Is a Wad or Grease Really Nessasary ?

[hylander]

Probably asked before but I can not find it.
Concerning Revolvers, I personally I use lubed wads over the powder.
However why do we need Wads or Grease ?
If a properly sized ball is inserted into the chamber it cuts a ring all the way around the ball
and the cylinder is sealed.
I'm thinking if a spark can't get past a felt wad or some grease, how is it going to get past a solid hunk of lead ?

[starmac]

Me thinks the powder burning might sorta melt the lead, but I could be way off, as I never tried it.
How come you have to patch a lead ball in a rifle,or lube a boolit to keep from leading, and you don't in a revolver, is what I have always wondered?

[Rattus58]

Probably asked before but I can not find it.
Concerning Revolvers, I personally I use lubed wads over the powder.
However why do we need Wads or Grease ?
If a properly sized ball is inserted into the chamber it cuts a ring all the way around the ball
and the cylinder is sealed.
I'm thinking if a spark can't get past a felt wad or some grease, how is it going to get past a solid hunk of lead ?

Well here is one illustration of undersized balls and no grease... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne4VgCdAy7Y

Here is another reason to consider either a wad or grease... wad is my choice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijCW6myUoXA

and another... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=711821_SNq8

I personally don't know of anyone who has had a chainfire, but they certainly are a potential to be aware of.

Be safe, have fun, and introduce others to this wonderful sport!

Aloha... :cool:

[dikman]

You're quite right, hylander, if the ball is a correct fit then the chamber will be effectively sealed. My Uberti .44 uses .451 balls. They don't cut a ring when rammed, but I've knocked one out and found that there is a nice flat band around it, which indicates it's a tight fit. I made a casting of one of the chambers, and found that they have a very slight taper which will also force the ball into an interference fit.

As for chain-fires, unless someone has done something stupid it won't chain-fire from the front. All the tests that I have read about have proven that chain-fires are caused by caps falling off nipples and causing the exposed chambers to ignite when the gun is fired. Apparently, the "top shooters" (some call them Masters ??) load powder, filler, ball and lube. At least, that's what I've read. The only reason for the lube over the ball is to provide lubrication down the barrel, ahead of the ball.

I'm currently using a wax pill over the powder, followed by the ball. The pill acts as a filler to keep the ball nearer to the mouth of the chamber and also provide some lubrication. The first ball fired, of course, doesn't have any lube in the barrel, but after that there should be traces of lube left for subsequent shots - at least, that's the theory! Does it work? I can't say, as at the moment I'm happy if I can just hit the target!!!

[dondiego]

Well, I have personally experienced a chain fire and it only happened when I didn't put grease/Crisco over the balls. Cured me! It may have been a coinkydink and occurred due to a cap falling off but I ended my test right then.

[Maven]

"It may have been a coinkydink and occurred due to a cap falling off but I ended my test right then."

dondiego, The loose cap is probably the culprit. Btw, I'd have stopped testing ASAP as well, i.e., after I changed my pants!

All, A few weeks ago I was firing my 1858 Rem. cap & ball replica with tight fitting RB's and conicals seated "naked" and over lubed felt wads. I was using Pyrodex P at the time as I wanted to used it up. Let me tell you the lubed wads made a real difference, not in preventing chain firing, but in keeping the bore clean...even with the supposedly clean burning Pyro. P. In short, the lubed felt wads go along way in keeping things clean and are much easier to deal with than a popsicle stick and grease of some kind over the cylinder mouths.

[dondiego]

Maven - Do you use the wads on both sides of the ball?

[RPRNY]

With properly sized ball, critical for any sort of accuracy given the mismatch between chamber diameter and bore diameter in most replica revolvers, the role of grease or lubed wad is to soften fouling. Wad over ball is neither required nor anything but a hurdle to accuracy. BP and it's substitutes leave considerable fouling in the barrel and, in Colts, on the arbor which can bind up the cylinder. Overball grease, which is messy, often removed by recoil, is with clean loading and properly sized ball utterly pointless. Underball lube or a lined wad acts as a softening agent ensuring that a large part of prior fouling goes out the barrel with each shot. The remaining soft fouling serves as bullet lube for the next ball.

[Mk42gunner]

Dondiego, I use lubed felt wads between powder and balls in my Colt pattern revolvers. A felt wad will not stay in the cylinder if you put it over the top of a ball.

I have in the past used greases over the balls, but the felt wads make less of a mess. I do however lube the heck out of the cylinder arbor to help keep fouling soft so the cylinder is still free to rotate.

I am one that thinks chainfires start from the rear, but I am not going to try to cause one to prove my point.

Robert

[dondiego]

I have some felt wads that I bought some time ago and I need to get them out and give them a try. Thanks for the info. Sounds a lot less messy. A goop of Crisco on top of the ball gets gooey real quick.

[Pb2au]

+1 on the loose/missing cap.
Chain fired my first 1858 Remington repro. That was quite enough for me thank you.
SO the lesson is;
1) proper fitting caps.
2) proper fit on the ball.
3) I use either a lubed felt wad or lube over the chamber mouth.

FYI, it bent the frame on the 1858. Which really was not much of a loss as it was a brass framed model. The cylinder toward the bottom cooked off and the ball smashed into the rammer part of the frame. The frame was just visibly torqued. After I counted my fingers and figured out the gun was toast, I pulled the cylinder and pulled the remaining loads. Then I condemned the gun.
Lesson learned.

[Maven]

dondiego, No, only on top of the powder charge. Even with black powder (FFFg) the fouling stays quite soft and manageable. Ditto with Pyro. P, which ain't so clean burning without the lubed wads.

