cap and ball mould?

[troy_mclure]

i just bought a cap and ball revolver at a flee market for $75.

its a euroarms new model army .44.

i bought a box of .445 balls(all i could i find) for it, but they seem a tiny bit too small.
they are very easy to seat, and dont leave the "ring of shaved lead" i read about.

what lee mould would be best for this gun?(i like lee because of the sprue cutter.)

what alloy should i use?

what else should i know about this gun?

any other advise?

[docone31]

Pure lead .454 should make it sing!!!
Get a Lee mold. Inexpensive, and well made.

[Dframe]

As docone31 said these replicas almost all take a 454 Ball.
"Forefathers casting" a vendor/Sponsor on this forum can easily supply almost ANY diameter round ball in soft lead, if you're not willing or able to cast your own.

[JIMinPHX]

Most likely you need .454". the ".454"" mold that I got from Lee drops around .457". that seems to work too, but it's a little harder on the loading lever.

I like to top the loaded balls with a healthy slab of wonder lube to prevent chain fires & keep fouling under control. Wonder wads help too.

It sounds like you got a very good deal. $75 is cheap in my local market.

[whisler]

Sounds like you got the same deal I did. I bought the same gun with cavalry flap holster for $75. The real deal was a Pietta 1860 Army with simulated ivory grips and accessories including powder flask for $125. The seller said they were given to him and he didn't shoot black powder. so we both made out.

[Springfield]

My Piettas work well with .451 bullets, myUberti's like .454 and Rugers like .457. You can go up in size but going down won't work, ball won't seal or stay in place. For what it's worth I have a single cavity .451 Lyman/Ideal steel ball mould for sale here for 20.00 plus 5.00 shipping.

[prs]

The ball mold is gonna be easy. The cap mold will be harder to come by.

;-)

prs

[docone31]

You know, it might be me, but, I find the thicker the driving bands are, the more accurate it gets. I am speaking of my C&B Revolvers.
.457 is too much, but possible. .454 is not much tougher than .451, but it prints a little tighter.
I make my lube. I use Beeswax, and Corn oil. Since I am in a warm area, I make mine stiff. Stinks, but clean up is a snap. No leading.
I heat the Beeswax, add corn oil. If you use about 1/2 to volume of Beeswax, you get close. I then add Crisco if I need to stiffen it.
I like my lube easily administered to the cylinder after it is loaded. So far, no chain fires.
I have seen slow motion of a chain fire. I can under stand, now how it happens.
Upon firing, the wave produced, creates a momentary vaccum. This then pulls down the outside of the flame column to the face of the cylinder. It doesn't just carbon up the forcing cone, and cylinder face, it swirls it down to the cylinder face, then dissapates.
Lube the hole, and no chain fires!!!!
Hopefully.

[R.C. Hatter]

:coffee: I have a .44 cap & ball of Euroarms manufacture, and I use .451" lead balls in it. The use of a larger than chamber size ball, which will be shaved slightly upon seating, creates a good seal in the chamber. After the balls are seated, fill the rest of the chambers with grease, so as to have a means of preventing an accidental chain fire with other chambers.

[fatelk]

I have a brass frame '51 Colt copy, and a 1858 Remington Army copy, and use a Lee .451 round ball mold for both, works great. If in good shape, $75 is a great price.

I'm kind of an amateur with black powder guns, but I just use lubed felt wads, and nothing over the ball. I bought a big roll of felt cheap, cut about a thousand wads with a punch, and lubed some with beeswax and crisco, IIRC.

[troy_mclure]

why is i called a .44 if it shoots .45?

[Southern Son]

I think that .44 is what they bored the barrel to, then add rifling. Might be something else entirely, I don't know.

I do know that I have to get one of these things, ASAP.

[Ohio Rusty]

the .457's might be too tight to try to ram into the cylinder. he .457 round ball was made to fit the Ruger Blackhawk BP pistol. Their chambers are a bit bigger. Either .451's or .454's will work. Most use a .451. All you need it a the cylinder face to shave off a thin ring of lead as the ball is being squeezed into the cylinder. That means it is tight enough not to move during recoilor let hot gasses get around the ball causing a chain fire of several cylinders.
The .445 ball are for .45 rifles that require a patched round ball. Lastly ... you might consider getting some of the wonder wads that fit between the ball and powder. Helps to push out fouling between shots, and may help to prevent a chain fire of the next cylinder. You'll also want to lube well the cylinder pin the cylinder rotates on. All that BP fouling will start to bind up the cylinder, making it feel sluggish unless you have some lube on the cylinder pin.
Enjoy your C&B revolver. They are a blast to shoot ....literally .....
Ohio Rusty ><>

[troy_mclure]

ive got some bore butter lubed patches.

there's a gun shop in the next town, ill check them for balls.

what kind of lube?

ive read several things that say never use oil based lube?

[jlchucker]

Troy, those Euroarms guns were pretty good. Hope yours is a steel framed one and not brass. I've used a lot of 44 cal cap and ball revolvers over the years--from Walker repros on down--and if I were going to cast for them I usually use the Lee round ball mold. The Lee design cuts the sprue off flush with the ball, so positioning the ball before you ram it isn't an issue. I've tried the Lee conical boolits as well, but for the most part they fit a little loose. These days my casting is mostly for cartridge-type boolits. If I use a round ball, I usually buy ready-made Hornaday ones.

