Field/Farm Use of Cap & Ball Revolver

[Stantheman86]

For field or camping use, sure a C&B is fun. I wouldn’t hesitate to carry all six loaded. The pins on a Colt C&B are safe enough. Plus, I’d use a flap holster if I was worried about the hammer hooking in a branch or something similar.

For EDC, I’ll carry something more modern. I don’t let my sentimentality and romanticism for C&B revolvers influence me on this. Your mileage may vary, but that’s my decision. To each their own. If you EDC a C&B, that’s your choice and is better than carrying nothing.

If you shoot one chamber, might as well shoot the rest. Makes it easier to clean the revolver.

I'd think cleaning one or two chambers would have been more of a concern back in the original period.

As in a farmer or just average working guy uses his $5 Manhattan knock off Colt to put down a sick cow or shoot a wild dog , and doesn't want to just cap off 5 more expensive and hard to get rounds . So he would probably just punch the bore and the dirty chamber when he got around to it, if at all.

I've seen some well used originals with frosty bores and chambers , so weapons maintenance wasn't a priority for everyone

For us, it makes more sense to cap them all off and clean , unless you're carrying in the field for hunting, etc

 

[VAN]

I only have one cap and ball gun. I built it from a Dixie Kit many years ago. It's a 36 caliber Pocket Model with 5 shots. I like walking the woods along the creek a short distance behind my back yard. Just following the deer trail and tossing wood chunks and pinecones down into the creek and firing away. It is perfect for sticking in the belt with no holster. I take some premeasured 15g loads of FFFg in plastic tubes and a capper along to ease reloading. When shooting this little gun, that is more fun than going to the range for me. When I get home, I take it apart and soak the metal parts in a pan of hot soapy water, brush out the barrel and cylinder, let dry a bit and use 3in1 oil inside and out. Still looks great after many years. I just touch up with some Brownell's Black T-4 Cream when needed.

 

[Flintlock Whiskey]

Someone wrote a book about this back in the 90s, about alternate history like this.......

I also wonder if in 200 years people will be looking at SAWs and M16s in museums like we look at Flintlock muskets , all like "people used those things to fight???"

The way things are going, in 200 years we will all be back to using flintlock muskets.
Not sure but I thing it was Einstein that said "I don't know what weapons they will use to fight world war 3, but I can tell you that world war 4 will be fought with sticks and rocks.

 

[Bad Karma]

Bad Karma, the front trigger guard screw is pretty loose or missing on the Uberti with the fluted cylinder

I noticed that after I looked at the picture. A dab of Loctite and she’s back in business. (Cleaned it too…) thanks for the heads up though!

 

[Stantheman86]

The way things are going, in 200 years we will all be back to using flintlock muskets.
Not sure but I thing it was Einstein that said "I don't know what weapons they will use to fight world war 3, but I can tell you that world war 4 will be fought with sticks and rocks.

Ironically I had a vivid dream the other night that the Russians invaded us and I was in a building shooting at Hind choppers with my Parker-Hale P53 , and handing out loaded percussion revolvers to people

I also remembered something funny when a few years back when I was doing Living History, and it was pretty loosely organized, I hid 2 live ball paper cartridges for my Pedersoli .69 1816 Springfield deep in my bag so I couldn't accidentally load them......but I had them "just in case" as if something went down I was ready to go Haha like ok there's a gunman on the loose, time to Make Ready

 

[TrapperDude]

Ironically I had a vivid dream the other night that the Russians invaded us and I was in a building shooting at Hind choppers with my Parker-Hale P53 , and handing out loaded percussion revolvers to people

I also remembered something funny when a few years back when I was doing Living History, and it was pretty loosely organized, I hid 2 live ball paper cartridges for my Pedersoli .69 1816 Springfield deep in my bag so I couldn't accidentally load them......but I had them "just in case" as if something went down I was ready to go Haha like ok there's a gunman on the loose, time to Make Ready

An in-extremis situation for which I chose to get involved in black powder is one in which some sort of wide-spread and protracted instability has caused modern firearms to become generally unavailable because of the near cessation of ammo availability and irreparable damage from neglect and overuse to remaining modern weapons. Under such circumstances, there would be no room to be choosy, and we would have to use whatever we could get our hands on.

