Originally Posted by
Bent Ramrod
Cerrosafe is harder than even lead alloys. Its function is via a low melting point for obtaining a cast of cavities of unknown shapes.
Get a 0.457” or so round lead ball, oil your bore up, expand the ball if necessary with a couple taps on the anvil of your vise, (the one you’re going to hold the gun in vertically) tap the flattened ball into the muzzle with an aluminum or brass punch, and shove it through with a stout cleaning rod with a flat tip. Catch it in a hat or dish with a shop rag under the breech.
Better still, why don’t you cast some boolits out of those Lee moulds, lube them with SPG, load up some shells according to established practice and see how the thing shoots before going through all this ancillary factfinding? Am I the only one who gets a rifle and shoots it without doing all this mechanical heartburning first? Modern firearms (and Pedersolis are state-of-the-art) don’t have all the glitches that a worn, rusty antique is liable to. Even with them, I see how they shoot with regular load development before mechanical analysis. Usually, it isn’t necessary anyway.
Believe me, if you don’t want to pound lead out of a barrel, you will likely be less than pleased trying to get a Cerrosafe casting out of your chamber if you follow the directions and wait. The stuff I have starts expanding as soon as it hardens, and I’ve had to melt my castings out several times before I wised up and pushed the thing out as soon as the end frosted over. Then, I wait the requisite time for the dimensions to stabilize before measuring.
I always used the now-obsolete Pyrodex CTG in my .45-70, with a little Pyrodex P at the top of the column just under the boolit. Seemed to shoot a little closer that way. Never tried a full load of the finer material in anything larger than .38 calibers, but it shot OK with no problems. I would think the RS would work, but I went to black powder after the CTG became unavailable, so have no experience with it in .45 calibers.