Chain fire!!

[SPQR70AD]

You can see the ball flying out like a meteor

I think she lit off 3 at the same time and her boyfriend or whatever is laughing about it as the girl didn't miss a puff off the cigarette and was also laughing

safety freaks

 

[Stantheman86]

It's Paralysis by OverAnalysis......

I fired a few cylinders today with RWS 1075 then switched to pinched CCI #11 for the remaining 90 or so rounds.

Give em a good pinch so they're oval shaped and firmly thumb seat them. They aren't going anywhere. And no flame is getting under them.

People don't pinch them enough and they're falling off, is my guess. Even Dr Balasz Nemeth who is seen as one of the world's authorities on shooting muzzleloaders and percussion revolvers, explains pinching caps to fit a Uberti Walker in one of his videos and that guy probably fired more rounds with pinched caps this month then most of us fire in our lives.

I've had case head seperations in military bolt action rifles that shot gas into my face , squib rounds almost blow up a semi-auto Thompson while I was shooting it, an old ChiCom SKS fire out of battery, a Beretta 92 blow up in my hand from a double charged factory round , a French MAS49 slam fire a whole 10 round mag, a Ruger SP101 send the barrel downrange and probably 1000 other mechanical malfunction mishaps I can't recall right now

The only way to be safe is not to shoot guns. A chain fire blurping out a ball at 100fps is not my biggest concern . I was more nervous about some of the weirdos I saw at my gun club today than my 2 Piettas chain firing

 

[jd945043]

Number 10 Remington's and number 11 CCI's are the same size. They are "number 10 or 11" in name only . . .

Size doesn't transfer from maker to maker.

Mike

I agree but you just shot the hornets nest

 

[Ninering62]

Hopw could a flame get past a properly fitting ball -- i.e., one where on loading a thin ring of lead is sheared off? That means that the powder CANNOT be reached from the FRONT - past the hermetic seal.

Thats exactly why I like shooting Kaido conicals in my ROA. They fit perfectly tight into the cylinder, no chance of any flash getting to the charge.

 

[jd945043]

The people who made the design knew of this. Today is the only time we hear that you can perfect a flawed system Samuel Colts company did just that they created a cartridge version of the revolver no more chain fires today it's rather arrogant that many of you are preaching that it can be completely done away with by just doing this grow up folks

 

[Dark Angel]

I’ve been pinchin’ caps off and on for about 40 years and haven’t had a chain-fire yet.

I too have had to pinch caps to make 'em stay on. These were Remington caps. Shoot CCI, now, but there must be something better. Been shooting C&B revolvers for over 40 yrs,. now, never had a chain fire. Suppose it could happen, but it hasn't yet. The cause of chain fires has been debated ad nauseum with no definitive cause being found that I've heard of. Still. I wipe the face of my cylinder to remove any stray powder grains and grease each chamber if for no other reason that it makes me feel good.

 

[nick_1]

I certainly found a definitive cause when I had my chain fires. I have two modern pietta 1858 .44s with stock nipples and pinched loose caps. no chain fires .

 

[Jim K]

I've been reading everything I can find about the use of percussion revolvers in combat, for years. A lot of it while I'm bored at work with access to a computer, and I'll burn up 2 hours reading forum posts from 2003 from Civil War and weapons Historians, letters from soldiers and Officers home telling their parents about the "beautiful but cantankerous forty four Colt's pistol I was given , it bucks like a mule and gets as sluggish as an old dog on a July afternoon after 12 shots" but I have yet to read an original account of a chain fire . Besides the Mark Twain pepperbox story.

