Here are the pictures of a Ballard cast action rifle.

Is the breech block on one of these Ballards a cast part as well? The one in the photos that's blown up sure seems like it exhibits the signs of a broken casting. And, is the forged reciever the beneficary of a forged block as well?
I know little of these rifles so I'm just asking to learn about them.

At the risk of starting a disruptive discussion. The barrel was relined and a large over charge, shot it it. The barrel failed and blew the rest of it into what you see. Wounding the woman that shot it severely.

Although the loader of the ammo, said he didn't double charge the case, what you see can only be, at lest that.

Frank

My concern is that I have been shooting for years a 38-55 #2 cast action (nickel plated) with both black and 16gr 4759 with a 250gr and it shows no sign of stress. Of course it could simply be dumb luck and that is the question. They are running 44 Magnums in clone 1873's.

At Raton about 1999, a double charged Ballard popped the heads off the screws that hold the clam shell together. One hit a the shooter on bench immediately to the left in the face.  Lucky it didn't put an eye out    The owner took it home, got new screws on it and shot it the next day.

Every cast steel Ballard action is over 100 years old and we have no way to determine how that action has been used (or abused).  And, like all steel, a cast Ballard action is susceptible to repetitive-stress and over-stress metal fatigue as well as other issues such as nitrogen embrittlement. 

In short, we have no way of knowing how close any given cast action Ballard is to a catastrophic end-of-life event even under "normal" use, much less an abnormal (overcharge) use.

My cast Ballard is comfortably re-chambered in .22 LR.

JackHughs

Year after year I read about Ballard's that are either have Cast receivers or Forged receivers. Now if memory serves me no one has, in relation to the cast frames stated cast WHAT? Iron or steel?

Certainly the Forged actions would have been a form of steel, but the earlier actions, just what were they made of?  Cast Iron is notoriously brittle and shatters easily under a hard blow or pressure, yet Cannon were made using it. Cast Steel is much less likely to do the same. Back in the day when cast Ballard actions were made there was little to guide the maker as to detecting flaws in the metal, slag, or air pockets trapped within the material so as to be invisible to the human eye. Did the manufacturers of the cast actions even have quality control in the 1860's. Today we have many tests available to us mostly electronic that were unheard of or even dreamt about in the 19th.C.

My own experience if these rifles is minimal, I've only ever seen two of them in some 50 years of shooting. But British target and game shooters tended to gravitate to their favourite British Gun Maker and we had plenty of them to fill the demand. So Ballard's are rare here.

Does anyone know of someone checking out the metal that cast action Ballard's were made of? I and I'm sure others here on this Forum would be as interested as I would be.

Harry.