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Old 03-10-2014, 10:07 PM
NW Tradegunner NW Tradegunner is offline
 
Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Fort Saskatchewan
Posts: 234
Thumbs up When the ball puller bores thru the ball....................

Sometime in your experience with BP rifles, you'll get a dry ball experience that will just about drive you crazy. You forget to put the powder in and ram that tight patched ball down the bore and when it hits bottom; crap! So you pull out your ball puller and proceed to screw it into the ball. In most cases the pure lead ball allows the screw to thread into it. On a rare ocassion, the ball is too hard; maybe the person that cast the balls used wheel weights ( heaven forbid) and it won't screw into it. Or the screw is too blunt and basically drills right through the ball! What now? If your gun has a bolster or a drum, you can unscrew the nipple and put a little FFFFG in there, screw the nipple back in. Put on a percussion cap and fire it in a safe direction. With a flintlock, dribbling FFFFG into the touch hole may send it out upon firing; but I doubt it. Usually a long whistling flame comes out of the touchhole and you're back to square one.
The only alternative is to pull the breech plug. About 35 years ago this fellow black powder shooter, that's dead now, told me how. When you get home, take the barrel off the gun, turn the barrel so you can see where the breech plug and the barrel match on the bottom of the barrel, turn the barrel so the sights are facing downward. Take a cold chisel and strike a mark that shows a line on both the breech plug and the barrel. This is your reference mark when reassembling the breech to the barrel. Pad the jaws of your vise with copper sheet so nothing get marred. Put the breech plug/tang in the vise jaws. Rest the front sight end on something solid. Now the barrel is horizontal and held up on both ends, front and back. You'll need a piece of rope at least 6 feet long. Take masking tape and tape one end of the rope to the barrel by the front sight. Take the other end of the rope and tape it to the breech end. About 3 or 4 wraps of tape will hold it. Now wrap the rope around the barrel in counterclockwise manner. Now insert a sturdy stick, a hockey stick will do, I use a stout piece of maple. Now turn the stick and as the rope tightens things start to happen. The stick shouldn't marr the barrel and the barrel should litterly pop loose off the breechplug. Unscrew it and knock out the ball and fowling. Put the breechplug back in and using the rope wrap it clockwise and proceed with the stick until the reference chisel marks line up. Whew! Won't do that again! I've done quite a few over my years of shooting BP and the shooters I did it for are ever grateful and tend to be a little more cautious.
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