[Maven]

"I've got some bore butter lubed patches.
There's a gun shop in the next town, ill check them for balls.
What kind of lube?
I've read several things that say never use oil based lube?"

Troy, You'll want to try plain white Crisco (cheapest) or T/C Bore Butter or the Traditions 1000 lubes atop the seated ball. In the interests of safety, remember to add caps LAST. While the aforementioned lubes work well, they are messy. Thus, if the gun shop has .45cal. lubed felt wads, I'd recommend trying them: Very neat and effective. Btw, unless you know who actually made the revolver (code is on bottom flat of the bbl.; remove cylinder pin to see it), it'll be a bit more difficult to determine whether you'll need a .451" or .454" RB.

[Green Frog]

One thing no one seems to have stressed from your initial post has to do with alloy. You should use pure lead only!! Avoid wheel weights and other antimony bearing alloy like a blind date with Nancy Pelosi.

As for lube, any of the natural lubes from beeswax and Crisco or similar basic, non-petroleum materials should work well for you. Like antimony, petroleum based lubes don't seem to be very compatible with BP revolvers. I "seal" the chamber mouths of my Remington revolver with straight Crisco... it's a little soupy by the end of a cylinderful, but my fouling is soft and easy to clean out!

I bought .454 balls (swaged) to start with then started feeding my Pietta Remington Army revolver balls cast from the standard Lyman .454 round ball mould. I get a good (but relatively small) lead ring shaved off when I load. BTW, nobody mentioned this yet, but loading is a lot more pleasant if you take the cylinder all the way out of the revolver and use one of the little bench presses to actually load the cylinder, especially for bullet seating.

Congratulations on a nice find and have fun!
Froggie

Just to complete the info, I have a steel frame revolver, not brass, and use about 22 1/2 - 23 gr of FFFg Goex and a #11 CCI percussion cap with mine. Is yours steel frame or brass? That load is safe for both, but heavy use with just about any load will eventually wear and stretch a brass frame. GF

[higgins]

Slug the chambers before you buy a mold. I went with the advice on the Pietta website and ordered a .454 Lee mold when I ordered the pistol, only to find out what I needed was a Lee .451 mould (which drops a .452 pure lead ball). The chambers on my gun slugged .447, so I was having to apply what felt like too much pressure to seat ".454" balls that I had on hand that measured .456. The barrel slugs .446-,447 so the results are good.

[troy_mclure]

the frame is steel.

i still have lots of t/c bore butter left from when i hunted with my dads old t/c hawken. i also have some t/c 17 natural lube 1000, seems to be softer than the bore butter tho.

i bought a box of hornady swaged .454 balls, but they seem to be too small as well, no lead ring.

[JIMinPHX]

why is i called a .44 if it shoots .45?

After they get squashed down in the forcing cone & come out the barrel, they're .430" - .445" depending on where I measure them.

[StrawHat]

...ive read several things that say never use oil based lube?

It is recommended not to use a petroleum based lube with black powder.

I use a mix of beeswax and cheap olive oil. A search for blackpowder lubes will provide you with more recipes than you will want to try but it will give you somewhere to start if you want to make your own lube.

I have more than a few 1860 revolvers and feed them all the same size ball, I believe it is 457 but I will have to measure one and see.

[Lead Fred]

They are little round balls, Ive never used any lube in a C&B revolver.
Just powder, wad, ball, wad.

I do use the same lube for my BPCR either holy black or smokeless

50% bees wax, 40% lard, 10% veggie oil.

and Im pushing over 1700fps

[fatelk]

As to the lead ring, one of mine has slightly chamfered chambers. The balls go in plenty tight, but they don't shave any lead at all.

[Brick85]

If it's a cool enough day in a cool enough area, you can use plain Crisco as a lube, applied with a popsicle stick or similar device.

And if you want a mould for the caps :grin:, try the Forster Tap-O-Cap, which swages and bends up caps from soda cans so your favorite canned beer can join the fun. You add the actual percussion-ignition compound from toy caps.

[Mk42gunner]

Like higgins said slug the chambers, I have a couple of Pietta navies (a '51 and a '61) that work well with .375" balls; and an Uberti 5 1/2" '51 that needs .380" balls.

The easiest and cleanest way to load is with felt wads over the powder, but they can get costly with much shooting. In my opinion the way to prevent chain fires is to have good fitting percussion caps, I can't see a spark making past a ball from the front of the cylinder.


Robert

[jlchucker]

As long as those lead balls fit tight, the absence of a lead ring isn't really a big deal. You said you had bore butter. I have found that this is not only good for lube placed over a ball, but some smeared on your base pin works quite well as a lube to keep your cylinder free after a few shots have been fired. Cylinders binding up from black powder crud after a few shots is an expected part of cap and ball shooting. It's less of a problem, I've found, with Colt-style repros--I expect because of the open top design, and because the base pins have deep grooves turned in them. Have fun shooting.