Pieta Remington 1858 New Army NEED HELP

S

sbgrady

Inactive
THis is my first cap and ball revolver, I purchased it at Cabelas with the help of their knowledgeable salespeople but am finding loads of conflicting information from the Pieta manual that came with the gun, a pamphlet from Cabelas telling me the Pieta instruction manual was somewhat vague and worthless and the advise of the salesperson. As I have always had great luck and trust with the advise of the staff at Cabelas I went with the reccomendation of the salesperson on how to load my new revolver. I decided to try it out today but stopped short for safety purposes because things didn't seem right. I then read some of the articles on this site and had even more questions. The book that the manufacturer provided reccomends a load of 12-15 grains of FFFG powder and a .454" ball. The guide makes no mention of substitutes like Pyrodex. By all accounts from what I have read and what the salesperson at Cabelas told me, this is about half of the typical load for this type of gun. The Cabelas pamphlet reccomends using 24-28 grains of FFFG powder or substitute and makes no mention of ball size. It does reccomend seating the ball directly on the powder charge and sealing it with a lubricant after seating the ball. The salesman reccomended 30 grain Pyrodex pistol pellets for ease of loading, they seemed a little loose in the chamber and a .451" round ball sealed with lubricant to avoid a chain fire. As the advise I got from Cabelas has not steered me wrong in the past I took his advise. Today when loading the gun after seating the balls they seemed to be very deep in the chamber, almost 1/4". I did get the ring of lead when seating the ball and it did seem to be a fairly tight fit. The manufacturer's manual said the ball should be about .040"below the top of the cylinder. This is when I decided not to shoot the gun. I'll have to go and get one of those CO2 things to unload it, just glad I didn't put the percussion caps on.

So, questions now:

Has anyone used Pyrodex revolver pellets and had the same seating concerns I did?

Would I be better off buying a powder measure and either conventional FFFG black powder or substitute?

What is the deepest the ball should be from the top of the chamber, remember Cabelas advised me that the manufacturer's manual was not accurate?

If I choose to seat the ball directly on the powder/pellet charge, how thick should the coating of lubricant be on top of the ball, should I fill most of the space in the chamber with it or just lightly coat the top of the ball? The salesperson at Cabelas advised Thomson Bore Butter as a good product to seal the ball.

Does anyone have any experience with the cartrige conversion kits to fire metalic cartridges from this type of gun. The cartrige conversion manufacturers state it is safe to use smokeless powder in a reduced Cowboy Load, but this concerns me as there are warnings in both the manufacturer's manual and the Cabelas pamphlet to "NEVER!!!!" use smokeless powder. If I choose this conversion, I will probably prefer to use black powder cartriges either hand loaded or from a manufacturer.

Thanks everyone for any response helping this newbie.:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:
 
A Remington .44 would use 25 - 35 grs of black powder (FFFG) OR Pyrodex P (FFFG). Use #11 caps (or #10: I like #11). It is better to have a larger cap that has to be pinched to make it fit on the nipple.
A .454 ball works well. Put the powder in, then the ball (compress it, don't squish it down, and do not leave an air space between powder and ball). It should shave a ring of lead off the ball (some revolvers have bevelled chamber mouths and won't shave the lead).
Over the ball, smear some Crisco or Bore Butter, most of which will disappear after the first shot, but enough should make a seal over the ball to prevent a chainfire. Or, you could use a lubed wad or lube pill (made of beeswax and paraffin) over the powder (under the ball) and not use grease over the ball. I'd start with the grease over the ball - it is messy, but it is cheap and easy.
Don't worry about how close the ball is to the top of the chamber after it is rammed, unless it is protruding out of the chamber and preventing the cylinder from turning.
It is a good idea to pour the powder into a measure, then into the cylinder (not directly from a flask) - there have been cases where an ember spark from a fired cylinder has ignited a flask.

You'll have more questions, and other shooters will have other methods for you to try. Check out this Primer:
http://www.angelfire.com/ny5/shenandoah/Choy.html

Oh yeah...I have never used pellets or 777 (powder substitute).
And, put the cap on and fire the gun to unload it.
 
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I think you are too concerned here. From what I read, you loaded it correctly and shooting it should not be a problem. I shoot the 30 gr pellets all the time in my BP guns. The seating death will vary depending on the load and unless you are shooting a very hot load it will not be a safety problem. So, if you have no more than 30 gr of powder, any from, black or substitute, a bullet that shaves a ring and grease over the bullets you are good to go! Enjoy it.

