I bought a rought T/C Hawken to clean up & sell. The ramrod is broken in half. How would a guy go about taking the ends off to fit them to a hardwood dowel? I'm going to refinish the stock anyway. Also, I'm finding 45 engraved on some of the brass. Could this have been a kit gun? The barrel is a warning era 50 caliber. Thanks!
Finding a split ramrod on a commercially made muzzleloader doesn't surprise me.
The factories seem to have the idea that a ramrod is more of a decoration rather than something that is needed to load the gun so, the ramrods they furnish almost always have grain runout. (Thompson Center was notorious for doing this and CVA and Traditions aren't far behind them.)
Ideally, the wood grain will run uncut from one end of the ramrod to the other. When this happens you won't see any partial "rings" on the surface of the wood. It basically will look like one unblemished piece of wood.
About the only way to achieve this is to split the wood from a long piece of wood letting the woods grain dictate where it splits.
Unfortunately, almost all wooden dowels are not made this way. The wood is put into a sanding machine and ground round reguardless of the direction of the wood grain. This leads to grain runout or "breakout".
Grain runout looks like elongated rings on the surface of the wood, like the picture below.
If you see this, don't use it for a ramrod. Very often, when pressure is applied to it when loading the gun, the wood will crack and split along those grains leaving a very sharp spear. More than a few people have had those spearlike ends puncture completely thru their hand.
In the posts above, pinning was mentioned.
Backing up a bit, almost all of the modern commercial factories just glue the ends onto their ramrods. This is a very poor practice because if someone is using the ramrod to clean their gun with a brush or trying to pull a stuck "dry ball" that was loaded without any gunpowder under it, the glue will fail and the metal end of the ramrod will pull off leaving it WAY down in the barrel.
To keep this from happening a good ramrod will have the metal ends "pinned" in place.
To do this, after you've filed the wood down so it fits into the hole in the metal end go ahead and glue it in place but next, pin it with a small brass or steel pin.
I recommend using a wire size of 1/16" made out of brass.
These 1/16: brass wires can be bought at any good hardware store or almost any hobby shop.
To install the pins, drill a 1/16" hole thru the metal ramrod end about 1/8" from where it shoulders on the ramrod.
Then, using a pocket knife or a countersink form a small tapered entrance to the hole on both sides of the metal end.
Cut the wire so it is about 1/16" longer than the ramrods diameter and push it thru the hole so it is sticking out both sides about 1/32"
Rest one end of the pin on a hard metal surface and using a small hammer, tap the upper end of the pin to force it down into the countersunk hole.
Turn the ramrod 180 degrees and repeat the tapping on the pin to force that end down into the countersink.
Now, use a small file to file off any of the pin that didn't go into the countersink leaving the end of the pin flush with the material around it.
This is what you should end up with.