went to the range last weekend to try them out.
I have a dilemma on the size of load. The gun manual says max grains of black powder for the 44 is 35 and the max for Pyrodex is 28.
It also says "suggested grains" is 12 to 15. What is the correct load size?
I did the 28 grains before I saw the 12 to 15 I thought I may have used too much and damaged the revolvers.
The one thing I did notice between the BP and Pyrodex is the Pyrodex produces a lot more "sparks". Is that normal?
I shot a tighter group with the BP then I did with my regular S&W revolver.

It took me almost 9 hours to clean the 2 revolvers and 5 cylinders. :)

I tried the Hoppes #9 on the first one but got tired so I tried the soap and water on the second. That was a lot quicker. I did forget to remove the wood grips before putting in water. Duh!

Another huge mistake I did was accidentally putting 2 balls in one chamber. I won't tell you how I fixed that - I'd get kicked off the forum before I even begin. :D

I have many "normal" guns , but these are the first BP ones so I'm sure I'll have a ton of questions in the future.
 
You can safely load a full charge of 3F powder with a ball.

My Pietta Remington does best with 30 grns of 3F Olde Eynsford or Triple 7 powders with my bullets. These may not be the most accurate but are with a more useful load as that gives my bullets about .45 ACP ballistics whereas the light loads Pietta mentioned might very well be much more accurate but give performance more inline with a .32 ACP or some such. My guns are sidearms and not just paper punchers.

Smokeless cleaning supplies won't work well. Some just use water, some dish soap and water, and some I've read even use various non petroleum oils.

My pistols take about 30-45 mins to clean I guess. I use soap water and Ballistol oil.
 
Hi GED, welcome to the black powder club.

I don't know what caliber your 1851 Navy is. Historically, they were .36 caliber, but many modern reproductions are in .44. Of course the 1858 Remington New Army is .44.

.44 caliber revolvers can generally hold a maximum of about 30 grains of powder. However, optimal accuracy will probably happen around 18 grains of 3F powder using round balls.

When loading, you want to look for a shaved ring of lead being shaved off the ball when it is driven into the chamber. This means you have a good gas-tight interference fit between the ball and chamber walls. Without that there is an increased risk of a chain fire, which is when the fire of the top chamber ignites adjacent chambers.

As when shooting any revolver, never put any part if your hand beside or in front of the chamber when shooting. The explosive venting gasses will injure you and chain fires remove fingers.

Hoppes #9 does not dissolve black powder residue. Soap and water, or even just water, is the best. I also very much like Ballistol.

It's important to guard against double-loading and squib loading muzzle loading arms. A way to safely unload a cylinder chamber without firing it is to remove the nipple and then use a needle to poke at the powder until it trickles out the nipple hole. If the powder is not compressed it will just pour out. If it is compressed then it may be packed together and so the needle helps break it up so it will fall out the hole.

After the powder is out, place the cylinder face-down on a block of wood with a hole drilled in it, and use a nail that will fit down the nipple hole and a hammer to drive the bullet out of the chamber into the hole in the block of wood.

Whenever handling a loaded chamber out of the firearm exercise extreme caution, and never cap a loaded cylinder out of the gun. If you drop it and it goes off, it is still a very short-barreled gun and could be lethal going off in an unknown direction.

I only shoot real black powder as substitutes are not allowed in N-SSA competition, so I can't say much about it. I used it a few times years ago and as I recall it was more prone to causing corrosion than real BP.

Steve
 
A quart of warm water with one (1) squirt of dish soap is the beast BP cleaning solution there is -- bar none (and the price is right). ;)
Don't even try using smokeless powder solvents (El Messo Grande)

1. Pull the barrel/cylinder apart.
2. Scrub the barrel inside (hot/soapy patches) and out, rinse, drypatch, oil and set aside.
3. Scrub the cylinders inside (hot/soapy patches) and out. (Put the cylinder in your bowl of dishwater and pump the water in & out through the nipples)
4. Pull all the nipples, the scrub the nipple recess/threads with pipestem cleaners (soapy water again);
5. Then rinse all, drypatch all, oil all, and set aside. Ditto each nipple
~~~~~~~~ All this should have taken you 5-8 minutes Max ~~~~~~~~~~

6. Unscrew/pull the backstrap and trigger guard off.
7. Using a toothbrush/soapy water, scrub out the inside of the trigger assembly, rinse, dry off and oil.
~~~~~~~~ Another 5 minutes Max ~~~~~~~~~~

