Percussion revolver loading problems

[stretchman25]

For over thirty years I loaded percussion revolvers in the following fashion. Powder, ball and then grease / bullet lube smeared on top of the cylinder chambers. This method is great for dedicated range use, but can cause problems for field use. Recently, I have tried using pre lubed felt wads. The problem that I am experiencing is the ball will follow the loading lever up when seated. At times is will refuse to remain seated in the chamber and will fall out of the cylinder. My conclusion is the lube from the felt wad doesn't allow the lead ball to grip the sides of the chamber walls. The gun that I am experiencing this problem with is a 44 caliber Uberti Remington replica. When seating the ball there is a lead ring left on the face of the cylinder with both .454 and .457 balls. As stated earlier, this is the first time that I have used pre lubed wads or any wads of any kind in a percussion revolver. I have never had this problem with placing bullet lubricant/grease on top of loaded chambers. Has anyone else experienced this problem and if so, what solutions were used to fix the problem?

[Rebel Dave]

Strech
Check your pistols Rammer for burrs etc, or misalighnment.

Dave

[Maillemaker]

I also tried lubricated wads once and saw the same issue you did. The wad made the chamber walls slippery and so the ball tended to want to squirt out of the chamber.

I've heard some chambers are tapered and this could also exacerbate the problem.

I also attempted to use multiple wads (in lieu of filler) and this was a disaster - driving the ball home squeezed all the wads and squeezed the lube out of them, saturating and ruining the powder charge.

Steve

[Dheisey#7003]

My first thought was the balls were too small, but you said they cut a ring when rammed. I tried using felt wads without grease over the loads and had bad results. I use cream of wheat and over ball lube for 30+ years, of course that is range use only. For short term us in the field, lube over would be ok, but you may have to add some beeswax to it to make it stiffer. IDK

[Bob Hatfield]

Believe it or not but I think it is suction pulling the ball out. A Remington loading ram concave fitting the ball perfectly against a sealed up tight chamber. The suction between the compressed wad and the concave rammer us pulling your ball out. That was my conclusion when my Pietta shooters model was doing this with loosely fitting .457 balls. I actually needed probably a .460 ball as it loaded the .457's rather easy.

Bob

[Lou Lou Lou]

FWIW When I still shot revolver I used Wonder wads and never had an issue. Used .454 in R&S