.36 Colt Navy that powerful??????

[johnraleksa]

Few know the power off Blackpowder because all they do is shot paper targets. I posted sometime back what my 36cal. Lyman revolver did at 45 feet. When through a 1in treated deck board and kept going. My 44cal went through that board and a 1/4 in plywood sheet then embedded deep into a ash log. Shooting at 25yards.

 

[nick_1]

forest service did a study a few years ago. in Wyoming. they got hunters to let them put a GPS app on their phones and follow the hunters. they had collars on the bears. the bears followed the hunters right from the parking lot. Often within 50ft of the hunters and the hunters had no clue. they love that gut pile. .36 navy is definatly not good for penetrating a bears skull as I believe Mr Hickock found out the hard way. I doubt a .44 army would have made much difference. only way your dropping a bear with a cap and ball is if you hit in the eye or the temple. which brings us back to shot placement = everything

 

[Juice Jaws]

Watched an episode of 'Hollywood Guns, Fact or Fiction' last night. One of their tests 'proved' a .36 cal. Colt Navy c&b revolver was a lot (a real lot) more powerful than I personally would have thought. They fired a lead round ball, with real bp, from a distance of about 30 feet at a ballistic gel torso, with bone structure, and another torso behind it. The round hit about one inch below the sternum bone, penetrated the torso completely and lodged about halfway into the backing torso. That is some powerful penetration. It is what happened on their TV test. But, personally, I would not depend on that little .36 cal. pill to be that effective from a pistol with it's small charge.

It was good enough for the man killer Wild Bill Hickok. There were bigger guns he could of use but didn't.

 

[Tenring]

I did an experiment some time back in witch I took my .36 Uberti Navy with home cast conical at max load with 3F and my S&W Bodyguard .380 with a Hornady XTP round bough were chronograph with the .36 going just a margin quicker because of the length of the barrel. I shot and old freezer Burt rump roast with a T shirt and an old piece of blue Jean pants over the roast, it being thawed out of course and each shot was taken at 12 feet under the same conditions and the .36 navy round went almost all the way through where the XTP flattened midway through as it was intended to. The conical from the navy also mushroomed out some being soft lead but I really think during the Civil War the.36 held it’s own on the battlefield and just like today I would not want to get hit with either.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

One of their tests 'proved' a .36 cal. Colt Navy c&b revolver was a lot (a real lot) more powerful than I personally would have thought. They fired a lead round ball, with real bp, from a distance of about 30 feet at a ballistic gel torso, with bone structure, and another torso behind it.

What they proved was that it takes less than folks realize to dispatch a human...sometimes. An angry human on adrenaline, is harder to "stop". One that's had a hefty dose of laudanum, and a few minutes for it to take effect, would be much harder still.

The .36 from a Navy or Remington is probably close to the .38 S&W cartridge, not the Special.

Another factor normally missed by folks is the accuracy and lesser recoil of the .36. With handguns, from the era of the The Great War and earlier, a person was likely going to need to hit the assailant more than once to stop the attack, or use a really big, heavy slug. IF the attack was stopped with a single shot, it was likely going to be quickly fatal if not instantly incapacitating even if it had been a hit with a modern .22 LR.....

..., the lesser recoil of the .36 allows a person using a single action revolver to be much quicker recovering from the recoil, recocking the piece, and making a second shot that also hits the target in the vitals, OR allows the shooter to acquire and accurately fire on an additional assailant much quicker.

Much of this is true unto this day. Large, heavy projectiles do a very good job on the first shot, and IF the shooter can control the recoil and quickly return to the target, they are an excellent choice, but this often requires much more regular practice than an equally accurate but smaller mass and thus less recoil projectile..., but this isn't often considered by Joe Home Owner

LD

 

[Bad Karma]

Responded to a domestic violence call once. The lady engaged her cocaine fueled, 6’2” 200# boyfriend with a Remington .44 replica. One round ball through the sternum and the top of his heart and he dropped right there. I don’t think he took another step. There was no exit wound and surprisingly little blood outside of his body. She was arrested later, tried and acquitted of all charges. In my opinion, she shouldn’t have faced any charges at all. County attorney was a glory seeking so and so.

