The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

I have a Uberti 1848 Baby Dragoon (which looks suspiciously like a 1849 wells fargo... ho hum ) and an Ardessa Derringer, just wondering if anyone else has any .31 cal pocket's and if so, what you use in them?

anyone use wads?

you'll have to wait until tuesday, i'm at work now.

or weds, then you can fondle in flesh.

I have a couple, the one I can lay my hands on just now is a Colt 1849 Pocket by Uberti, at least it has a loading lever, needs some help with a bit pipe.

.32" calibre ball over 10 gns by volume on my slidey measure of Swiss fffg gives a little under 800 fps, so a bit like shooting a .22 with the ball just coming in at around 50 gns. I don't shoot it that often and when I do it is at 10 yards, it groups well enough at that distance if I do my bit.

No wad, no grease as I only shoot half a dozen cylinders and the fouling isn't bad with the small charges of good powder, I just shoot them for the curiosity and fun, fiddly little feckers to load.

Always loved the 1849. The linotex at the indoor range tends to bounce .31 balls back to the firing line, so I went with an 1862 police. 1849 frame which is "stepped" for a .36, 5 shot fluted cylinder.

I will add an Uberti 1849 at some point, but more for the joy of ownership and to "scratch that itch" more than anything else....

For the Barnes Wallis loads of bouncing balls of the linotex the air gun plastic curtains we have hung up stops the bounce back of the balls just as it does the airgun pellets.

Think I'll wait for the photos instead, but thanks for the offer!

bradaz11 wrote:or weds, then you can fondle in flesh.

nice to see someone else does shoot them. so far i've only shot my 1848 once, with 9gr by vol of czech. it went bang each time, but not sure where the shots went as board was out at 25 yrds. I didn't use anything other than powder and ball, so was a bit unsure if I maybe should have used something else. as i've never used wads with BP before.

1849 Wells Fargo. The chap who sold it to me supplied his remaining stock of 0.310 Round Ball, I have no idea how he stopped them rolling back out the chambers or indeed how he ever saw more than 200 fps

I fill the cylinder nearly level with FFF, sit a lube cookie on the powder and use a separate cylinder loading stand to seat this very tightly seated 331 Round Ball and seat the ball just under flush.

Miniature joy !