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
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