 

[AlexB]

The shooting I have done into compressed newsprint and wood leads me to believe they're all pretty much lethal.
I was even surprised at the 31 and how well it does on meat and bone.
You can definitely drop a steer or a horse with a 44.

 

[Whitworth]

FWIW my ancient 1937 "Complete Guide to Handloading" by Phil Sharpe lists loading data that today would have lawyers circling like buzzards. Lots of long lost data in there such as 18 grains of 2FF behind a 158 grain bullet in a 38 Special gives 820 FPS, 26 grains of the same shove a 246 grain .44 Special bullet at 780 FPS and 28.9 grains behind a 255 grain bullet yields 790FPS in .45 Colt. Those figures can be easily applied to our Colts and Remingtons and are nothing to sneeze at ballistically. YMMV

 

[Bad Karma]

It’s Cavalry.

There appears to be only one surviving Calvary veteran…

 

[M. De Land]

The Army thought it had to be a big chunk of lead like a .58 caliber to be a man stopper. Then it went down to .45. Then 30 caliber, now it's 22. Granted those were rifles, but I think a .36 would "do the job". I wouldn't care to try and stop one .

As a general rule when the diameter was reduced the velocity was increased in military cartridges hence the energy levels and hit capabilities increased and thus killing power.
I have a friend with 3 purple hearts and star or two from Vietnam say the 223 killed like lighting on what ever they hit.
He used every thing from the M-1 carbine to 45 cal grease gun and finally the M-16. He's killed a truck load of men so I differ to his actual experience !

 

[IT47]

I'm just relating from what I read from Elmer Keith. Keith learned his black powder wisdom from Civil War veterans who told him the 36 caliber Navy was much more powerful than the 38 Special, introduced in 1898. The Navy was battle tested in the Civil War and the Indian wars. Even in the railroad strikes of the late 1800's and early 1900's, cap and balls were used to defend many of the strikers and the railroad officials, as told to me by my late grandfather. The black powder arm lives on.

 

[johnraleksa]

forest service did a study a few years ago. in Wyoming. they got hunters to let them put a GPS app on their phones and follow the hunters. they had collars on the bears. the bears followed the hunters right from the parking lot. Often within 50ft of the hunters and the hunters had no clue. they love that gut pile. .36 navy is definatly not good for penetrating a bears skull as I believe Mr Hickock found out the hard way. I doubt a .44 army would have made much difference. only way your dropping a bear with a cap and ball is if you hit in the eye or the temple. which brings us back to shot placement = everything

36cal with 25grans BP 15yards went through a 1inch solid treated deck board and kept going. I think that would do some major damage to a skull of anything

 

[Mike in FL]

I reckon we ought not make comparisons with other calibers/guns as in this one is better than that one because unless we are at the top tier of calibers there will always be something a lot or a little better. I mean if you like what you have, you are good to go.
Wait. I think I might have missed the point.

 

[The Black Tyrone]

Watched an episode of 'Hollywood Guns, Fact or Fiction' last night. One of their tests 'proved' a .36 cal. Colt Navy c&b revolver was a lot (a real lot) more powerful than I personally would have thought. They fired a lead round ball, with real bp, from a distance of about 30 feet at a ballistic gel torso, with bone structure, and another torso behind it. The round hit about one inch below the sternum bone, penetrated the torso completely and lodged about halfway into the backing torso. That is some powerful penetration. It is what happened on their TV test. But, personally, I would not depend on that little .36 cal. pill to be that effective from a pistol with it's small charge.

At the time .36 was probably plenty of oomph considering all the 38 and 41 rim fires and the relative lack of resources. A small amount of lead and powder probably made good sense to a fellow without a governments budget to spend.

 

[The Black Tyrone]

The .36 cap and ball guns were a lot more effective than people today give them credit for. Way back then it was considered adequate for people stopping. Medicine was very primitive and getting shot with anything usually meant a slow death no matter. The little .22 short revolvers and derringers were super popular too and may have resulted in more deaths than all of the other handguns used combined too. The .31 snubby revolvers back then were also quite popular too. Don’t forget that John Wilkes Boothe killed President Lincoln with a .44 Deringer which was likely loaded with what we think was a pipsqueak load. But the bullet still got through his skull with authority. The little .32 long revolvers were common issued sidearms for police up until after WWII. The .32s in Europe were still being used long after WWII in Europe too.

