Stuck Round Ball

[john.k]

By the way,I dinnt say mercury is necessarily dangerous to have,every school lab had a bottle........but if the authorities find out ,different story......So dont tell anyone.

[Woodnbow]

By the way,I dinnt say mercury is necessarily dangerous to have,every school lab had a bottle........but if the authorities find out ,different story......So dont tell anyone.

Let’s just keep it between us kids here...



Greg, anything happened yet?

[Gtek]

Yea, and when your a kid don't play with it in the back yard. You drop it on the sand and it disappears like something out of a Terminator movie.

[Texas by God]

Yep, it was cool to split it up on the desk top and watch it regroup while the teacher rambled on about whatever.......my "rock collection" had a big chunk of asbestos in it; and we used toxic poke salad berries to paint our faces when we were the "Indians".

Sent from my SM-A716U using Tapatalk

[hawkenhunter50]

What was the outcome of using the Mercury?

[Lead pot]

The lead probably got amalgamated with the iron barrel

[Agarbers]

In case you ever need mercury again, almost all pre-2000 thermostats use mercury as the contact to close the circuit. The older Honeywell T-87 was one that had it. It is in a small glass bubble. I took many of them out to dispose of them. Many HVAC supply houses used to take the mercury thermostats back to recycle as a service to their clients. You could check with them to see if they would take the mercury. Lowes also has a recycling program and they may take it. Some communities have a tox-away day a few times a year and they would most likely take it.

Old placer gold miners used mercury to collect flour gold from their pans, then make a hollow in a potato to hold the mercury. They baked the potato which caused the potato to absorb the mercury and leave the gold clean. They then "wrung" the mercury back out of the potato using cheesecloth. And now you know why some old miners are crazy.

[T-Bird]

did the mercury work?

[Hossfly]

I got the mercury today and it’s already in the barrel. We will see what happens.

Did the mercury work? Did it dissolve the lead ball?

[GregLaROCHE]

Well it’s been almost three weeks and I don’t think the mercury did much. I am really surprised. I wonder if the residue from the Ballistol I was soaking it with, could have kept the mercury from getting a good contact with the lead. I set the barrel muzzle down overnight so the Ballistol would run out. I didn’t wash it with any detergent though, because I didn’t want to take a chance of rust forming. I figured the mercury would eventually displace the Ballistol film. If it didn’t, that’s sure a good plus for Ballistol.

I finally got a cartridge for the CO2 bicycle tire inflator and tried it today. It certainly had a lot more pressure than my air compressor, but nothing budged. I think I have more or less drilled a hole in the ball, by screwing into it and striping it out repeatedly. I can’t get a hold it anymore. I may try to fit a larger screw onto the range rod to get a new bite on the ball or try drilling it out. Maybe it’s time to take it to a gunsmith. He can get the frozen nipple out at the same time.

[megasupermagnum]

I know it was dismissed early in the thread, but I think at some point it may be time to stop poking at the problem, and unscrew the breech plug. I would think any good gunsmith could do that. I used to be scared of it myself, but after trying a couple, it's just a threaded plug in a tube. It isn't the end of the world. If I were in your position, I would be doing that way before trying to drill out or chisel out the ball, or even before having tried the mercury.

[GregLaROCHE]

If it were a modern gun I would have considered unscrewing the breech plug. However since it’s over 150 years since it was screwed in place and the steel is a lot softer than today, I didn’t want to take any chances. If it was to strip out, the gun would be ruined. Plus I can’t heat it to help unscrew it, because of the BP charge still in it. If I take it to a gunsmith and he wants to do it fine, but it will be his responsibility.

[Tom Trevor]

Any further action on the stuck ball or whatever might be in the barrel? We would all like to know how it turns out.

[GregLaROCHE]

Well the mercury didn’t work. I finally poured it out and recuperated almost as much as I had put in. I soaked it for a while with real penetrating oil (not Ballistol as before) and tried pull it out with the ball puller. No luck, but I did eventually drill a hole through ball to the BP by screwing into it and stripping the lead threads created out.

I then drilled and tapped a piece of all thread, the only stock long enough available and turned down and threaded an old 7/16” drill bit to attach to it. I wrapped the all thread in duck tape, to not damage the barrel. I got the BP out and now have the nipple clear, but still have a lead doughnut stuck in the barrel.

I have plugged the nipple and have penetrating oil soaking it until my next move, when I plan to take a length of around 7/16th rebar I have and grind a chisel end on it, wrap it with duct tape and try to cut the doughnut into pieces to remove it.

As you can see I haven’t been in a big hurry, working on it from time to time. I will post again after the next step is done and hope it’s the last.

[AntiqueSledMan]

Hello Greg,

Now you have a hole through it, maybe you can make a puller for it.
In industry we used to use a lot of "Dorner Brand" conveyors,
they had a little puller for pulling bearings out. They had an expanding
mandrel with a step to hook the back side of the bearing, then we'd slide hammer them out.

AntiqueSledMan.

[GregLaROCHE]

Actually, I got motivated today after posting the update and ground the end of a piece of rebar to a chisel as I had mentioned I would do. It didn’t work. The distance is too far and I wasn’t able to get the chisel enough on the remaining ring of lead. I may need to modify a paddle bit into a chisel so it is the exact width of the barrel and cut both sides at the same time. That means more machine work and my shop is still in boxes.

I did get it cleaned out under the ring. There was still some oil soaked powder and pieces of the patch. I haven’t tried to knock the ring further down yet and maybe I shouldn’t. Now that I have a hole through the ball and the nipple is all cleaned out, what if I load some powder and try firing it. I can use the drop tube I use for charging .45/70 BP cartridges. It will go through the hole I made and put the powder directly into the chamber. There shouldn’t be any worry about over pressure because of the big hole in the ball. If the ball isn’t getting pushed out ahead of the burning powder, will the heat start to melt the lead? It may take a few times, maybe something will give. What do others think?

[cornbelt]

It has not been mentioned, but diet coke has phosphoric acid in it that eats corruption, but will not harm the steel. I have used it to loosen breech plugs. Have a Tower musket which had been loaded since who knows how long. When the breech plug did come out, there were pits deep enough to hide BBs. Some I let set for a couple months to get it to do it's job.

[Scrounge]

It has not been mentioned, but diet coke has phosphoric acid in it that eats corruption, but will not harm the steel. I have used it to loosen breech plugs. Have a Tower musket which had been loaded since who knows how long. When the breech plug did come out, there were pits deep enough to hide BBs. Some I let set for a couple months to get it to do it's job.

Phosphoric acid is still acid, and it will etch the metal a bit. I'd say find a pint of EvapoRust and use that. It will eat the rust and browning/bluing, so you'd need to be careful getting it in. You may be able to find it in Europe now: https://evapo-rust.com/buy/international/

It is non-toxic, and will not eat good metal. One of the things you can do with EvapoRust is let it dry on the object you're de-rusting, and it will protect the surface from further rust. It is water soluble, and it won't do anything about paint or oil, so you'd need to use a solvent or detergent to remove the Ballistol, or penetrating oil residues. EvapoRust is good stuff, though not cheap. I've used quite a bit of it on restoration of machine tools, old hand tools, and such. It will not replace rusted metal, so if you have deep pits of rust, it will clean them out, but it won't make pits on it's own, like any acid can if strong enough, or left on long enough.

Bill

[725]

In as much as there seems to be a hole through the lead, could a "L" shaped hook be used to catch the edge of the lead to drag it or part of it towards the muzzle?

[RU shooter]

what's the possibility of making a hard alloy bronze or brass bit of bore dia. Heck even a hard aluminum alloy would work ,And just drilling or chewing away what's left of the lead ball ? Even a mild steel rod with a cutter shape at the end would cause very little if any damage if used slowly in a brace