Max Load Discrepencies -- Help me to NOT blow myself up.

[Ore]

Hey folks.  Need a little help here.  The other day my wife brought me home a Traditions .44 cap & ball revolver (appears to be the 1851 Navy model).  Anyhow, it came with 2 user's booklets tucked inside each other (one from F.LLI PIETTA, the Italian company who actually made the gun, and one from Traditions).  Unless I am mistaken, however, there is a significant difference in what each of the user's manuals lists as the max load:

F.LLI PIETTA Manual:  FFFG Grains min-max = 12-15

TRADITIONS User Information: 3F grains min-max = 22-30

Can anyone shed some light on this for me?  I need to get my information right before I shoot this thing.  Thanks for any advice you can provide.

[crow_feather]

Start with 15 grains - work up until you see that the ball is close, but not at the top of the cylinder.    Of note, the correct caliber for the navy's is 36 caliber.  I also have a Navy 44.  I loaded it up max and shot into an aspen tree.  I could still see the end of the ball protruding from the tree.  Don't be huntin grizz with it.

[Rickk]

How about e-mailing Traditions and asking them what is up?

Please post their reponse here when they reply

[lil_hunter12]

i have a 1851 .44 i have loaded up to 38 grains but it is not recommended 20-25 is best. in my opinion anyway.

[Cowpox]

Ore, It is perfectly safe to load and shoot the 30 grain max load indicated by Traditions. The discrepancy between the two pamphlets is that Traditions is telling you what the revolver is capable of using, and Pietta, because they produce both steel and brass framed revolvers, lists the 15 grain max to save themselves warranty problems. The steel framed revolvers will give long service life with 30 grain charges, but the brass framed revolvers will start the get loose very quickly with that load. If your revolver is brass framed, follow Piettas book, and use the 15 grain loads for most of your shooting. Your brass framed revolver will stay serviceable for a good long time, if you use the 30 grain loads sparingly.

[mykeal]

The "right" load is the one that the gun shoots best. Sorry to have to turn the question around, but that's really the way to get to the right load.

Sam Fadala did a lot of test of many different black powder guns, looking to document the "optimum" load for each. He got many different answers, but the one theme that I saw in all that work was that the maximum load was almost never the best in terms of accuracy. The type of powder, the type of projectile, how well the load is installed, the amount of fouling in the gun, many, many things affect the results. And in the limit, what is also clear from the experience of many people is that what's good for my Pietta 1851 Navy Yank with a steel frame in .36 cal is different for my Pietta 1851 Navy Rebel Army with a brass frame in .44 cal, and will likely also be a little different for your Pietta/Tranditions 1851 (?) Navy (?) in .44 cal with a brass/steel/whatever frame.

How to find out? Crow_feather said it first: start out shooting 15 grains, a minimum of 3 shots but not necessarily more than 5, then shoot, say, 18 grains, the same number of shots, then go up to 20 grains and so on up to where the ball won't fit anymore. Do all this from a bench rest, with the same type of powder and type and size of projectile each time, and at a short enough range that you are certain of hitting the target every shot. And always shoot the exactly same sight picture. The idea is not to hit the bull in the center but to shoot consistently enough that differences in the loads become apparent. Keep track of the size of each group, and it will soon become apparent what load your gun likes best: the one with the smallest diameter group that you can shoot. With that powder type and projectile size and type. Rest assured it will be different if you change either. Maybe not much, but it will.

By the way, some of us would like to see you load powder, then a felt or lubed wad, then the ball and finally some Crisco or other gel type lubricant, or perhaps substitute Cream of Wheat for the felt wad in an amount large enough to bring the ball up to the chamber mouth... Whatever combination you choose to try, just do it the same each time until you settle on the best powder/ball combination for your gun.

A lot of work? Yep. Good excuse for lots of shooting too.

[Flint]

Cowpox made the critical point, the light load is for the brass framed gun, the max load should be used only in the steel frame gun.

As far as "blowing yourself up", not to worry, even if the max load eventually tore the arbor out of the frame, everything would still go downrange, not back at you.  Now if the cylinder were brass, then you might worry.......

[Will52100]

I haven't understood that yet, heck my walkers recomended 15 grains if I remember rite!  I finaly settled on a load of 50 grains after jaring the arbor losse on one with a bunch of 60 grain charges.

If you've got a steel cylinder and barrel and there lined up and locked up your not going to blow yourself  up with black powder.  Now if you do like a guy I know who cut open some shot shells for the powder, well that's why there stamped "black powder only"  Basicly overloading means you can't seat the ball down far enough to rotate the cylinder past the barrel.  Even then unless it's in bad shape, or brass framed or a Walker with it's huge capacity you'll not hurt the gun, much less blow it up.

I've got a 51 navy that I converted to 38 long colt.  It was a steel frame Pietta 36 cal., I cut the cylinder down and bored through and chambered it for 38 special, and made a temporary breach plate.  I test fired it with .357 mag load data to proff it.  Gun held up to 6 rounds just fine.  Would have probably shot loose with that load over time though.  The ratchet teeth wore down pretty quick with the way I cut them so I took the breach plate out and bougth a new cylinder and now it's back to cap and ball and after several thousand rounds it's still going strong.