Am I fick er wot?

[Simon G]

I disagree whole heartedly with the concept of using fillers in order to bring the ball as close to the cylinder mouth as possible. I base this on extensive testing that I did myself after getting into B/P revolvers.

I started off with advice from an old sweat after losing our cartridge handguns. I was using powder, ground rice, a ball then grease. Got the ball just below the mouth. Accuaracy was appalling. Went to Pyrodex, just the same, lousy. Then dropped the grease as I thought the filler would be enough to prevent flash over. Still not good.

777 came along and gave it a go. In the first loading data supplied, it was adamant not to use fillers but an over powder was. The change was dramatic in accuracy terms. Carried on experimenting with charge amounts in .36, .44 and .45. Came to the result that 777 with just a wad gave by far the best accuracy. Obviously, the result also showed that the ball was quite away down the chamber.

So then I got to thinking.

Firstly, powder gas, filler, ball and grease, all scooting down a barrel at 800fps...... that's a lot of cr@p. Is it any surprise that accuracy suffers then.

Secondly, the ball depth matters not a jot. For close to the mouth or half way down the chamber, the ball still has to cross the area of fresh air that is the cylinder gap, no matter how small the gap is, it's flying. So does it matter how close it is? Perhaps the argument is that it should be further down the chamber so that when the ball starts it journey, the cylinder walls act as a barrelthemselves and help true the ball up before it jumps the cylinder gap?!

On top of which, regardless of the position of the ball, both types of fired shot enter the leade of the rifling or the barrels forcing cone, truing it up anyway.......

And again, what's the most accurate revolver cartridge in regards to conventional thinking? The .38 special, 148gn wadcutter....... Have you seen how far they sit down a chamber? Even further in a .357, but will still give outstanding results.

You see, I've thought about this a lot......

But I could still be wrong!

[Jim McArthur]

I can't say from experience whether you're right or wrong, Simon: but I can say that what you're saying sure as hell makes some good sense!

Jim

[Smokeless Coal]

The logic is if the ball is too far back it starts moving forwards without twist then there is a transition from no twist to twist. If the ball is well forward it goes straight to twist.

Its a bit like a cartridge round when you load your own you seat the bullet nice and close to the rifling so it picks it up straight away.

Nothing in muzzle loading is hard and fast, what suits one shooter or gun may not suit another, part or the experience is the experimentation.

Myself I use couscous as filler and seat the ball as far forwards as I can. Its given me a massive improvement in my shots. I'm now at the point where I am hyper critical with my powder measuring and weighing my balls but funily not getting a noticable difference.

[Simon G]

The logic is if the ball is too far back it starts moving forwards without twist then there is a transition from no twist to twist. If the ball is well forward it goes straight to twist.

No, I can't see the logic in that. The ball still has to cross the cylinder gap into the forcing cone. So even if the ball is set level with the cylinder mouth it will still move and still jump the gap before it meets the rifling. Granted, the cylinger gap will be around 0.007", but when you actually look at the area of the bearing surface of a ball, it's tiny.