Shooting a Cap and Ball Revolver (Updated)

[MoA]

Well I dont know how much interest there is in the subject, but thought would give it a try.
I own a few of them, and off late these havent been getting a work out. Infact I have not shot them at all this year. Today is very windy, which makes my normal rifle shooting a pointless exercise in throwing ammo down range, so have decided to shoot cap and ball instead.

I plan on shooting the Colt Walker, and Colt 1860 both of which are replica's made by Uberti in Italy. And will take a bunch of pictures including the prep that goes into it, and post back later today or tomorrow.

[Vikram]

Will be quite interesting to see the range report,MoA. I always like the black powder revolvers being a great fan of Westerns.Thank you.

Best-
Vikram

[diskaon]

One of my favorites.. just like how I like fountain pens more than ball point pens.. Alas, i dont see any way I may ever own one though.

regards,

diskaon

[xl_target]

Back when I was in college, one of the guys on my floor was into black powder and he let me shoot his Remington New Army repro and his Thompson Hawken (.50 cal) rifle. It was a lot of fun. I was amazed at how accurate those weapons were.

[MoA]

Well decided to take these to the range


And before one can shoot them, one needs to remove the healthy coating of WD 40 that protects them.
Here you can see the size of the Walker's Cylinder compared to the colt 1860. The Walker is absolutely huge and weighs more than 2 Kilos.


here is the basics of a BP load, powder, lube pill and ball or conical. Also a 9mm cartridge for reference. The tube on the left holds a light charge for the Walker, while the one on the right is the standard charge for the 1860.


The Lube pill is a mixture of Bees Wax, Parafin and Olive Oil. It keeps the fouing down and even prevents the cylinder from gunking up and freezing.

When shooting light charges, I tend to load Powder, Couscous, Lube pill and Ball/conical. With the Walker it is Powder, Lube pIll and ball.


Capped and ready to go


It is difficult trying to take a picture from behind the gun as you aqueeze the trigger. Also gives a clear meaning to the term the smoky haze of war...


here is a friend of mine shooting it, in full recoil. The Loading lever on the Walker drops when shooting full loads. Normal for it, and this was fixed in the later Dragoon series of revolvers.


Here is another shooting buddy shooting his Remmie 1858. On the table to his right is a Colt cattleman. BP shooting is popular around these parts.


-- Sun Nov 15, 2009 16:08 --

Once the shooting is done, time to clean...

Luckily the Swiss ffg is not as messy as Goex or Pyrodex etc.. in the sink with liberal amounts of Windex. The Cz goes in as well, since it was exposed to BP residue.


A good soak and scrub with hot soapy water


Dry.. completely. And coat with WD 40 liberally


Its a good thing my wife is uderstanding.. shooting BP is messy


I didnt get to shoot them too much, simply because I ran out of primers.. Time to order more.
I wanted to order more smokeless powder as well, but the wife pointed this out to me.

[shooter]

im coming down to shoot them asap.
Doesnt so much wd40 on the butt spoil the wood?

[MoA]

Nope... doesnt do any harm.

[shooter]

not even causing the wood to go weak from the inside?

[MoA]

Well i have only been doing this for about 5 years with the BP guns, havent noticed anything so far.
Come on over, have a look and draw your own conclusions.

[Vikram]

MoA,

That is a great post and thank you for taking time to post all the pictorial details.Much appreciated.Very interesting though a bit of a hassle re the post-shoot cleaning. You can see the Walker Colts in action in the film, "Outlaw Josey Wales" . Of course there are scores of other movies.

Best-
Vikram

[MoA]

Cleaning is a little different.

It actually takes me longer to clean the rifles, in terms of time. Mainly beacuse I let the copper remover soak in overnight. And BP cleaning is easier than say a session with JB Paste.

[dev]

Thank you so much. I have dreamt of owning one of these replicas and was fascinated by the way they work and shoot. Your post has filled several grey areas, please keep them coming.

[MoA]

Dev would be more than happy to answer any questions you might have.

[HSharief]

When I shot SASS a few friends of mine shot BP and they let me shoot those a few times. Just like you did, I had a LOT of fun too. The smell of BP is "unique" and that itself makes it fun. I'm sure the prep before and cleanup after is part of the fun too.

[MoA]

Also BP booms, while smokeless is more of a crack, the recoil is more like a push rather than sharp recoil from smokeless. Personally I love rituals of BP.
Moreover burning smokeless in the open is a slow fizzle, it is only explosive under pressure in a confined space. BP on the other is a low grade explosive under all circumstnces.