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Loading a Jukar 45 cal. ball and patch safley
William V
Member Posts: 2 ✭✭
I am not very experienced to BP so I would like to know what you guys think of my loading. I know to have the gun very clean and dirty barrel makes the ball hard to go down. What I do is center the patch on the top of the barrel. put the ball on it, them start it with a wood handle that has a dent to fit the ball in it. Then I take wood and shove it down flush to the top of the barrel. At this point the ball is very tight I take a 7/16 steel rod and cram it down about 6 inches. Then I know that friction equals heat and enough heat equals a potential lighting the charge. Well for that reason I do not shove it down quick.
I take the 7/16 rod and put it against something hard such as a tree and push the back of the riffle. The ball goes down and it is loaded.
The pressure needed to get it down is excessive and seems like something is not right. I use a pre lubed patch.
I shoot with 90 grains of FFG . The 7/16 rod is
steel. Anything else bends. It seems that the shape of the top of the ball is distorted from all the pressure. Does this
make it not very accurate? I have not shot it enough to get it zeroed in. It has been shooting so high it missed the target. Last shot was dead center in windage and 8 inches high in elevation at 50 yards.
I take the 7/16 rod and put it against something hard such as a tree and push the back of the riffle. The ball goes down and it is loaded.
The pressure needed to get it down is excessive and seems like something is not right. I use a pre lubed patch.
I shoot with 90 grains of FFG . The 7/16 rod is
steel. Anything else bends. It seems that the shape of the top of the ball is distorted from all the pressure. Does this
make it not very accurate? I have not shot it enough to get it zeroed in. It has been shooting so high it missed the target. Last shot was dead center in windage and 8 inches high in elevation at 50 yards.
Comments
If .440 balls still load hard, you might have a rifle bored to .445. I'm fairly certain the Jukars were true .45 calibers, but the line of so-called .45 caliber rifles marketed as Numrich, Hopkins & Allen, and probably others, were of the slightly smaller caliber. I know a number of the earlier-made Spanish guns were actually sold as .44 calibers, but what their exact bore size was I couldn't say. In such a case, even .440 balls would make for too tight a fit to be loaded easily, and might even be dangerous. A ball in the .433-.435 range would be the proper choice. Outfits such as Dixie Gun Works and Track Of The Wolf sell these size balls. They're hard if not impossible to find in most gun stores.
.50 caliber roundballs are actually .490 or .495, with the same rule as to patch thickness applying: larger ball requires thinner patch and will take somewhat more force to load.
If it were me, and I were now shooting .445 or .495 balls (depending on whether the rifle is a .45 or .50), I'd drop to .440 or .490 and see how it goes.
You definitely should not have to use a steel ramrod and a tree to load, assuming a clean bore and properly-sized balls for your rifle. I'll go a little further out on a limb and venture a guess that you're generating fairly high levels of pressure by firing a ball and patch combination that loads so hard. The steel on the Spanish-made guns isn't junk, but it also isn't the best by a long shot.
Hope this is of some use to you, William.
You don't want to use a steel ramrod. You will damage your bore if you continue to do so.
Get a wooden short starter, and either a wooden or fiberglass ramrod.
I recommend you buy a pack of 4 hickory ramrod blanks from Dixie, and make your own ramrod.