Birdwatcher isn't wrong about the ball puller.
But....
A lot of times you might think you need to pull a ball, you don't.
Fill the pan with 3F, use your pan pick to work powder through the
flash hole into the barrel. You will need a few pans full.
Shoot it.
Hilarious. If there was no charge, you get a BLOOP. Can see the ball go.
Bought my flinter as a young teenager.
Read/heard a lot of stuff.
Tried most of it.
Double charges, tripple. Same with balls. Double both. (That kicked!)
Never tried leaving the ball off the powder, everyone says that will
blow them up. Everyone! So I accepted that one!
Pulled a ball intentionally loaded without powder. Once! To try it.
It sucks. Trying to thread a screw into a ball, then get it tight. Then the threads pull. Push It back down trying to screw it in again.
Make sure you get the puller fully threaded in, don't over tighten and strip
The ball.
My technique is faster, and works unless a saturated charge is the problem.
I've never had to pull a ball since that time it was done as an experiment.
PS. A ball puller can work pretty well to retrieve a lost patch.
Not like a worm, but not bad.
