Thread: Resurrecting a 159 Year old 44 Rimfire

Here's a piece of history you don't see often

I saw the very nice vintage 44 Rimfire last year and told its owner I would love to make some brass for it and we could try shooting it.
And mentioned if he ever wanted to sell it I would be interested

Well HD contacted me recently and it is now mine.







It's a Ballard's 1861 Patent
Made by Ball & Williams in 1865
Sporting rifle
30" barrel
Cambered in 44 Ballard Long Rimfire

How do you make the rimfire brass

Hey how about making a reloading tool to go with it. Pocket of boolits, 3 bits of brass, flask of powder and off ya go!

Here are some of the rimfires I now shoot

22 LR
25 RF reloadable and an original
44 Ballard long rimfire dummy



The 44 Ballard long is the biggest of the 44 RF cases of that period



Ball & Williams made 16000 Ballard's between 1863 and 1865
Most were military for the Civil War

This rifle is sporting and in the last 500 made of the
16,000

Haha - a .44rimfire semi-auto anyone? Gold...

Long or extra long? Ballard made rifles for the 44 long before he developed the 44 extra long in 1870. There's only 1/4 inch difference in case length. Either way that's a cracking piece

It has the 1894 patent dual ignition.
Rimfire and percussion

You can punch a small hole in the fired cartridge base.
Fill with BP and seat a bullet
Place a percussion cap on the nipple and fire

It was highly regarded at the time
This breech block is missing the nipple but the threads are still good

You can see the thread halves on each side of the breech block halves







The Ballard breech block has all the hammer and trigger moving parts fixed in it which is why the triggers are so good

So I made a dummy case from a 7x57R case much modified

Turned a standard 210 grain .429 bullet into a heeled bullet by turning down the last band in the lathe to fit thumb tight in the case mouth
And tested it for case length and cartridge over all length

The extractor is the little finger lever under the fore end
It is perfectly parallel to the bore and gave reliable extraction with the variably sized 44 RF brass of those times

could you make a steel case that's rimfire? one shot brass screams $$$

lots of work there mate dressing up some of those munted screws - but you will do it

Hi Its great to see this ole gale get some love and attention Good luck to see the job through and hopefully the barrel will shoot well too Cheers

These cases are rimfire reloadable

Drill trough the primer pocket 5mm
Tap it M6x1
Screw in an M6 machine screw
Solder it in
Cut it off and mill the case base flush
Drill, ream and rebate to take a 6mm blank cap
Cut relief for the firing pin nose



Test fire a few blanks to check ignition

So I could cram 24 grains of BP under the 210 grain heeled bullet

And outside to fire the first shot about 4 hours after I started
In that time I've stripped and reassembled the entire rifle
Cast the chamber and muzzle to get meaningful data to make the case from

Made the one reloadable case

First shot from a rough rest at 25m and of course safety glasses so not a perfect sight picture



Two more trips inside to deprime and reload the one case and this result



I think that's as good as you could ever hope to do first up.

Once I've made 20 reloadable cases it will be off hunting asap
Just think of it as being as effective as a sub sonic 44 magnum
And way cooler

It's around 8 pounds so a joy to shoot and being a Ballard it has a superb trigger at 3 pounds

I look forward to seeing photos WHEN you have it set up for percussion too.thats almost an modern inline sort of arrangement years before it's time.