I deep dive this stuff, I've read deeply about soldiers using rocks to pound on ramrods to load Minies , old trashy European muskets that would barely go off, soldiers getting barrels so hot in muskets and rifles that the powder was igniting and they threw it away to pick one up off a corpse....young soldiers telling their Dad that they got an Austrian musket that kicked like 20 mules, or a "beautiful English gun that shot clean every time " ,..but not once has a Union LT or anyone else apparently had a letter saved for posterity saying stuff like "I fired off my Colt today to get the 6 shots out I never used and I'll be dammed if half the cylinder didn't go" there's 0 of any of this . You'd think if chain fires were common the troops would write home griping about them

Rifle-Muskets and muskets are written about heavily by veterans and soldiers but there's very little to read about revolvers. I feel like they were such a small piece of the overall picture and weren't fired a lot, so they weren't really written about.

Where could I find these articles? I’d like to read them.

 

[Stantheman86]

Where could I find these articles? I’d like to read them.

Many are in the book "myths and facts of the Rifled-Musket in the Civil War" mostly the excerpts of letters about rifles and muskets

Lots you just have to deep dive, Reenactor forums are a gold mine of obscure info. The older the post the better it usually is. I've read stuff posted 20+ years ago by a reenactor who has his ancestors letters about his Springfield rifle, or Colt revolver and the period way they spoke back then makes it so much better . Unfortunately reenacting was more alive in the early 2000s so more guys were active and posting letters from their Veteran ancestors. The Colt forum sometimes has more technical info if someone posts about percussion Colts

I have the advantage of having usually 2 hours of complete dead time at night at work, or if I work a night shift. I'll just hole up somewhere and search the internet to turn up totally obscure info

This is how I learned that some Confederate revolvers used "field salvage " Colt parts to speed production, sketchy contractors used to "short charge" revolver cartridges to save powder and whole shipments were rejected by the US Ordnance Dept because the 44 cartridges had as little as 10 grains of powder ....... cavalry sometimes did a "mad minute " type thing where they'd empty both revolvers at a line of Infantry while at a halt, over 100 + yards away, reload then charge or flank around

You just have to enter a Google search for something like "chain fires in the Civil War " and go down the internet rabbit hole

 

[Jim K]

Many are in the book "myths and facts of the Rifled-Musket in the Civil War" mostly the excerpts of letters about rifles and muskets

Lots you just have to deep dive, Reenactor forums are a gold mine of obscure info. The older the post the better it usually is. I've read stuff posted 20+ years ago by a reenactor who has his ancestors letters about his Springfield rifle, or Colt revolver and the period way they spoke back then makes it so much better . Unfortunately reenacting was more alive in the early 2000s so more guys were active and posting letters from their Veteran ancestors. The Colt forum sometimes has more technical info if someone posts about percussion Colts

I have the advantage of having usually 2 hours of complete dead time at night at work, or if I work a night shift. I'll just hole up somewhere and search the internet to turn up totally obscure info

This is how I learned that some Confederate revolvers used "field salvage " Colt parts to speed production, sketchy contractors used to "short charge" revolver cartridges to save powder and whole shipments were rejected by the US Ordnance Dept because the 44 cartridges had as little as 10 grains of powder ....... cavalry sometimes did a "mad minute " type thing where they'd empty both revolvers at a line of Infantry while at a halt, over 100 + yards away, reload then charge or flank around

You just have to enter a Google search for something like "chain fires in the Civil War " and go down the internet rabbit hole

Thank you very much!

 

[TrophyGuy]