"It is the slow blade that kills"

 

[MezcalCharlie]

There was a thread not too long ago from a guy that killed a deer with a 36 revolver. Surprised me.

Wild Bill Hickock killed Davis Tutt at 75 yards. The 36 caliber 1851 was a fine pistol. Accurate and powerful. But I wouldn’t hunt deer with for the same reason I don’t hunt deer with a 22. It can kill them, but it isn’t as certain as my ‘06. I prefer a weapon that limits the animals suffering. A 54 caliber ball, well placed in range does that just fine.

 

[fishmusic]

E will always equal mc squared, regardless of what platform the projectile exits from or what propellant pushes it.

That formula describes the total energy of the mass of the bullet were it to be converted to energy. The better formula is e=1/2mV^2 which is the kinetic energy of a bullet.

 

[smoothshooter]

The shooting I have done into compressed newsprint and wood leads me to believe they're all pretty much lethal.
I was even surprised at the 31 and how well it does on meat and bone.
You can definitely drop a steer or a horse with a 44.

Without doubt they are all lethal.
In self defense scenarios lethality is not as important as immediate incapacitation.
Lethality and stopping power are two entirely different things. ( I am not inferring that YOU don’t understand the difference, but most people don’t )

 

[nick_1]

Farmer John. Wild Bill actually did shoot a bear between the eyes with a.36 Navy. Didn't work out so well for him. Google it. Good story.

 

[Tanglefoot]

Some years ago I was writing for a publication called The Trade Blanket, which is no longer in print. We accumulated some BP revolvers and did quite a lot of testing for accuracy and relative knockdown power, using carefully controlled loads, consistent ammunition, and a gadget called a "Ballistic Pendulum." The pendulum didn't read force or energy directly, and only provided a comparison of with a standard, based on how far the pendulum was moved by a bullet strike -- in other words, angular displacement. The mass of the pendulum itself was constant, as was the range, and all bullet strikes were contained within a very narrow target space. The modern loads we chose to record were the displacements achieved with standard velocity 40-grain .22LR rounds, standard 158-grain lead .38 Special loads, and standard GI-issue .45 ACP 230-grain jacketed hardball loads, all commercial ammunition. All were fired in 6-inch barreled S&W revolvers except the .45's, which were fired in a Colt 1911. We tested .36 Navy replicas, .44 Army replicas, both Colt and Remington versions, and (as I recall)
two Colt Walker replicas also. All firing was done at the same distance, from a rest, using measured loads and the same powder, caps, etc., to minimize variations. We also used commercially available round ball in each caliber that were weighed to eliminate variations there, commercial wads, and lubricants.
Firing was done in 5-shot groups. The pendulum was reset between shots and the results recorded, then averaged for each 5-shot group.
For reasons I no longer remember, the magazine only ever published the results from the 1860 Army model testing, but
some of the data that spanned several models was included for information purposes. Here's what the numbers said:
The .36 Navy guns delivered energy on target only slightly greater than modern standard velocity .22 LR rounds. The 1860 replica revolvers generally delivered energy on target between that of the .22's and the standard .38 Special loads, roughly the same as a standard .38 S&W loading. And of course, the Walker replicas were the barn-burner loads.
We were surprised at the lack of response to the article.
I suspect that's why the publisher chose not to print the work we did on the other revolvers.
One of the most "interesting" things that occurred was a 5-shot flashover ignition with one of the 1860 replicas. I was taking a break and the publisher/editor chose to do some of the shooting, so he got the first-hand experience. By great good fortune (?) our photographer was taking a series of automated photos and caught the event on film. Nobody was injured, unless you consider singed eyebrows an injury, and the revolver itself survived intact with an interesting number of lead smears on the frame, the wedge, wedge screw, etc.
We did conclude that the high mortality rate associated with cap-n-ball bullet wounds was very likely just as much due to poor sanitation and worse medical care than it was to bullet trauma. It's worth noting that Cole Younger was shot
11 times during his last raid, but was captured after the gang left him in a thicket, survived his wounds to serve his sentence and went on to live to old age.