Grease...

[fcat]

Hi,

It seems to be fairly common practice to apply a little grease over the ball in a bp revolver's chamber to reduce the chance of chainfire and presumably help in general lubrication. What sort of grease do people use, and how do you apply it - finger, pot & stick, syringe?

[harricook]

I use a proprietary Black Powder Lube made up by my local guy

Used to make my own - but not worth the faffing around (and the sheer mess) when I can buy it cheaply about 5 mins from my front door.

I don't lube over all the 6 cylinders - as I use a 457 ball in a Pietta 44 NMA 7 the balls cut a nice ring on loading.

I finger (or lolly stick) just 2 of the 6 cylinders & this keeps leading to a minimum. (as a belt n braces) I roll the balls in a few drops of liquid alox too - not sure if it helps - but I've always done it.

I used to use a small syringe to suirt a ring around the tops - but spent more bleddy time filling the syringe than anything else. I considered getting a small grease gun - but never got round to it - fingers & rags cost nowt !

If you want some BP lube - I'll get some & send it at cost

As I said - I don't htink chainfire is a problem if you have decent sized balls (oh matron !) and in soft lead.

The leading you will get without lube is considerable - if I can work out how - I'll post a coule of pics of a club gun that had 36 round thru it - no lube

Looks like the surface of the moon !


All the best

Roy

[harricook]

Can't work out how to attach

Sent pics to your email

Cheers

Roy

[fcat]

Hi Roy,

got the pics, many thanks. That is very instructive. I guess the lead is soft and does tend to break up a little & stick to the steel...but that amount of debris after so few shots... I think I will lubricate the balls, add grease in the chamber and probably clean & oil the barrel between shots. OK maybe I won't really do that last bit but those pics are a stark illustration of what can happen with inadequate lubrication! (please excuse all innuendo!)

cheers
Nigel

[harricook]

When I'm shooting my New Model Army - because the cylinder comes out so easy - I find that after every couple of cylinders - I'll run a dry bristle brush through & all I tend to get out is carbon.

Thats following my Alox & 2 x lubed ball routine

If I can send any lube or help again - give me a shout

Cheers

Roy

[Wobbly 2]

I use liquid alox too, I also have some of the lube mixture harricook mentions, but have not got around to using it.

I find the alox keeps the lead fouling down, I also remove the cylinder, and use a bronze brush down the barrel, ever couple of times.

[tony1975]

Im still yet to prove that it was just luck and not an actual result of the grease, but when I have used grease over the front of the balls I seem to have shot my worst scores, now gone back to my original scheme of wonderlube wad, and every twice round the cylinder, drop it out and brush the barrel

I use pyrodex pistol, as soon as I get home from shooting the gun is stripped of woodwork, cylinder taken out and all dumped into a sink full of very hot soapy water, left there while I put the other guns away, have a cuppa, moan at the missus about my shooting, kick the cat etc etc

then its out of there, brushed through, all the nooks and crannies cleaned, got an electric toothbrush that does the job well, cylinder has the nipples removed and is then placed into an ultrasonic tank for a clean, get the nipples and threads all clean.

then its left fully immersed in a tray of WD40 for a couple of hours, hung up to drain and drip dry, wiped over with a cloth, re assembled, all checked functioning etc, then cased up and into the safe till its next called upon to humiliate me at the club!!!

(although this week I did win the club comp with it, 6 left hand 6 right hand) so gave it some extra special cleaning when we got home.

[harricook]

Nigel

Forgot to say - I'm shooting Black Powder not 777 or Pyrodex


Cheers

Roy

[DJS]

Another function of the lube is to keep the fouling in the bore soft. After firing the muzzle should be wet, if it's not you're not using enough and you will get hard fouling in the bore.
I use tallow with a small amount of Castrol R (castor oil) to soften it slightly, this doesn't get blown away when the chamber next to it is fired.
After firing 30 or more shots, one patch through the barrel and bore is shiny.
Daz

[lilguy43uk]

I use a proprietary Black Powder Lube made up by my local guy

Used to make my own - but not worth the faffing around (and the sheer mess) when I can buy it cheaply about 5 mins from my front door.

I don't lube over all the 6 cylinders - as I use a 457 ball in a Pietta 44 NMA 7 the balls cut a nice ring on loading.

