Britsmoothy said:
I leave my hammer on the cap. Cap needs percussion, a failing half cock notch will provide some percussion.
For added safety have a strip of heavy leather hanging off the trigger guard to rest between cap and hammer/s.
By the way, I have never experienced an ember issue or percussion gun helping itself to go bang in 30+years.
Has anyone here?
B.
The question of percussion cap and hammers can have accidental dischargers , over 69 years of shooting muzzle loading guns with most types of ignitions I have seen it happen in both originals and repros more so the latter
The method of lowering the hammer to rest on the cap of a loaded gun while the other barrel is fired, what I have witnessed is when the first barrel is fired and the shooter pulls back the hammer of the second barrel it discharges. The reason after examination shows that on most the nose of the hammer was not central to the nipple resulting in it riding down the side of the nipple and when pulled back ground the cap compound which ignited, I have also seen this happen on some original drum and nipple conversions
The strangest accidental discharge I saw was with a pedersoli sxs I was stood next to the shooter and witness everything. The caps he was using were Italian no 11 brass caps the gun mainspring was weak and when he fired there was no ignition ,he pulled back the hammer to full cock with the gun pointing in a safe position then removed the brass percussion cap ,on doing so we notice that the compacted fultimate was lodged on the top of the nipple he then started to remove the compound using his finger nail which was enough to ignite and discharge the gun.
Feltwad
