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Shooting Remington New Model Army .44s with round balls and conicals

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Bummer about the cap jams. (Although you've made me feel like I've been lied to... I thought I was told that Remingtons were impervious to cap jams.) :rolleyes:

Otherwise, as is pretty typical, nice video Mike. :cool:
 
My Remmy hasn't had a cap jam in quite a while. If I seal the caps with clear nail polish for storage, I I've never gotten one. I can even eliminate cap jams on my Colt, which is guaranteed to get one or 5 or 10 in any given session unless one holds it muzzle down while cocking. I can do that by adding paraffin wax to my sealant for the caps.

My 5.5" Pietta Remmy shoots about 2.5" 25 yard groups with RB. Lucky to get 5" groups with a 220 Lee Conical, so I load it default with RB and live happy. :D My ROA don't seem to care, puts ANYTHING under 2", easiest to please cap and ball I've ever fed, but that's another subject. :D I cast the hollow points for it so I can keep them straight with the .454 conicals. I have both RN and HP molds for the ROA in .457", both shoot great.

I rarely shoot conical in my Remmy now that I have a Lee RB mold. The RB uses up less lead and is, therefore, cheaper to shoot, too. That's a side benefit. But, it if did prefer the conicals, I'd use 'em.

My Remmy is most accurate with a 30 grain charge weight equivalent of Pyrodex. I have not bought BP in 35 years due to lack of a local source. The gun varies iin accuracy with load, 30 grains being the sweet spot, and the gun doesn't like 777, either. My ROA, again, loves ANYthing. I've tried various loads in 2.5 grain increments from 25 grains up with both conical and RB and this is my result.

I do all my accuracy shooting off sand bags. That was some good shootin' in the clip, but I'm not a human ransom rest, myself, so I use sand bags to quantify accuracy at a standard 25 yards.

Oh, btw, I might have had ONE cap jam from a piece of cap in 2 years that I can recall. Don't you think your modification of the cylinders to allow your capper might be the problem here? Oh, too, with the 30 grain charge, caps tend to come out in one piece, fewer fragment into pieces. Especially if you're shooting 220 conicals, your pressures are going to be up there and the cap is going to pay the price.

I fill all my loads with cornmeal if that matters. It gets the ball up close to the forcing cone, though, and is beneficial for accuracy. I'd rather steal some cornmeal from the cupboard than order lubed wads. I'm cheap. :D
 
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What caps were you using Mike? Would a load of 35 grs. of 3f 777 be safe behind a conical in a Pietta or Uberti?

Thank's for sharing.
 
Mike:

Great video as usual. I think I found your accuracy problem with RB though. at around 2:50 on the video it appers you place the ball sprue up (correctly) and then roll the sprue to the side before you ram, It appears that as you go to ram the sprue is not even visable so is someplace on the side of the ball.

An interesting test you might make would be to compare carefuly lining the sprue up directly atop the ball and firing a group and then intentionally aligning each ball's sprue up in a different direction to se if the old timers are right about sprue position affecting accuracy.

Like the look's and apparent accuracy of the conicals.

Thanks for sharing this with us.

-kBob
 
I have a 452 200g swc mould...this makes me want to try it !
Click to expand...

The problem with that would be lining it up straight and getting it started. Didn't work too well when I tried a Lee 200 grain tumble lube SWC. The Lee black powder conical molds cast a base that's under size to facilitate starting and keeping the bullet straight. They work rather well when the gun like's 'em. Mine just don't particularly like conicals. My ROA does, though.
 
I don't see there being enough room in the cylinder after you've added a conical to get you into serious trouble even with 777. 777 has 15% more power but you're probably losing more than 15% of the available volume...
 
There are guys who load them up with Triple 7, though it may be 2F they use. But I don't know if it wears the guns out faster or possibly creates an unsafe situation, and they've just been lucky so far.

Many people believe Triple 7 needs to be reduced by 15% to be safe. It's not what their warning states, which is to reduce by 15% to replicate a BP load. It actually states never to exceed the manufacturer's max load. But Uberti specifically states never to use anything other than Pyrodex or BP. ~38 grns would be 85% of the possible 45 grn max load using a RB, which is what I understand they'll hold. With a 240 grn FN bullet I can get 35 grns with a very small amount of room left over. So with that bullet you could safely load about 30 grns, which is 86% of max.

Funny thing is that Swiss is included in BP, which is certainly more powerful than other BP's other than the new Olde Eynsford. I'm not sure how/if the pressures differ, but the velocities are quite similar to T7 from what I've read.

This is one reason why I'm thankful I have a Ruger Old Army. I have no concerns using a max charge (45 grns of 3F T7 and RB) in it.
 
I dont think you can over loada cap and ball revolver with black powder or any of the substitutes as far as it blowing your gun up.For the most part after a point it will blow un burnt powder out of the barrel.I have seen several crono tests that showed even with 777 that velocity gains were very little to nothing after a certain point.A heavier conical prolly will allow it to burn more powder up than a round ball.With the newer repro guns that i have they seem to used better heat treating than many of the older ones and of coarse since they started useing CNC machining most of them come better fitting as far as lock up and chamber to barrel allignment too_Of coarse heavy loads will have more wear and tare on a gun if they are shot a lot with them but if you are just useing the heavy loads for hunting i dont think it would be too hard on them.The colts will hammer the barrel wedge up with hot loads but i have never heard of any problems with 777 in steel from Remingtons.Just a guess but i think you wont gain a lot with over 30 grs 777 and a conical though. That is a good hunting load anyway.I should have a Remington here soon and i want to do some tests with diffrent loads of 777 with a sheet laid out in front to see when it starts to leave much unburned powder.Pretty sure if its spitting much powder out that it hurts accuracy too.
 
I don't see there being enough room in the cylinder after you've added a conical to get you into serious trouble even with 777. 777 has 15% more power but you're probably losing more than 15% of the available volume...
Click to expand...

I agree. I'd not loose sleep if I wanted to shoot heavy 777 loads with conical OR RB. I do think it was the added pressure, though, that might have been responsible for his cap fragmentation in the video. He had no trouble with ball. I NEVER have cap jams with 30 grains equivalent of Pyrodex behind a RB. Caps come out in one piece.
 
A little update on the cap jams...

In this case I think the cap jams are related to the cylinders I was using. I did a trade for some used Remington cylinders. I thought I'd save time on range day by pre-loading a bunch of cylinders at home the night before.

All my jams were on those spare cylinders. The cylinders supplied with the guns worked fine.

The cylinders I got in trade were advertised as Pietta cylinders, and they all mounted on my gun, so I thought I was good to go. But I was wrong

All those spare cylinders were a bit short in my Pietta NMAs. There was enough fore and aft movement under the impact of the hammer fall and from recoil to cause the jams.

As it turns out, those cylinders fit my Uberti NMA perfectly.

Lesson learned...Uberti cylinders, being smaller will function on a Pietta gun, but you can't get a Pietta cylinder into an Uberti gun...
 
As it turns out, those cylinders fit my Uberti NMA perfectly.

Lesson learned...Uberti cylinders, being smaller will function on a Pietta gun, but you can't get a Pietta cylinder into an Uberti gun...
Click to expand...

That's interesting. Hope I can retain that knowledge a while. :D But, I don't own a Uberti. Pietta cylinders go on sale all the time at Cabelas. I only have 3, probably need more. :D
 
Mike,

Now I have to ask if the conicals were in a pietta cylinder for your test and the RB in an Uberti?

Perhaps a do over is in order. Hey it is an excuse to go shooting again!

-kBob
 
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