pedalplant
32 Cal
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2016
- Messages
- 4
- Reaction score
- 1
What are the dangers associated with not ramming a ball snuggly onto the powder charge? Could this condition explode with enough force to fragment the cylinder? Thanks.
Seat the ball firmly. Push it in, don't hammer. To test, draw the ramrod out a foot or so, let it drop on the ball. If the rod bounces, the ball is all the way in.
Leaving airspace can cause it to explode and not burn. Hammering the ball can overly compress and ignite the charge.
I was taught to not hammer on the ball. Maybe it's being overly cautious, but over is better than under.Hammering the ball deforms it. This will NOT ignite the powder charge.
Revolvers have limited space available in the cylinder so if a person were to allow a quarter inch or more of a space I would assume that powder charge would be relatively small. Again, this is not recommended AT ALL!! Do not leave a void under any projectile in a black powder arm! Ever! But, and this is a very big but, sharps rifles do function perfectly with a void in the chamber, some other civil war arms as well, and the orientation of the arm immediately prior to firing affects the safe discharge not in the least.
Bearing this in mind, I’ve been tempted to test fire a revolver (remotely fired, behind a barricade while filming the action, or lack there of) I have a test mule, an old brass framed .44 1851 sheriff model. All I need is time to run the test. Again, this is not something anyone should actually do but I’m curious about stuff like this.
WRT seating a ball too briskly, compacting the charge with sufficient force enough to ignite it? I’m going to say it’s impossible for a normal human to do that... if it were, I have no doubt one of my ham handed gorilla friends (or myself) would have done so already.
Probably nothing would have happened. Your friend needs to calm down, rehearse the process until he understands what the heck he’s doing. It’s not terribly difficult to load and shoot one of these revolvers safely but how he’s going about it is not the way it’s done.
Powder, ball, repeat six times and then cap the cones. Cap and ball is not rocket science if you just slow down and follow the very simple procedure.
Zonie's got it right but then he usually does. There is not enough room in a revolver cylinder chamber to cause a bulge or burst. I did once ring a 50 caliber TC Hawken barrel from a maxi slug that worked up the barrel, off the powder charge after carrying it all day while moose hunting. Put a nice visible ring about 8 inches back from the muzzle.Amen. Did my best to guide him. Have never had any of these problems, myself.
Great supplement to Zonie’s remarks...Zonie's got it right but then he usually does. There is not enough room in a revolver cylinder chamber to cause a bulge or burst. I did once ring a 50 caliber TC Hawken barrel from a maxi slug that worked up the barrel, off the powder charge after carrying it all day while moose hunting. Put a nice visible ring about 8 inches back from the muzzle.
It's the compressed and expanding gas column, racing up bore unchecked ,until it smacks into the constriction, over powering the steels elasticity limits and bulging or bursting the barrel.
The reason it does not happen when there is a small or no gap is because the bullet mass begins to move with the burning of powder at the base of the charge. The front part of the powder column is not burning initially so the movement of both ( front of powder column and projectile) are gradual increasing together as the expansion ratio increases with the progressive powder burn.
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