Packing Powder

[Half Dog]

I have a 1860 Army cap and ball revolver. When I pressed the ball into the cylinder, compressed the powder tightly, the balls shot over the target. I noticed that if I barely seated the bullet the POI came down, which makes sense. I am using 26.5 gr of Pyrodex powder and a wad.

How do you tell how far down to seat the ball? How much powder do you use?

Thanks in advance for your help.

[dondiego]

The ball should be seated firmly down on the powder with no air space and a small ring of lead should be sheared and visible at the mouth of the cylinder.

[Nobade]

An 1860 is supposed to shoot high. They're sighted to be on at 50 yards. (Or is it 100?) Either way they're all high at normal handgun ranges. Plus pyrodex really needs to be compressed tightly to burn right.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

[Half Dog]

An 1860 is supposed to shoot high. They're sighted to be on at 50 yards. (Or is it 100?) Either way they're all high at normal handgun ranges. Plus pyrodex really needs to be compressed tightly to burn right.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

Great information. At 25 yards they were at least 24 inches high; they were going over the target and I was aiming below the paper. Does that seem too high?

[Nobade]

About right.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

[Hellgate]

Half Dog,
On my 1860 I took a dremel cutting wheel and deepened the rear notch on the hammer. When that wasn't enough I ground down the top of the hammer to (in essence) lower the rear sight. That brought it to zero. Otherwise you can knock out the front sight and epoxy in a taller sight in the barrel sight groove to match up the POA with the POI. Be careful to check to see if there is much clearance above the barrel to grind down the hammer. Some guns have the hammer notches lined up right down the barrel and cannot sight any lower. In that case a taller front sight is the only answer.

[wcandres]

Like Hellgate, I used a Dremel grinding wheel on the hammer notch, along with grinding down the top of the hammer (a very little at a time:smile:). This worked perfectly with my "51".

[Hellgate]

The formula for sight correction that I use is this:
Correction (C) is to sight radius (S) as error (E) on the target is to the distance (D) to the target. All units in inches. i.e.
C/S=E/D solve for C C=SE/D
For example if the gun shoots 1 foot high at 25 yards you first measure the distance from the front sight to the rear sight. Let's say 10 inches .
25 yards=12 (inches) X3 (per foot) X25 yards=900 inches. So, the total correction of either or both sight is:
C=10X12/900=.13 inch That means .13 inches of correction to what you already have on the gun.