The other bonus was that the cornmeal did a very good job of scrubbing the bore and it looked better when I was finished than when I started!  (I've found the same thing when fire-forming cases in some of my other obsolete calibre rifles.)  Do you have any suggested "pet loads" for the .40-85 / .40-90 Ballard?  I was thinking that I'd try some light charges of SR4759.  My original test loads were 7 to 8 grains of SR4759 over the primer and then 80 grains of drop tubed 2F black with a 400 grain RCBS silhouette cast bullet.  Results were fairly good, but I'm hoping for better with fine tuning.  I'll be spending Christmas out in Manitoba with my wife's family again this year and while I'm out there I'll go and see "Red River Rick" in Winnipeg about an adjustable .40 paper patch mould plus some mould handles that I need to buy.  This Pacific Ballard of mine has a short (very abrupt), paper patch throat so I'd like to try a 330 to 370 grain paper patched bullet in it to try and duplicate the original loadings.

This is a great thread ....I did this a while back using 700x
about 9gr. worked well on most But had a few cases crack
in the middle../maybe a bit to much X and my cast fit togood ..........I'm going to do it different next time  

Ol Deuce