6. Reassemble -- you're done --
 
What they ^^ said; plus:

For my .44s I generally load 25 grains of fffg BP, lubed wad and a .454 rb. The .36s get 22 grains of fffg BP, lubed wad, and a .380 rb. These have shown to be the most accurate loads in my Colts.

Hoppe's #9 Plus BP solvent (NOT Hoppe's #9) is a good cleaner; but soap, water, and Balistol works better IMNSHO.
 
A couple more cleaning tips:

When you disassemble for cleaning, make sure you use screwdrivers that fit the slots of the screws. Otherwise you will bugger them up.

With the 1858, often I only remove the single grip screw and remove the wooden grips, and then dunk-clean the entire gun without further disassembly. Then I use compressed air to blast the water out of the action and all the nooks and crannies. Then I blast Remoil into the action to make sure everything is oily and won't rust. About every 3 outings I do a full disassembly.

Of course with Colts you have to remove the backstrap to remove the grips, which unloads the hammer spring, so it's much more of a chore and you may as well remove the trigger guard at that point. Often with the Colts I don't bother with a full disassembly and just clean what I can get from the outside without removing the grips. Again about every 3 outings I do a full disassembly.

Steve
 
As the plunger can only push a projectile so far you'd need filler if you use mouse fart loads of powder. Match shooters use filler with their light loads to get the ball as close to the mouth of the chamber as possible to reduce bullet jump.
 
Maillemaker, that's what I did. Removed the nipple and emptied the BP - then I took a drill and started from a small dia. bit up to a larger one until the first ball just fell out. I used a variable speed drill and SLOWLY drilled. I thought about a nail/punch through the nipple hole but didn't want to ruin the threads.
If there was any gun powder involved I wouldn't think of doing that.
In the end all is fine.

I shiver just thinking about putting a gun in water, but that seems like the SOP for cleaning BP weapons.

The one revolver looks pretty clean after using Hoppes #9 and some other assorted gun/bore cleaners. I just kept cleaning until there was absolutely no more residue. :D

I just bought some Ballistol.

So, if I understand correctly, any load between 12 and 30 grains will not hurt anything? Sounds like 20 +/- would be the optimum load??

I have another question, but will start another thread. Thanks again
 
Mouse fart

I might suggest a couple of tools for your range bag. Maybe.

After trips to hobby and craft stores, I made two useful tools for getting out of a jam. Of course, Murphy's Law dictates that if you have these, you will never need them again, but you might rescue someone else. I am thinking they will keep me from ever needing them again. :)

I cut a solid brass rod with a diameter small enough (1/4"?) to use through the threaded nipple hole in the back of the cylinder to push out a ball if needed. I put a small solid wood ball on mine to make it easy to push. That way you don't need to hammer.....or use a drill.

I made a larger version with a wooden dowel long enough for pushing a stuck ball out of the barrel. You really should never need either of these if you pay attention to what you are doing, but I must have loaded one cylinder cavity with too little powder. I will admit my mistake for the possible benefit to others. :o

The solid round balls are used to make doll heads, are hollow and made from some Chinese hardwood.
 
I shiver just thinking about putting a gun in water, ....
Click to expand...
water (esp soapy water) is a superb cleaner -- and de riguer for BP.
With hot water, things will dry almost immediately when set aside -- or in the sun at the range even faster
Worst case rush -- throw parts in the oven at "warm" for 10 minutes.



