Pointless cap & ball weatherization experiment

[blixen]

For the heck of it, in October I loaded all six chambers of a spare .36 Navy cylinder with black powder. The balls pressed in with nice circles of lead and i put a coat of grease (olive oil-beeswax) over them. I applied the caps, then painted them in place with a little finger-nail polish.

I stored the cylinder in my unheated shed through a hard fall and winter -- temps from 90s down to zero and lots of snow and rain on the shed.

Last week, it being Spring-like weather, i dropped the cylinder into the ol' Colt and EVERY SHOT FIRED. I got an 8" group at 25 yards (this is, after all, a Colt Navy) which seems to indicate some consistency.

Note: I'm not recommending a Navy as a carry weapon--for a lot of reasons, but still...

BTW, I read that Wild Bill fired off his Navy every night and reloaded fresh--guess he didn't have finger-nail polish. :-)

[Mike Brooks]

I'm not surprised. I have full faith in my C&B pistols. In thousands of rounds I have had one failure to fire. I have left them loaded for months and they always fire.

[Hanshi]

Decades ago when my only pistol was a Rem c&b, I kept it loaded all the time and on a nightstand by my bed. One summer rain blew in through the window and soaked the revolver. I wiped it off and took it out a few days later and it fired off all shots perfectly.

[Fly]

My 44 Remmie is my main line of defense at my side each night.My son in law is a policeman.
When he comes down here to the lake we always go shoot our guns.My remmie can out shoot
his glock hands down, & he will tell you that.

It may not shoot as fast, & as many but i can hit more accerate with my first shot.Mmmmmmmmmmmm

Fly:roll:

[Combat Diver]

On some federal/state lands that I used to hike and camp, black powder wasn't considered a firearm. Keep my 51' Navy with me during those times.


CD

[Omnivore]

I've left mine loaded, without any nail polish, just loaded normal, in my pickup (which gets parked outside in the weather) in the same conditions, and after many months it fired all six. The only problem is in the greased wads, which can contaminate the powder and result in a weakened charge after some period of time.

I figure a loaded and capped percussion chamber is about as weather resistant as most metal cartridges. Better than some even. If you're pinching oversized caps to make them stay on, there would be some chance of incursion there, but a tight fit cap would be as good as anything.

Funny thing; I've had Russian steel cased hollowpoints with the nice lacquer sealed case mouths and lacquer sealed primers, but you could remove a bullet and blow air through it, into the hollowpoint, around the lead core, and out the bullet base. The powder then would be very exposed to weather in spite of the nice looking, confidence building lacquer. So yeah; things are not always what they seem.

[izzyjoe]

i've also heard that tale about Wild Bill shooting his pistol's everyday, but you'd think that it would get rather expensive with that much shootin'. and just think about the cleanig process too, he may have shot them alot, but sometimes the truth get's a little long. anyway, i was talking to a friend once about his very subject, cause i was 17yrs old and was'nt old enough for a real pistol. but i did have a .45 kentucky pistol that i built from a kit. i asked him the same question of how long it could be left loaded, he told me if the cap/nipple was sealed and kept dry, that it could be loaded for a long time. but that it would be wise to fire it once in awhile and clean, and reload it. i've left it loaded for several month's, and it never failed to fire, once i did get a little delay, but it still went bang.

[Hellgate]

All you guy's mileage varies from mine. I've had several occasions where I loaded up my '61 Navy, US Marshall, or my Remington Navy with clean and dry chambers, open nipples, no wads, no grease, tight fitting caps, Goex FFFg and after a few months shot them dry only to have one or several chambers fail to fire (dud caps or a weak POP! with no BOOM!). My suspicion is the crummy Remington caps. This fall I'm gonna load up the Remington and use RWS caps which appear to be better sealed. What I do is load the gun up at the beginning of deer/elk season (first of October) and shoot it dry at the end of November after carrying it on me in the rig & in the field while hunting in a variety of weather from hot sun to rain to snow. I suspect it is the paper sealed Remington caps.

[blixen]

I think a good nipple-cap match is key. It also reduces chain fires to about zero.

yeah, izzyjoe, much of that wild west stuff is bologna. I once saw a comparison of the price of a box of cartridges to a month's pay in the days of old that brought things into focus.

BTW, I've got a Rem. New Army (Navy Arms) that was used in an actual shoot out in Ogden, Ut., in the '80s--1980s! Bought it from the lawyer who defended a biker who built the .44 from a kit to carry for self-defense. In a biker-with-chain vs. biker-with-.44 C&B fight-- the .44 carries the day.

Long story short: one biker shoots second biker in leg and goes to court for attempted murder. Lawyer gets him off on self defense. Biker gives lawyer trusty New Army.

[SCHUETZENBOOMER]

When I was a kid(14) and did a lot of trapping, I used to carry my '51Navy. Starting with a very dry and clean cylinder, I would load it and seal both the ball and cap with melted candle wax. Took many a cold November spill in the Muskegon River with that pistol completely submerged. Fired it at the end of the season with all six firing perfectly. I remember one "unloading" all too well. It was below zero and I fired a frozen poplar tree about 20ft away.....the first ball came back past my ear in reverse as fast as it did forward. Never did that again!