[hylander]

Thanks for all the input, pretty much was my conclusion as well.
I will still stick with the lubed wads

[mainiac]

I shoot lubed wads in my ROA,,,no grease over the ball for me. Besides,when the gun gets hot from shooting,the grease just melts off anyways.

[Sergeant Earthworm]

My 2 cents: I use a wad to prevent the hot gas from melting the ball which increases leading of the barrel. Lube over the ball is just that: lubrication for the ball as it travels down the barrel, also makes the deposits softer so they come out easier

[Battis]

Chain fires can start at the cap or chamber. I've had two multi-chamber fires, in two different guns (both were .36 caliber), caused by poorly cast roundballs (defective mould). My fault.

[GunSlingerNM]

I was at range yesterday and shot 2 revolvers both colt 1860. One I shot with lubed wads over powder the other no wads. Accuracy was about the same 25 yards off hand.
Clean up was much easier with gun using wads.

[Omnivore]

The loading instructions that came with the original Colt's revolvers did not call for any wad or lube of any kind in the chambers. I don't know about other manufacturers, but I have a legible photo of an original Colt's instruction sheet.

I'm not making any sort of point out of that other than giving out the information.

There is an extensive, fairly scientific experiment on chainfires on the web somewhere (I may have found it linked from this forum) that I will find tonight and post a link to it here. In short; he concludes, after deliberately causing chainfires with some methods, and being unable to cause them using other methods, that the vast majority, if not all, of chainfires are ignited by way of a path of crushed powder along the wall of the chamber, even with a tightly fit ball. The solution, he says, is what he refers to as "clean loading" meaning that there is no powder around the mouth and upper wall of the chamber that can be dragged down alongside the ball when the ball is placed into position and then seated.

I'm not saying he's right, but he certainly did present a decent case. Also he says he was unable to cause a chainfire by leaving caps off from adjacent nipples. Although it is purely anecdotal in my case as I've never set out to try to produce a chainfire, I have had caps fall off without knowing it, and then I fired adjacent chambers, on several occasions, and I've never had a chainfire. The process by which a wad prevents a chainfire, he says, is by wiping the chamber wall clean before the ball goes down, rather than having anything to do with directly stopping a flame-front.

If I have a point of my own here, it is that different people can observe the same sequence of events and come to completely different, and yet reasonable, conclusions, and that repeatable, well thought-out experiments are often needed to determine what's really happening. A simple, "I did this and then that happened or didn't happened and so I now know WHY" does not always make any sense.

Anyway, check back in several hours, or do a search of your own for that article in the meantime, and I'll see if I can find it for you.

[Omnivore]

Hylander and all,

Here it is;
http://www.geojohn.org/BlackPowder/bps1.html

Whatever you think about it, it is good reading.

[hylander]

Hylander and all,

Here it is;
http://www.geojohn.org/BlackPowder/bps1.html

Whatever you think about it, it is good reading.

That was one long article,
Can't say I agree with everything but I enjoyed it.
Thanks

[dikman]

Omnivore, I read that article a while ago (along with many others) as part of my "learning" process when I became interested in this sport. He makes some interesting comments, and as I learned more I re-read it. By then, as my knowledge increased, I found, like Hylander, that some of it I could no longer agree with. As you say, though, it makes interesting reading.

The idea of powder "tracking" down a chamber is, I suppose, a possibility, but if the ball is a proper fit it can't chainfire that way, as the ball should be a tight enough fit that so that there is no gap between the sides of the ball and the chamber. If the ball doesn't fit correctly then yes, it could chainfire from loose powder if there is no wad/lube to break the powder's path.

Where I shoot it is mandatory that there is either lube over the ball or between the powder and ball, presumably to guard against someone loading the wrong size ball and causing a chainfire that way.

[Omnivore]

What we "agree" with or not doesn't matter. You will see that in the article, the author claims to have tested for and proven the very thing that you disagree with. The only way to continue to disagree with it honestly is to prove it wrong.

Pointing out that this or that set of range rules requires this or that is the inverse of the sort of argument your parents give you when your a teenager. When you tell them "all my friends are doing it" they reply with "if all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you follow them?" In other words, the "they require grease over the ball" argument is a statement of what is popular and not necessarily what is right. The article addresses what the author claims to have proven to be popular misconceptions.

I don't think that I can have, or anyone else can have, an "opinion" on something like that unless we've set out and done empirical tests. In other words; fact are facts, and opinion has nothing to do with them.

I can say for certain that what some people think of as a "tight filling" ball is actually a "loose" fitting ball because of slight deformations at the chamber mouth. If there is a ding at the chamber mouth, it doesn't matter how big the ball is or how much lead is shaved, it's going to be asymmetrical and possibly leak after it's shoved past the deformation. The article touches upon this issue as well, as one of the secondary causes of crossfire.

That, and the Remington loading system has an inherent tendency to want to ding the chamber mouths toward the center of the cylinder when seating a full chamber. I have Pietta and Uberti Remingtons and they both do this. No one else talks about this problem, and yet it exists on both of mine. It's inherent to the design.

[Mike 56]

All you need to shoot a cap and ball revolver is a good fitting ball, powder and a cap. If i am carrying a cap gun as a sidearm that's all i use i don't want lube any were near my powder or grease running down my holster. If you are target shooting you need to control fouling some how you can use wads, grease cookies or grease over the balls. You can also remove the cylinder blow down a freshly fired barrel wipe the cylinder face with some spit on a rag load her back up and put a little spit on top of the loaded balls and fire away that will clean enough fouling away for a few more loadings.