Black powder weapons may be the only ones available at any given time. It's better to be familiar with them now, rather than learning how to use them when things have already gone down hill.

 

[Sparkitoff]

I carry a '58 short barrel around the ranch. I load 6 as the between notches work. It's rare that I need to shoot at all but there have been instances where I shot one, two or three shots. Later that same day or early the next I removed the cylinder, removed the caps and cleaned the frame and barrel as I would any other day. With the fired chambers, I removed the nipple and carefully cleaned that area and the chamber, pushing a rod in from the nipple side. When clean, I put the nipples back, loaded those cylinders, then capped all chambers and re-assembled. I make it a point to shoot all 6 chambers once per 6-months if I have no other occasion to shoot it. When the 6-mos day arrived, I shot all 6 since I didn't keep track of which ones were more recently loaded. I've never had any sort of issues doing this ritual.

 

[TrapperDude]

I carry a '58 short barrel around the ranch. I load 6 as the between notches work. It's rare that I need to shoot at all but there have been instances where I shot one, two or three shots. Later that same day or early the next I removed the cylinder, removed the caps and cleaned the frame and barrel as I would any other day. With the fired chambers, I removed the nipple and carefully cleaned that area and the chamber, pushing a rod in from the nipple side. When clean, I put the nipples back, loaded those cylinders, then capped all chambers and re-assembled. I make it a point to shoot all 6 chambers once per 6-months if I have no other occasion to shoot it. When the 6-mos day arrived, I shot all 6 since I didn't keep track of which ones were more recently loaded. I've never had any sort of issues doing this ritual.

Thanks for posting your real-world experience with this practice.

 

[M. De Land]

I carry a '58 short barrel around the ranch. I load 6 as the between notches work. It's rare that I need to shoot at all but there have been instances where I shot one, two or three shots. Later that same day or early the next I removed the cylinder, removed the caps and cleaned the frame and barrel as I would any other day. With the fired chambers, I removed the nipple and carefully cleaned that area and the chamber, pushing a rod in from the nipple side. When clean, I put the nipples back, loaded those cylinders, then capped all chambers and re-assembled. I make it a point to shoot all 6 chambers once per 6-months if I have no other occasion to shoot it. When the 6-mos day arrived, I shot all 6 since I didn't keep track of which ones were more recently loaded. I've never had any sort of issues doing this ritual.

That makes a great deal of sense to me as the fouling is presumably being de solved/removed with water soon after firing and not left or covered over with oil in the hope nothing bad will happen.

 

[Flintlock Whiskey]

Ironically I had a vivid dream the other night that the Russians invaded us and I was in a building shooting at Hind choppers with my Parker-Hale P53 , and handing out loaded percussion revolvers to people

I also remembered something funny when a few years back when I was doing Living History, and it was pretty loosely organized, I hid 2 live ball paper cartridges for my Pedersoli .69 1816 Springfield deep in my bag so I couldn't accidentally load them......but I had them "just in case" as if something went down I was ready to go Haha like ok there's a gunman on the loose, time to Make Ready

I was 13 when my Father bought two A. Zoli 58 Remington Zouave replica kits. Had alot of fun shooting that gun and used to daydream of zapping Soviet troops with it.
Times have changed.