This is an illuminating discussion, fact based and speculative, a good thought experiment as Einstein might say. As an engineer I weigh the plausibility of all the chain fire explanations. Ignition through ill fitting caps is the least plausible. Incandescent expanding gas would have to make several 90 degree turns to get under an adjacent cap and nipple. The nature of expanding gas is to increase entropy by moving to free space, not re-compressing down crevices. There is a big flash cloud around a fired nipple, but it's shielded from adjacent nipples by cylinder cutouts. All which begs the question of why chain fires happen, drawing attention to the chamber mouth. The most plausible explanation I read was the powder trail under a ball that leads fire to the chamber, sometimes aided by messy grease contamination everywhere. Puzzling that a flame path could get under a tight fitting ball, then it hit me. It doesn't. Balls simply back out of the chamber under recoil. I've seen it happen in all types of revolvers with much better metallurgy and fitment than cap and ball pieces. Heavy kickers are perfect kinetic bullet pullers. A ball pulled out of a chamber won't gain much acceleration from a burning charge behind it, explaining why chain fires do no damage. There is still a big flash from the cross fired cylinder but not much extra kick. There is no evidence after the fact to tip off the shooter that a ball backed out. When I was a kid we would toss center fire cartridges in the campfire expecting a tremendous explosion. Nothing happened except a mild pop and conflagration. I hope this "theory" adds knowledge to the mystery.

 

[rhart]

Watched a vid on YouTube where a guy removed the loaded cylinder from his C&B pistol and placed it on a table with the cylinder openings up (no grease over round balls) and then liberally sprinkled black powder in and around the cylinders. Next he lit the black powder sprinkled in and around the cylinder openings and nothing happened as far as chain fires (the loose powder ignited).

A guy (John Walch) had a patent (and produced a few pistols) around the time of the civil war for a .36 cal pistol which fired 12-shots by loading two ball and powder charges in each chamber (each chamber had two nipples to fire each charge independently of each other). The design relied on some sort of 'grease' to insulate the remaining charge from being discharged by firing the first charge.

 

[Col. Batguano]

I had a chain fire like that once in 1976. On a ($75 at the time) brass framed Italian reproduction of aa `51 Navy. It totally swaged the ball in to the loading lever to the point you almost couldn't see it. It wound up shooting the revolver cylinder spindle (I don't know the exact name of that part) loose. I didn't shoot the gun much after that because I could never figure out how to tighten it up again, and years later the gun got lost somewhere.

 

[Stantheman86]

I found an interesting discussion on chain fires in an old CAS forum thread

For a Cowboy match, they shoot 5 or 6 cylinders through each gun, sometimes more , the guns are run hard and even recreational shooting , like most of us do, involves lots of rounds downrange

Back in the period you drew your revolver , and fired your 6 rounds.....which in the period of 1830s to 1860s, was still a huge advance over a single shot pistol.
And either the battle/fight was over, you went to a knife/sword or maybe reloaded during a lull in the action for 6 more . No one was shooting 100 rounds in a fight

More shooting = More chain fires

 

[Stantheman86]

Thank you very much!

I randomly learned why most of the Leech & Rigdon revolvers sold in the 1960s-70s were found in Central Pennsylvania. Because this particular Battalion of PA state militia captured the factory during Shermans March, and grabbed all the revolvers. Fast forward 100 years, families started finding old revolvers stuck in drawers, attics etc put there by Deceased uncles and dads who were vets of that Battalion and hocking them . Random knowledge like that is fascinating to me

 

[nkbj]

With these and pinched caps I never get chain fires therefore the problem must be caused by shooting round ball.

 

[TrophyGuy]

With these and pinched caps I never get chain fires therefore the problem must be caused by shooting round ball.

View attachment 204391

Makes perfect sense. These would have to back out a long way before spilling powder. Do you ever look to see if they back out? I may try some of my swaged HBWC's. They are dead soft lead.

 

[Dale Allen Raby]

Long ago when I was shooting .451 round balls in a C&B Revolver, I did have some balls back out far enough to jam the action. I learned from the experience, read the manual and bought some .454 balls. Haven't had a problem since then.

 

[Stantheman86]

I just caught a sale on .451 balls.....now I get to single load one in each of my .44's to see which ones are a little tight and shave a ring

Hopefully Pietta made one or two of them a little tight in the chambers

 

[Red Owl]

Thanks Dale- first time I've run across anyone who confirmed balls can move forward from recoil. My thinking is the explosion still forces the ball forward but since it's already beyond the chamber, it lacks power and doesn't do much damage.