Water ? Great for guns
Deadly for people
http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
 
One thing I don't remember seeing anybody mention is if either of those guns has a brass frame you do not want to go over 20 grains of powder
 
I've never understood the ridiculously low charge volume recommended in the manuals - at 12 - 15 grains, you can't even seat the ball on the powder.
The Ruger Old Army will hold 40+ grains, but the 1858 and 1860 (and the *gun that never was* 1851 .44) will only hold about 35 or so. For Cowboy Action Shooting, I use the least amount of powder that will still allow for a full stroke of the ram - at the distances we shoot, why use more?
I've accidentally put two balls in before, and it's perfectly safe to just go ahead and shoot them out. A .44 RB weighs in at about 140 grains, so two of them come to 280 grains, and people have been constantly experimenting with heavy .45 conicals of 250 grains or more for the .45 Colt for years. If you have a brass frame, I wouldn't make a habit of using such heavy projectiles, but it's perfectly safe for a gun in good working condition.

Nine hours to clean two revolvers and five cylinders is a bit much. That job should take under an hour. Hot soapy water, a toothbrush, bore brush, some compressed air, and a bit of oil. When you screw the nipples back in, put a tiny bit of Gorilla grease or choke tube grease on the threads, and remember there is no need to torque them much past finger tight - you want to be able to get them back out again without breaking your nipple wrench.

I very seldom do a complete disassembly of my C&B revolvers, unless there are cap fragments that have worked their way inside somehow. This is a very common problem with my Walkers, but seldom encountered with the other models. I've never been a big fan of the "just take the grips off and toss the whole thing in a bucket of water" cleaning method either, but that's just me. I suppose it works just fine, if you can get ALL the water back out. On things like the ram, there is an internal spring operating the latch, and getting all the water back out of that tube looks difficult. It won't take much for a spot of rust to develop and make that spring break. Baking it in the oven might get the water out, but it will most definitely initiate and promote corrosion in the future. Take a clean mild steel plate, dunk in it water, then put it in the oven at 200° or whatever - I guarantee there will be rust on it when you take it out.
 
Ballistol

Been using moose milk, about 1/6 volume Ballistol and 5/6 volume of tap water. It works well.

In reading the cleaning regimens, where one dunks the frame in warm soapy water and uses compressed air to get the water out, then hoses it all down with Remoil or the like, I got to wondering whether if one were to clean the action with moose milk, whether the residual Ballistol would do any good to prevent rusting?

Thanks in advance for your experience.
 
Buy a copy of Lyman's BP Handbook and Reloading Guide. Has .44 Revolver loads and a whole bunch of info. Still trying to get my head around BP being loaded in grains by volume.
 
Welcome...

...to the forum!

Yeah, I don't like using water on my firearms either. It has been done for decades, but my pistols never see any water.

Sounds like all the guys here have this pretty well covered and I have nothing to add.

All the best,

Birch
 
Worst case rush -- throw parts in the oven at "warm" for 10 minutes.
Click to expand...

I definitely don't agree with this. I once had a shirt of chainmail that I had cleaned, and decided to dry it in the oven. It came out nice and orange!

Oxidation (iron + oxygen to form iron oxide - rust) is accelerated by heat.

I find the best way to dry wet gun parts is with compressed air. It will blast water off the parts and rapidly evaporate what remains.

Steve
 
Worst case rush -- throw parts in the oven at "warm" for 10 minutes.
Click to expand...
Never had a problem in all these years -- including every time for every one of
my flintlock locks after a thorough soapy toothbrushing under the sink faucet. :rolleyes:

Into the oven it goes... 5 minutes later it's warm, dry and oiled.




postscript: This is also in effect what I do every casting session with a new/stored/factory mould -- scrub it out with hot soapy water/toothbrush, then throw it under a hotplate/covered with a small pot as a dutch oven. Twenty minutes later both the mould and the lead are up to temp -- any never any rust anywhere, ever.
 
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Rather than MAX load the revolver, I like mid loads,with filler to seat the balls at premium height.
I've found that someless than max loads are most accurate!
I try and keep .36 cal balls ata min of .22 gr and .44 cal balls at a min of 25gr, and adjust for accuracy. both are healthy lads in both cqlibers with lots of filler room to experiment with.
I use Cream of Wheat for filler. It's explosive 9how much I don't know) but it helps make some power. (?)!!!

I shoot BP and experiment for fun From History I already know it kills well! It can protect you!
ZVP
 
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