Odd thing happened at the shooting range

B

brotherg

New member
I took my brand new Uberti 1860 army .44 for the first shooting today. On the second loading I had two balls back out with the ramrod. Seems the ramrod dug into the balls and held on better than the sides of the cylinder. I tried two more balls but they did the same thing. I went ahead and shot the six with two cylinders going off as blanks. The next go around everything seated just fine. It was time to go so I did not get to try a fourth go round.

Never had this happen with hundreds of rounds through my 1858 Remy.

I loaded 30 gr Goex fffg, Gatofeo wad, .454 round ball. Shaved a nice ring every time. Nice 65 degree F day.

I spent several hours getting the gun ready, removing all of the factory lubricant, cleaning the bore and what not per all the great advise I received from this forum.

Anybody else see anything similar?
 
I had something like that happen to me recently, when I rammed the ball in, it got jammed, and started to mushroom over the chamber. It just refused to go in the chamber. And it was pure lead. When I got home I pulled it out with a tool.

I don't know what the cause of your predicament could be. Strange
 
The balls were too small. You need to measure them and your chambers. If they're all too small you may need to go to a .457
 
I had that happen on a Walker (pulling the balls up). There was a sharp edge on the cup side of the rammer that grabbed the ball when rammed. A little bit of grinding with a Dremel (rounded cone shaped stone) to remove the sharp inner edge/lip did the trick. Do the Dremel deburring (or tedious sanding with the fingertip) of the rammer cup inside edge and see if the .454 balls stay put. If not go to .457 diameter balls. I've never needed to go to .457 in any of my C&Bs yet.
 
It's a combination of wrong size ball & a badly cut rammer. Use a reaming stone & open up the mouth of the rammer. If you look closely, you'll see a straight or curled lip that is grabbing the balls.

Hellgate beat me to it.
 
Sounds likely. Looking at it under the magnifier I really can't see anything and unfortunately my caliper is not very accurate to tell either way on the size of the cylinders. I will ream out the rammer and see what happens. Thanks for the advice.
 
Here is the correct answer.....Your round balls may indeed be too small you need to measure your bore. Your situation is more likely to occur when you are ramming the round ball home and you have the ram perfectly centered over the round ball.

To eliminate this problem I ram the round ball home with my ram on the sides of the cylinder. I general ram twice once on each side of the cylinder this prevents the suction cup effect.
 
No chamfer. I found a better caliper. There is no discernible difference between the cylinders. Comparing the 1860 to the 1858 the 58 cylinders are bigger if anything and have never given me a problem with 454 balls. Comparing the ramrods the 58 has a bit of a v shape compared to the the round and sharper 60. I am willing to bet that a little work with a dremel on the ramrod will solve this one.
 
The one time I tried using lubricated wads I had this problem. The wads oozed lubricant and under compression just squirted the balls out of the cylinder. Now I was using 3-4 wads, trying to emulate filler between 18 grains of powder and the round ball.

I think shaving lead is good, but it is the final compression of the bullet by ramming that swages the bullet into the chamber, making a tight fit. I think with so many wads under the ball I could never sufficiently compress the bullet to make it swell to stick well in the chamber. This, combined with all the lube oozing everywhere, allowed the pressure of the compressed wads to just squirt the ball out of the chamber.

Also all the lube fouled the charge.

Steve
 
First, remove the sharp edges of the rammer.
Second, get oversized balls that will leave a ring when forced into the chamber. That ring tells you the chamber end is sealed airtight from the front.
Third. Fillers don't have to be fancy. You can use wads, old cornmeal or as I do, old farina. Heck, sometimes I don't even use a filler and it'll work anyway (but I'm not a competitive shooter like others here).
 
I tried fillers but didn't make any difference in the way I shoot. Maybe if I benched it but I rarely do that.
 
Yeah filler doesn't seem to make any difference in most of my pistols except for my Pietta Shooters Model 1858 Remington. Even one handed, not on the bench, it makes a difference in accuracy.
 
OK. I got the dremel out. Removed the rammer. Gave it a few passes, it sparked so was glad I had no powder laying around. I don't leave powder lying around but thought I would mention it. Just made it look good to me. Put it back together and loaded it up, exactly as before. The problem did not return and looking at the balls under the magnifyer I can not see any marks from the rammer on the ball. Made a nice ring each time. I think this one is solved. I loaded it on my coffee table, so, no chance to shoot it till tomorrow. I will let you all know how it goes when I get the chance to go through a few loading cycles.

Thanks! You guys are pistol geniuses!

As for filler, I have not tried that yet. The balls do set fairly deep in the cylinder so 10 to 15 or so grains will seat it at the mouth. My Remington shoots baseball size groups when I am really trying but I am just happy sending lead down range most of the time.
 
Brotherg,
We are not so much pistol geniuses as "been there, done that" types. We've all pretty much made the same mistakes or had the same problems and figured out how to fix them and really enjoy helping others out of their predicaments because we know how frustrating it feels.
 
Ok. Just got back from the range. Had one ball back out but, I saw it pop up a full second after the ram rod came up and found the wad in sideways. reseated it just fine. No other problems shooting 40 rounds.

What makes you "pistol geniuses" is your been there done that. So the moniker fits. Own it.

Baseball size groups. Did it exactly twice. Sandbags both times. Not sure the colt will do that but I will give it a try one of these days.

Thank you very much.
 
The ball should not pop up that easily. It looks like that gun needs larger balls. You could ram them in a little harder and swell them but a .457 should do the trick. OR....... You may have a slight overhang on the edge of the chamber(s) that a little bit of chamfering would remove. You could have what is called "ball creep". No, it is not a venereal disease but can result in the ball working its way forward under recoil and jamming the cylinder. You will still get the magic ring of lead during ramming but the ball will be cut undersized. A tiny bit of beveling of the chamber mouths will swage the bullet and could eliminate the ball creep. If not you need to go to a larger ball.
 
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