Well ...  I'm a bit of a "shootin' fool" and in the end rather than 500 rounds instead I bought 1200 rounds of once fired Norma 9.3x74R brass out of Germany and had it shipped over.  Sold about half of it to recover costs and now I have fire-formed several hundred rounds for use in this Ballard!



rustyrelx wrote on Jun 29^th, 2016 at 2:34pm:

sharps4590 wrote on Jul 25^th, 2016 at 7:40am:


The .40-90 Sharps Straight, and .40-90 Ballard/.40-85 Everlasting, are not the same case. The Sharps being 3.25" long where the Ballard is 2.94" long. But the rim and base diameter are almost identical.

My friend Holger is over from Hamburg, Germany right now for his annual holiday visit to Canada so I "forced" him to go up to our local range with me and fire-form a bunch more of the Norma 9.3x74R brass in my Ballard Pacific.



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I've been following this thread with great interest as about ten years or so ago I acquired a similar 40-90 Ballard #5 Pacific from the estate sale of an old gunsmith friend of mine.  Anyway, it has all matching numbers in the receiver and butt, but the barrel and fore end have a different (but self matching) serial number.  Then to cap it off, there is no caliber marking on the barrel, although everything else seems "normal."  I identified the chambering by a chamber cast and my one example of a paper patched 40-90 round which appears to be a perfect fit.

So, why don't I buy up a bunch of the metric German brass and start loading?  Because the bore is what I would call marginal... not badly pitted, but a VERRRYY long way from pristine.  I am hesitant to put forth the cash and effort to build a batch of this ammo only to find out the bore isn't good enough to support good accuracy.  As an alternative, I'm wondering about having that unmarked barrel rebored to 45-70 so it will be easy to get ammo and I'll have a fresh bore to work with.  Decisions, decisions. 

Froggie

So far my reformed Norma 9.3x74R brass is working very well, but I have the same problem as you with the small rims.  If I'm careful to ensure that the extractor is seated before I chamber a cartridge it will extract with no issues, but if I'm not careful it's easy to let the small rim slip behind the extractor and then like you I need to knock the cartridge back out with a cleaning rod.  I just have to pay attention and make sure the extractor is seated first.  (And it sure is nice to have LOTS of shooter brass for a very reasonable price!)

OK, good to know!  I'll pick up some O rings and try that ...

Just a rubber o-ring, you can use them over and over again.  They are cheap if you need to replace any.

Thanks for the thought, Rev Al.  Maybe I could come to Canada and sew a fringe of brass jingle bobs on my Hudson Bay Capote coat to bring them back across the line from one land of crazies to a different land of crazies.  As they said on an album cover about 40 years ago, "We're all bozos on this bus!"

It seems like I have some brass around here somewhere to try.  Maybe I can cobble something together, but then I'll have to load for yet another caliber. 

Froggie