I guess I might add, one of the biggest problems with splitting out a hunk of wood to make a ramrod from is getting it down to a nice round size that can be used.
Whittling can only go so far and sanding can seem like it takes forever.
A better way of getting a round ramrod, and one that follows the existing grain is to pull the wood thru a series of holes in a steel plate.
A piece of 1/8" thick steel works nicely. Much thicker than that takes a lot of work to drill all of the holes and anything thinner than 3/32" will be too flimsy to do the job.
It also takes a stout workbench and a good vise to hold the steel but if the holes are pretty close together in size it doesn't take a whole lot of force to pull the wood thru them.
That does bring up the problem with making the steel plate though.
Drill bits over 3/8" in diameter can be expensive and hard to find which brings me to Harbor Freight.
I'm not a fan of their drill bits but they do offer a set of reduced shank titanium nitride drills from 1/16" to 1/2" in 1/64" increments at a very fair price.
If you only have a regular electric hand drill, 3/8" is about the maximum size drill it will chuck.
The hole sizes you will need are more like 3/8" to 1/2" so be sure the bigger drills have a shank size your drill can use.
To get the ramrod blank started into the first 1/2" hole you might want to taper the end a bit and soak the wood in some water.
Stick the tapered end thru the biggest hole and grab the end of the wood with some pliers and give a good pull.
In no time at all, you will end up with a nice, round rod.
Here's a current link to the drill bits I mentioned:
http://www.harborfreight.com/titanium-nitride-coated-drill-bit-set-29-pc-61637.html