Slugging a barrel

[byronw999]

Hey all...

I read this post from last year ( http://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/.../post/423702/hl/slugging/fromsearch/1/#423702 ) about slugging a barrel as I wanna do that to both my new BP pistols.. I have a Pieta 1858 .36 and a .44..

Question is after you slug the barrel what size should the round ball be that you use?? Do you use a ball the same size or bigger or what?

Thanks in advance!

 

[jtmattison]

I don't see how slugging your pistols will help. When you load the cylinders the ball is swaged to the cylinder diameter so regardless of the bore diameter you'll still be shooting the same diameter projectile.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

HD

 

[rafterob]

I agree-don't see the purpose of slugging a revolver.

 

[renovato]

For a revolver, you don't need to slug the barrel to determine ball size. What you want is a ball that will shave a clean ring off as you seat it in the chamber. For the Pietta .44 that's usually a .451. I'm not sure on the .36.

The ring shaving is important. This forms a tight seal so the hot gasses of firing can't get into the adjacent chambers and set them off in a crossfire. It also creates a "driving band" on the ball, that lets get a better bite on the rifling.

 

[byronw999]

Ok, perhaps I was given the wrong info from a shooter at the range.. He was telling me that a lot of the import C&B revolvers had undersized chambers and that I needed to slug the bore to get the correct size then ream the chambers to match..Is this not correct??

I'm real new to BP so I dont know..

On the .36 the .375 RBs shave good.. The Pieta manual said .451 for the .44 but they didnt shave at all.. Bought .454 and they shave some..

 

[paulvallandigham]

Use calipers to measure both the bore diameter and the throat diameter of the chambers. Its not at all rare to find the throats to be way undersized from the bore, or, saying it another way, to find the bore is quite a bit larger in diameter than the throats in each of the chambers.

Then there is the problem of whether the barrel is aligned with the chambers, If not, you are spitting some portion of each ball off to the side of the gun every time a ball jumps from the cylinder to the barrel.

Then there is the problem with the barrel NOT having any kind of forcing cone, to help the balls feed easily into the rifling of the barrel. It needs a 11 degree forcing cone for best accuracy.

Then you check the ROT of the rifling. Most current replicas don't have the optimum ROT for the velocity they can produce in the calibers they are intended for.

Other than those things, and often unevenly cut cylinder faces, so that the gap between the face of the cylinder and the rear of the barrel varies as the cylinder rotates, or too large a cylinder gap, there is almost nothing wrong with the current replica revolvers. Actions can be cleaned up, and trigger pulls adjusted. None of that shows outside the revolver's frame. But if the ball doesn't go where you are aiming, there is not much point to shooting it, NO?

You have already found out that the chambers are cut oversized, and need at least a .454 diameter ball, if not a .457 ball to shoot. Measure the bore with calipers to learn what diameter the barrel is. Then go from there.

 

[byronw999]

Ok, as the ole Roseanne Roseanadana used to say many years ago on Saterday Night Live "Never Mind!"

Appears I dont have any problems at all.. The BP guy I had been talking to had Pietas 3-4 years ago when quality wasnt what it is now I guess..

I used a caliper on both. The .36 measures .369 on the barrel and all cylinders. The .44 measures .448 on barrel and cylinders...

Everyone here and on several other forums had said the quality had come way up on these which is why I had bought them in the 1st place..

Thanks for the help folks! :bow:

 

[paulvallandigham]

Believe it or not, the companies are beginning to learn to read these forums, as we often do their " Quality Control" for them, and our comments have a ripple effect that does affect sales. The market feedback they get by reading these forums are much cheaper than if they had to hire a marketing company to survey customers.

If they have improved anything concerning their production, is because more buyers are asking questions and demanding better products. This is a highly competitive business, even within Italy where there are more than one gun company manufacturing these replica revolvers.

At least you learned what and how to check your gun to see what you have. The throats of the chambers, and the diameter at the opening of the forcing cone of the barrel should be the same diameter, and then the forcing cone of the barrel should taper down to the rifling. There should be no " shoulder " at the back of the rifling, to knock out chunks of your ball,letting gas blow by and cut the ball further.

Instead, the forcing cone should allow the ball or bullet to engrave on the rifling gradually, for best accuracy. Forcing cone reamers can be bought from Brownell's.

If you have a thread-tap wrench, you can use the reamer yourself to clean up the back of the barrel, and adjust the diameter of the forcing cone. The action needed to hand-ream a barrel is the same as threading a hole in steel. Just improving or adding a forcing cone to the back of the barrel will help improve accuracy of these revolvers dramatically.

 

[deanscamaro]

:v
I have to agree with Paul_______. I depend on info from this forum as a newbie trying to work my way into the hobby. I have been able to avoid some potentially costly actions by asking questions. So far, I haven't seen very many "idiot question" responses from the members. Because of that quality level in the question/answer discussion, the companies are getting good feedback.
:2 :2