You can vary the load and find the most accurate load. My guess is that it is around 20 to 26 gr of Pyrodex.

At some point you will likely put a bullet on an empty chamber and the bullet will get stuck in the barrel. Embarrasing but not a big deal either, just push it out again.

I have shot BP for a long time and will admit my mistakes :o

One additional advice I have is to fire a round of caps before you load the gun. I clean my BP well and sometimes a bit of oil is in the nipples. This cleans it out and makes for more reliable ignition.

Enjoy!
 
It isn't possible to overload a percussion revolver, in my opinion, as long as you are using black powder. If you can seat the ball below the chamber mouth so the cylinder can rotate, you're good to go. Several members here regularly shoot 40 grains from their Remingtons, which requires the powder be compressed a bit to seat the ball below the cylinder face. I have no experience with any of the substitute propellants but all are supposed to be equal to black powder, volume for volume, except 777 which is supposed to be reduced 15%. I've settled on 32 grains of Swiss fff in my Pietta which is quite accurate and powerful enough to hunt anything I regularly use a bp revolver on.

The seating depth of the ball below the chamber mouth isn't a safety factor as long as there isn't air trapped between the powder charge and the ball. The ball needs to be touching the powder or anything else you have loaded between the powder and ball, whether it is a filler to take up space ( corn meal, cream of wheat, etc.) or a wad of whatever material. The caution to not allow an air space between the powder and ball exists because the ball, if seated far enough ahead of the powder not to move when the powder first explodes, acts as a barrel obstruction (chamber obstruction in this case) when the expanding charge arrives. I know from personal experience that this actually happens as I "ringed" the bore on a rifle of mine that way. The distances are much less in a revolver cylinder but the cylinder walls are also much thinner, so caution should be exercised to eliminate any possibility of an air space. If the ball in the cylinder is seated deeply, it is said to be less accurate than if it's barely below the chamber mouth. I haven't tested that personally so I pass that on for what it's worth. Go ahead and shoot those deeply seated balls, they will work fine.

As far as lubricants go, you can fill the chambers to the brim on top of deep balls or just barely have any on them at all. There's been debate about the whole subject for quite some time. I have tried everything possible over the years and am now putting a lube pill, which is a disk or cookie cut from a sheet of hardened lubricant, between the powder and ball. If I intend to maybe leave the revolver loaded for a while, I'll seat a cardboard wad between the powder and the lube pill to keep the powder uncontaminated. It may be a needless step but it makes me feel better. All black powder shooting is messy but the messiest is accomplished when you fill all the chambers to the brim with lube. It gets evertwhere.

The revolver's weakest link is it's cylinder.The black powder only caution on these replicas applies to the pistol as it is sold. The manufacturers don't want anyone loading smokeless in their black powder cylinders. The manufacturers of the conversion cylinders have their own standards for the cylinders they sell and if they say their cylinders can be used with smokeless mild loads, I'd not be afraid to do it.

Steve
 
In the most basic way, you've got it right. There are many nuances to shooting the cap-n-ball revolvers, some in the guns and some in the loads, which is what makes them fascinating. I recommend Sam Fadala's books such as "The Complete Blackpowder Handbook" and Mike Cumpston's & Johnny Bates' book "Percussion Pistols and Revolvers".

#1 Don't cap the gun until all the chambers are loaded.
#2 Leave one chamber unloaded and lower the hammer on the nipple for that chamber. That is the safest way to carry the gun.
#3 You must have the ball down on the powder, i.e. NO air space twixt bullet and powder.

Good shooting.
 
Sundance44s

Some of these little pamplets that come with blackpowder guns are giveing you the charge tables in weight not volume ...Use a volume measure , and your Pietta 44 remmie with shoot best with somewhere between 20-30 grains by volume . Loose powder is the best ...those pellets are expencive and don`t produce the best shots out of a remmie ...more made for inline guns of today ..Goex 3f is hard to beat ...but if you can`t find any try Pyrodex P ...its close . loose grains .Remington # 10 caps are hard to beat on a Pietta remmie too ... on mine they fit tight no pinching needed ...and i can`t remember the last time i had a missfire ..
Always pop a cap before loading to dry the oil out of the cylinder ...other wise your first 6 shots will have a hangfire delay ....possibly a missfire .
I`ve loaded my Pietta remmie many times with 35 gr. of powder ...its a stopper load ...but not the best accuracy . 30 grs in mine seem to produce the tightest groups ....... your gonna really enjoy shooting these remmies ...they are hard to beat . And 1 is never enough ... i have 4 now , one of each maker .
 
