How to work a 1851 Navy .44

If you are actually loading with 25 grains of ANYTHING (not 2.5 grains), and you're shaving a ring of lead off each ball as you ram it into each chamber, and you have .44 chambers behind a .44 barrel, and your barrel is the same .44 internal diameter all the way through, and your powder is dry & in good shape, I can find no imaginable scenario that could explain lodging a ball in the forcing cone.

Have you looked through the bore to check for any kind of constriction?
Forget the caliber stamping- with muzzle up, set a .44 ball in the muzzle.
Does it LOOK like it'd fit, under pressure? Or is it obviously WAY too big for the bore?

Possible the barrel was mismarked.

If your powder's good, I can't see how 25 grains would NOT propel a .44 ball all the way through an unobstructed .44 barrel.

.451 is probably too small.
I've had undersized balls start to back out from OTHER chambers (including a couple fall completely out) under recoil, but never one in a first-shot chamber.

Even if the ball was somehow loose enough to move forward while cocking the hammer & open up airspace between powder & ball in the chamber, which is not a good thing, the pressures generated should still push the ball farther than the forcing cone.
Same even with any blow-by on an undersized ball.

What powder measure are you using?
Brand?
How's it marked/graduated?

Denis
 
i might br wrong but i thought 25g was for a 36 and 30 to 35g is for a 44 but brass frames don't hold up well as compared to steel frames when using max loads. I tried shooting a 44 w/ 25 grains and it popped out like a potato gun

hey ya'll are scaring me:confused:
 
My .44 Army with 25 grains of 3F Swiss runs 800-840 feet per second.
Accuracy deteriorates with heavier charges, on the whole.
Denis
 
Just my .02, but if the timing was dead on, the chambers were clean and DRY, I had a good tight fitting ball, and an accurate charge of powder and my pistol did that, I would slug that bore IN A SKINNY MINUTE. Seems to me I remember reading either here or elsewhere of someone having the WRONG barrel installed from the factory on their REPRO. It seems to make sense to me.
 
My 2 best guesses would be undersized bore or tiny powder charge.
I can't understand how anything else could produce that stuck-ball result.

Denis
 
colt 1851

Yeah, I dont know, even if the cylinder didn't line up correctly with the barrel, shards of lead would have went off to the side when I fired it (no shards did)
 
Agree with No, makes no sense whatever.

I'm totally unable to understand how 25 grains of anything (BP, Pyrodex, 777, whatever) in good condition (not wet or degraded) could possibly stick a .44 ball in a .44 bore's forcing cone.

If the chamber was far enough out of alignment with the barrel to jam a ball, it could not have popped a cap.

Can't even begin to imagine how a loose arbor could prevent a ball from completely exiting a chamber.

Anybody else got a theory?
Denis
 
I have an older .36 Remington repro I acquired in '89, can't recall the maker, wasn't Uberti.
Think it might be Euroarms.

The chamber alignment is very slightly off center with the bore.
It fires reliably.
Had the cone slightly enlarged to compensate for the mis-alignment.

It's actually quite accurate & proves there can be a certain amount of...off-centered-ness... without either losing reliable ignition or shaving lead.

Enough outa line to jam a ball halfway into the cone though, I can't see striking a cap.

Possibly there is no cone?
That could potentially cause problems with the ball trying to enter the bore, but again all that pressure from 25 grains of powder has to go somewhere & it can't all escape through the nipple on blowback.

If the barrel/cylinder gap's sealed by the ball, where does the pressure go?

Ben- where did you see the cloud of smoke you described?
Out the sides?
Out the rear? Nipple?
Out the front?

Did you use a wad? If so, where? In front of the ball or behind it?

How does your gunsmith think the loose arbor could have caused this malfunction?
Denis
 
When I rammed in the ball, I dont remember if I got a ring of lead or not, maybe it wasnt seated correctly, I dont know. I rammed it down really hard though. When I fired it, the powder went off and came out like it was a blank, but there was no kick, so I took off the barrel, and there was the ball.
Thanks for all your brainstorming guys!
 
The powder IMO would have had to have been degraded or contaminated. If it had full ignition that ball would not have stuck there. It or most of it would have exited the muzzle. If the chamber was off center it would have sheared off where it met the forcing cone but like was said if it was very far off the cap wouldn't have fired. I daresay even if the barrel was a .36 a .44 ball would not have stuck in the forcing cone with 25 grains of good powder behind it. IMO it would still have exited the bore but probably not go very far and the bore would be terribly leaded. At the least it would have stuck further down. It would not have stopped at the forcing cone and the recoil would have been severe.
 
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