 

[Whitworth]

Ironically I had a vivid dream the other night that the Russians invaded us and I was in a building shooting at Hind choppers with my Parker-Hale P53 , and handing out loaded percussion revolvers to people

I also remembered something funny when a few years back when I was doing Living History, and it was pretty loosely organized, I hid 2 live ball paper cartridges for my Pedersoli .69 1816 Springfield deep in my bag so I couldn't accidentally load them......but I had them "just in case" as if something went down I was ready to go Haha like ok there's a gunman on the loose, time to Make Ready

You may have been a designated AA gunner Seems to me I remember reading about Afghan fighters shooting at the tail rotors of Russian Hind choppers with the old Martini Henry rifles. The story was the big lead Martini bullet would leave a lead splash if it hit a blade and this would throw it out of balance and thus self-destroy. YMMV

 

[Pete453]

Van, kool gun! I like it!

Sparkitoff, thank you for your post. Sounds like it's working well for you.

 

[TrapperDude]

I was 13 when my Father bought two A. Zoli 58 Remington Zouave replica kits. Had alot of fun shooting that gun and used to daydream of zapping Soviet troops with it.
Times have changed.

Some of us formed a World War III club after watching Red Dawn as kids and used to sit around planning how we were going to get the rifles from Soviet airborne troops and become resistance fighters. One of the goofiest things we did was make sloppy silhouettes of Soviet troops on a fence and practice having a couple of us throw rocks at it while the third ran up to snatch his rifle. We never considered that his one or more buddies would have shot us all while we tried that stunt.

 

[Stantheman86]

You may have been a designated AA gunner Seems to me I remember reading about Afghan fighters shooting at the tail rotors of Russian Hind choppers with the old Martini Henry rifles. The story was the big lead Martini bullet would leave a lead splash if it hit a blade and this would throw it out of balance and thus self-destroy. YMMV

It makes perfect sense Hahaha

That's amazing , maybe that's what I was doing and just didn't know it

 

[Stantheman86]

Some of us formed a World War III club after watching Red Dawn as kids and used to sit around planning how we were going to get the rifles from Soviet airborne troops and become resistance fighters. One of the goofiest things we did was make sloppy silhouettes of Soviet troops on a fence and practice having a couple of us throw rocks at it while the third ran up to snatch his rifle. We never considered that his one or more buddies would have shot us all while we tried that stunt.

Stranger things have worked

The Ranger Handbook shows you how to take out a Russian sentry with your helmet

I'm like , seems like a solid plan

 

[TrapperDude]

Stranger things have worked

The Ranger Handbook shows you how to take out a Russian sentry with your helmet

I'm like , seems like a solid plan

Yeah, the ol' whip it off his head, flip it and smack him on top of his head with it trick.

 

[SwanShot]

Back in the bad old days on the Australian gold fields all the good people of the towns were horrified by the gunfire at night, but nobody mentioned the lack of bodies. The mines, two to four man operations on a small claim, were often wet with foul salty water, so every night the miners were unloading by firing, then cleaning and reloading for the next day.

 

[Dude]

You may have been a designated AA gunner Seems to me I remember reading about Afghan fighters shooting at the tail rotors of Russian Hind choppers with the old Martini Henry rifles. The story was the big lead Martini bullet would leave a lead splash if it hit a blade and this would throw it out of balance and thus self-destroy. YMMV

It makes perfect sense Hahaha

That's amazing , maybe that's what I was doing and just didn't know it

I heard that the Vietcong threw spears at the tail rotors, which would unbalance them with the same result.

 

[nick_1]

If you live where there is high humidity the powder will suck up moisture and you will get misfires if you leave them loaded too long. shoot her dry at the end of the day, clean and reload. I occasionally carry a .44 1858 or my 50 cal trapper pistol. critical for safety is a holster that completely covers and or secures the hammer.

 

[Rifleman1776]

If you live where there is high humidity the powder will suck up moisture

That is an old saw that is simply not correct. Bp, by itself will not "suck up" moisture. If the gun is clean and completely free of residue it can remain loaded for generations and still shoot. It is the by-product of shooting bp that attracts moisture. And it does it quitel effectively, as any flint shooter can tell you when shooting during humid weather.