Sundance44s.

You quote -"and your Pietta 44 remmie with shoot best with somewhere between 20-30 grains by volume . -

I have loaded (ro realoaded) smokeless cartridges for eons, and perhaps I am making this harder than it should be, but at least in smokeless a grain is a grain across all powder manufacturers. How does one get 30-40 grains by volume? By volume of what. I was surfing one evening and ran across on this site somewhere how much BP is held in various cases, ie., 45 ACP, 38 special, etc. Now I can't find it. I sometimes feel, the more I read on BP and it's substitutes, the more confused I get. I thank sbgrady for starting this thread, for if he didn't I was going to soon. Pohill stated in the first response that ---"A Remington .44 would use 25 - 35 grs of black powder (FFFG) OR Pyrodex P (FFFG)---". 25 - 35 grains real BP will not be the same volume as 25-35 grains of Pyro, but we are told to measure by volume, not weight. When one does not have any real BP to get a benckmark volume from, how does one know what an equivalent measure by volume of Pyro would be according to conventional advice. Can ya see how I may be making this more difficult than it really needs to be. From this thread, I feel entirely safe loading 20-30 grains of Pyro in my Remi 44, but am still not 100% clear on conversions of weights/volumes.

While we are at it, i just got a 45 long gun, a kit build I think, one of those Jukar kits, and wondered about the loading level of a long gun vs pistol. I have read on here the general rule of caliber dictating a general start grain range, ie, 36 caliber is safe with 36 gr. BP, and son on. Does one use that logic on long guns? It seems like they would require more for the longer trip down the barell.

Just an inquisitive shooter,
Okie out
 
okiefarmer, it does get confusing dealing with weight/volume. I use a plastic measuring tube to measure out BP or Pyrodex, and I fill it to the same level for either (say, 25 grs). Or I use the spout on my flask that throws a specified amount of either. With the idea that you cannot overload these revolvers (hopefully), unless you use smokeless, I feel confident in this method. I think it comes down to the chicken/egg question - what came first, a weight of a charge, a volume of a charge , or the charge itself. I think they (Colt) worked up a certain charge, then weighed it and measured it and marked it.
 
Its best to get a volume measure for loading black powder and subs.
I use one for loading my 45lc and 45/70 cases too...with black powder and the subs loaded in cases ...there`s the unwanted air space to deal with .
Pyrodex and real black powder don`t weight the same ..one is lighter but loading by volume each one by volume will be about the same amount of energy ..777 on the other hand loads best by volume too ...but its more powerful than real black or the other subs ...so you have to reduce the charge by 15% to get the same results as pyrodex or real black .
not really that difficult loading cap and ball ...... another animal loading brass cases though .
 
Thanks guys,

Clear as mud as they say. I have a complete set of those little LEE dippers that work great out in the field. Iuse the 2.3 and the 2.3 a lot on the Ruger OA. I have had it a while and I know one can't overload the OA with BP or subs, it's a tank with a handle. If it's difficult to overcharge these repros too, then I feel a lot safer than before , like I said, not having any real BP to get a benchmark on a volume to use. I have read of those that cuss anyting but the real McCoy, and those that feel real BP is too dangerous to handle for the average Joe, and just stick to the subs. I just do it for fun, but wish to keep my facial features intact, and just shoot what is available around my neck of the woods, which is predominantly Pyrodex. Sundance, thanks for that link, that wil help a lot.

Good shootin' all,
Okie out
 
Well, Okie, to make it simpler, I think: You replace black powder with an equivalent VOLUME of substitute, and it works, because the folks who make BP substitutes busted their butts to MAKE it work that way. They knew full well that people who shoot black powder and measure it in the field are measuring with a volume-based dipper or similar. No powder scales in the field!

For people who shoot muzzle-loading rifles, knowing to measure by volume and not weight is a safety issue. But as you say, a cap and ball revolver will work safely (if not well, perhaps) with any BP or BP substitute charge you can get into its chambers. So for BP revolver shooters, knowing to measure by volume is more of a profanity-saver than anything else.
 
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