I've been using, for decades, a grease gun and adaptors made for the various flash-holes and nipples that won't use a standard grease fitting. The grease gun method is messy but NEVER harms the barrel.
You can always hit the bro-in-law with the grease gun if this fails! (Make him hold the gr-gun's snout to the fitting tightly, then attack!
Most folks ruin their bbl or breechplug trying to remove them or "pull a ball", then they sheepishly bring them to me??
I must confess to recently getting trapped into listening to a customer tell a long-winded story about his "son" (It's never the fellow who bring the gun in) lodging a ball and their breaking ramrods, etc. marring the breechplug and barrel before giving up.
Then I wasted valuable time using a grease gun, but NO Ball emerged w the grease! I thought the grease had eased by the ball?, though it didn't feel like it, and began to pull the breechplug. Fortunately I happenened to bump the breechplug with a steel rod cleaning out the grease. It rang like a bell, not the dull lead thud!! There was NO BALL in the bbl!!!! :rotf:
I guess I was in a hurry and didn't check to see if there really WAS a ball stuck! My 7,783,553rd mistake!!The owner even told of feeling his ball puller catch on something in there before he broke his rod!! :thumbsup: