Stuck ball puller came unthreaded, help

[rfd]

think smart about dry balling a muzzy, and be prepared. we all will dry ball eventually. and if we shoot a lot, sometimes we do this dry balling over and over again, particularly as we advance in years and decline in smarts - guilty as charged am i.

if yer in the field and do a dry ball, you will be smart if ... a) you have a Good ball screw worm, and b) you have practiced using said device. there is no pressing need for breech plug removal tools if you've practiced ball retrieval with a rod and ball worm. with any ball diameter, use as small a thread ball screw as possible - the large diameter and coarser thread kind will make ball retrieval harder to impossible as their size will over compress the ball lead into the barrel, acting as a wedge. some folks have taken to making a rod with a 3/32" or so drill bit at one end, to pre-drill a hole that will greatly lessen a ball screw worm's ability to compress the ball lead into the bbl.

there are two kinds of breech plug removal tools - make-shift and proper. mine are all of the proper kind, they will not mar the steel, and i've removed/replaced many Many dozens of breech plugs over the decades, of all types and sizes. again, if yer prepared to use a ball screw worm, and done yer homework, it will work just fine for the most part. i will add, for the guys that are loading *TIGHT* patched balls, you will have a Far greater chance for requiring breech plug removal.

[6bg6ga]

Since this is going to be a one only time thing I'm not going to invest in a lot of tools. I did however just order a ball puller off Amazon actually (2) of them from different vendors. I'll try them tomorrow when they arrive and see if they work and if not it will be disassembly time and the new neighbor will owe me a favor.

Since I have a home made cannon I thought it relevant to have a ball puller on hand.

[megasupermagnum]

At no point is a stuck ball ever worth pulling a breech plug. If a ball puller fails, you can put powder under the nipple and fire. If that fails you can try compressed air. If that fails you can put a grease zerk in place of the nipple and push the ball out with grease. That wont fail.

[rfd]

At no point is a stuck ball ever worth pulling a breech plug. If a ball puller fails, you can put powder under the nipple and fire. If that fails you can try compressed air. If that fails you can put a grease zerk in place of the nipple and push the ball out with grease. That wont fail.

not at all true unless you qualify yer talking strictly about a cap gun - flinters are a totally different story and there WILL be times when pulling the breech is required. which brings up the point about using anti-seize lube to anything threaded into a muzzy barrel.

[megasupermagnum]

Why wouldn't compressed air or grease work on a flint lock? I guess I could see on a flintlock without a touch hole bushing, but every one I've seen had one.

[rfd]

Why wouldn't compressed air or grease work on a flint lock? I guess I could see on a flintlock without a touch hole bushing, but every one I've seen had one.

dry balling can be, and usually is, more of a problem with a flinter than a cap gun. if a flinter employs a chambers white lightning touch hole liner, there is no way to easily remove such liners. for liners with slots or hex holes, there's the matter of thread size for a special screw-in bushing to use with compressed air or a grease gun, where all the offshore ones are metric. there is, or was, a device for flintlocks that clamped over the touch hole and a CO2 device was used. it was a pain to attach and typically required pulling off the barrel. this device didn't work at all for me and so wasn't worth the investment. with a flinter, using a ball screw worm on a rod works well as long as the patched ball isn't loaded *tight*, however pre-drilling a ball screw pilot hole would probably help in that matter. having any special paraphernalia on hand to pull a patched ball is also a concern when yer out afield or at a match. for cap guns, dry balling is fairly easily taken care of with a powder blow out via the nipple or "clean out" screw.

[725]

Not knowing how messed up the rifle in question is, after an attempt with the ball puller, I'd use compressed air. POINT IT IN A SAFE DIRECTION ! It will come out with some authority. If that doesn't work, I'd go with the grease jerk and just accept that I had a cleanup job afterwards. It's one thing when I screw up. I know I didn't put some smokeless powder down there and it didn't fire. Some folks just don't know as much as you do and put all sorts of powder in the loading process. In a nice way, I don't trust anybody. Some know what they are doing, some think they know what they are doing. Good luck.

[waksupi]

For flintlocks I just use a ball inflator with the end cut off. Stick it in the hole, and let 'er rip.

[megasupermagnum]

I hope I'm not pulling this thread too far off course, but is there any reason why a touch hole liner would be made without some kind of means of removal?

[6bg6ga]

Granted this weekend when the ball remover tool arrives will be my first go at it I can hardly make myself think that compressed air is going to work when someone was fool enough to forget the powder charge and load it with only a patch and ball. Granted my cannon isn't the same thing but it is close in that it uses powder, ball, and some type of patch material and when the ball and patch are rammed in there hard its going to distort the ball in a manor in which the ball can't help but be a closer tighter fit.

Hydraulic pressure by the means of screwing a zerk in and injecting grease will certainly work as I have removed many pilot shaft bearing in the end of a crankshaft by filling them up completely with grease and then walloping them. I'm not concerned about the mess in the barrel since my function is only to get the ball out and the owner can clean his rifle and learn an important lesson to keep his mind on what he is doing.

Now, if a ball and patch were inserted in the barrel and not rammed then compressed air would certainly work. For the sake of argument I will try compressed air first and when that doesn't work I will move on to more tried and proven ways.

[dondiego]

Granted this weekend when the ball remover tool arrives will be my first go at it I can hardly make myself think that compressed air is going to work when someone was fool enough to forget the powder charge and load it with only a patch and ball. Granted my cannon isn't the same thing but it is close in that it uses powder, ball, and some type of patch material and when the ball and patch are rammed in there hard its going to distort the ball in a manor in which the ball can't help but be a closer tighter fit.

Hydraulic pressure by the means of screwing a zerk in and injecting grease will certainly work as I have removed many pilot shaft bearing in the end of a crankshaft by filling them up completely with grease and then walloping them. I'm not concerned about the mess in the barrel since my function is only to get the ball out and the owner can clean his rifle and learn an important lesson to keep his mind on what he is doing.

Now, if a ball and patch were inserted in the barrel and not rammed then compressed air would certainly work. For the sake of argument I will try compressed air first and when that doesn't work I will move on to more tried and proven ways.

That "fool" would be EVERY shooter who has fired a muzzle loader very much.

[dondiego]

Granted this weekend when the ball remover tool arrives will be my first go at it I can hardly make myself think that compressed air is going to work when someone was fool enough to forget the powder charge and load it with only a patch and ball. Granted my cannon isn't the same thing but it is close in that it uses powder, ball, and some type of patch material and when the ball and patch are rammed in there hard its going to distort the ball in a manor in which the ball can't help but be a closer tighter fit.

Hydraulic pressure by the means of screwing a zerk in and injecting grease will certainly work as I have removed many pilot shaft bearing in the end of a crankshaft by filling them up completely with grease and then walloping them. I'm not concerned about the mess in the barrel since my function is only to get the ball out and the owner can clean his rifle and learn an important lesson to keep his mind on what he is doing.

Now, if a ball and patch were inserted in the barrel and not rammed then compressed air would certainly work. For the sake of argument I will try compressed air first and when that doesn't work I will move on to more tried and proven ways.

That "fool" would be EVERY shooter who has fired a muzzle loader very much.

[waksupi]

I hope I'm not pulling this thread too far off course, but is there any reason why a touch hole liner would be made without some kind of means of removal?

They are not intended to be removed except for replacement when the vent burns out.

[waksupi]

Granted this weekend when the ball remover tool arrives will be my first go at it I can hardly make myself think that compressed air is going to work when someone was fool enough to forget the powder charge and load it with only a patch and ball. Granted my cannon isn't the same thing but it is close in that it uses powder, ball, and some type of patch material and when the ball and patch are rammed in there hard its going to distort the ball in a manor in which the ball can't help but be a closer tighter fit.

Hydraulic pressure by the means of screwing a zerk in and injecting grease will certainly work as I have removed many pilot shaft bearing in the end of a crankshaft by filling them up completely with grease and then walloping them. I'm not concerned about the mess in the barrel since my function is only to get the ball out and the owner can clean his rifle and learn an important lesson to keep his mind on what he is doing.

Now, if a ball and patch were inserted in the barrel and not rammed then compressed air would certainly work. For the sake of argument I will try compressed air first and when that doesn't work I will move on to more tried and proven ways.

An old friend was an expert at dry balling, and I used co2 to remove a couple dozen balls from his flinter. As I said in another thread, if the hole is completely through the ball, seat another well lubed patch and ball to make a seal, and they will come out You need a lot of pressure to do it, so a half full co2 tube won't do it. I don't know how you would get an air compressor attached to do the job, but it's probably possible.

[rfd]

I hope I'm not pulling this thread too far off course, but is there any reason why a touch hole liner would be made without some kind of means of removal?

they offer a direct and unfettered (no slot or hex relief) access to the chamber, and are well coned on their insides. these liners come in both stainless and iron, where the iron blends in quite well with the barrel steel to better emulate an 18th century touch hole.



stainless white lightning as i installed it on my kibler colonial ...

[megasupermagnum]

Oh, whatever. I've forgot powder before. I guess that means I shouldn't be allowed to mow my lawn.

[Schreck5]

Now I have an excuse not to mow my yard. All my muzzleloaders are flinters and yes, I have "dry-balled" a load many times. Anyone who shootes a mzldr WILL evetually do it. Show me some one whoes says they have never done it, and I will show you a liar.

[triggerhappy243]

Now I have an excuse not to mow my yard. All my muzzleloaders are flinters and yes, I have "dry-balled" a load many times. Anyone who shootes a mzldr WILL evetually do it. Show me some one whoes says they have never done it, and I will show you a liar.

pretty bold statement from someone with only 134 posts. Knock on wood............ have not dry balled............... yet.

[rfd]

pretty bold statement from someone with only 134 posts. Knock on wood............ have not dry balled............... yet.

you will. it's inevitable IF you shoot on a fairly regular basis, particularly in the company of friends and/or other shooters.

actually, it's a rite of passage and means "you have arrived". looking forward to having you join the club.

[dondiego]

pretty bold statement from someone with only 134 posts. Knock on wood............ have not dry balled............... yet.

The post of 6bg6ga was the bold and and most arrogant post. Schreck5 is correct!