Shooting .36 Patched Round Balls with a .44 Remington

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arcticap

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In this video, the guy forgets to bring .45 balls to the range to shoot his .44 revolver.
All he has with him are .36 revolver balls.
So he decides to load the chambers with patched round balls and they worked.
He used dry pillow ticking without lube, cut the material off at the mouth of each chamber and then pushed the balls
in, and the cylinder was loaded off the frame.
Notice that he doubles over the patch material to obtain a tighter fit.


 
The accuracy wouldn't be too good as some of the wading would not make it into the barrel. But, at least, he'd get some fun shooting.
 
If a patch remained in the barrel, would it be a dangerous obstruction on the next shot? I honestly don’t know and I don’t want to test the situation myself!
 
If a patch remained in the barrel, would it be a dangerous obstruction on the next shot? I honestly don’t know and I don’t want to test the situation myself!

That's a really good question J-Bar!
We recently had a topic about firing sabots & bullets from a revolver.
It's pretty easy to check to see if something were stuck in the barrel if a shot sounded too much like a squib load.
And that probably holds true for any firearm.
Even a .22LR squib load carries the same type of warning.
However, I would think that a patch alone would need to be precariously stuck inside the bore to cause a serious obstruction if it were possible at all.
Perhaps loading .45 sabots with a small patched round ball inside of it would be better since sabots seal the gases better?

If there were a patch stuck, some of the excess pressure would have a way to exit the barrel through the barrel cylinder gap.
With modern steel, perhaps the bore could be at risk of being ringed or bulged but I don't know if there would be enough pressure for a revolver barrel to burst.

When folks put tape over the muzzle of their rifles during hunting, the pressure blows it right off the barrel before the bullet exits.
And some kinds of tape may make a better obstruction than a piece of empty cloth patch.
I would speculate that a patch may need to be frozen with ice or in combination with some other form of obstruction [water, mud, powder residue, rock] to be able to cause any real need for concern,
besides there being a seriously under-powered squib load resulting with a ball being stuck in the bore.
Checking the bore is just a part of routine & safe shooting procedure no matter what type of gun is being fired.
Imagine shooting a semi-auto centerfire where the cartridge didn't have any powder loaded in it, and only the primer went off.
It can happen at anytime and the barrel should be checked before taking the next shot.
But I don't think that I would be paranoid or overly concerned about firing a patched round ball out of a C&B revolver under most normal circumstances if loaded responsibly.

Even if a loaded bare ball or bullet moved 1/4" off the powder charge before firing that C&B revolver chamber, I'm not so sure that it would result in any real danger of damage
to the chamber or injury to the shooter.
For all we know, that could happen frequently and we don't even realize it because folks are too busy shooting to check after each and every shot.
I think that most of us tend to trust the margin of safety that's built into modern C&B revolvers by virtue of their modern steel construction or we wouldn't be shooting
them at all because of all the potential hazards that could crop up while using them.
A massive total chain fire would probably be the most concerning but that doesn't seem to have much of a chance of occurring.
But I do try to always wear safety glasses when shooting because that's probably the single easiest safety precaution to put into practice along with wearing hearing protection.
That and keeping the barrel clean of excessive powder residue that can act as a form of obstruction if not properly maintained.
 
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The patch is exiting out the barrel. It's got 700 to 900 fps pushing it out with the ball.
 
The patch is exiting out the barrel. It's got 700 to 900 fps pushing it out with the ball.

Probably but stuff happens. A close friend, a federal law enforcement officer, blew up his Glock and nearly lost his trigger finger. The cause was determined to be a fragment of the bullet’s copper jacket remaining in the barrel when the next shot was fired. One would have expected the jacket fragment to exit but for whatever reason it didn’t.

Glock replaced the gun.
 
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