I finger (or lolly stick) just 2 of the 6 cylinders & this keeps leading to a minimum. (as a belt n braces) I roll the balls in a few drops of liquid alox too - not sure if it helps - but I've always done it.

I used to use a small syringe to suirt a ring around the tops - but spent more bleddy time filling the syringe than anything else. I considered getting a small grease gun - but never got round to it - fingers & rags cost nowt !

If you want some BP lube - I'll get some & send it at cost

As I said - I don't htink chainfire is a problem if you have decent sized balls (oh matron !) and in soft lead.

The leading you will get without lube is considerable - if I can work out how - I'll post a coule of pics of a club gun that had 36 round thru it - no lube

Looks like the surface of the moon !


All the best

Roy

Are your balls really that big? I have the Pietta .44 and find it difficult to get a 454 ball in.

[harricook]

I had smaller balls () - around 450 - bought from a nice stand at Bisley many many years ago (for a Colt I used to own) & they were and absolute b*stard to get in - almost had blood dripping from your fingers when you had loaded six.

Mentioned this to my local man (specialist lead caster who even supplies Fultons) - who requested to see said balls........he pointed out that they were too hard - threw them all into his 'Rifle Bullet' melting pot & handed me a bag of his 457s FOC.

Yes - these are a 'firm' push - but they leave a nice fine ring behind

I have since bought a Lee 2 gang & 'roll my own' when the weather is warm - over winter I buy from my man (see www.tfsa/co.uk ) Allwood Stocks & Mouldings

Maybe you have hard jobbies too - if you know what I mean ?

Regards

Roy

[lilguy43uk]

Maybe you have hard jobbies too - if you know what I mean ?

Unfortunately I don't have the room to roll my own. Could have if I move the wife out, now there's an idea.

[harricook]

Mmmmmm - now theres a thought ..... wouldn't have to keep sneaking stuff into the house !!


Roy

[NickHarvey]

I use a Castrol high melting point grease from a syringe with a needle from an inkjet refill kit cut down, just to control the flow. If you do try this though, choose a syringe that has a thin ring of rubber around the circumference and not a full cap over the end of the plunger. The solvents in the grease will expand the rubber and make it unusable after a couple of weeks. The type I've been using has worked reliably for more than 2 years now. Using the Castrol grease pot makes it easy to fill as the syringe is a near perfect fit over the hole in the plate. I've tried specialist lube (look at http://www.stifters-gunflints.de/ - although the site is in German, Guenter, the owner speaks excellent English and is very helpful) the grease works very well and is a LOT cheaper!

As for the fouling, it seems to depend as much on the gun as what you put through it. I started shooting a Pietta competition (and took the British record of 100 with it) and it would need the cylinder pin to be hammered out after two details. I changed to a Hege Remington with the same load and there isn't anything like the amount of debris blown back into the mechanism. It'll do two or three consecutive details and not require any force to dismantle it. I also shoot an original Remington (17 grains Swiss 2 compared to 15 Swiss 2 in the repro) and that does foul more. It's not as bad as the Pietta was but noticable so it's possibly down to engineering tolerances.

I agree with the previous posts that the grease isn't absolutely necessary for preventing chain fires. In my case, there's a very thick layer of semolina on top of the powder but I'd rather have belt and braces on this one! The other thing to do is look at the face of the cylinder after firing the first chamber and see how much grease is actually left. I doubt you'll see much!

On a different note, I have a lot of small spare parts for the Pietta revolver (screws, springs, cylinder pins etc) if anyone needs anything, drop me a pm and I'll give details.

[air-tech]

I agree with the previous posts that the grease isn't absolutely necessary for preventing chain fires.

+1 on that - it's all about lubrication.

In my case, there's a very thick layer of semolina on top of the powder

I used to use that but the balls tended to self-jam, a ring of compressed semo would form in the chambers and then any further balls would not want to seat - so I turned to polenta (ground maize) - just as useful, slightly less fine and no ring issues. In my (also Hege - very nice!) remy I put the powder in, then filled the cyl to overflowing with polenta, (using a gearbox oil litre container with the extendible spout - a second's job) gave it a twirl to make it flush, and found that the balls would compress perfectly to just a smidgen below flush.

HTH