Last year I began my foray into Civil War era rifles and muskets by purchasing a Pedersoli 1861 Springfield rifle in spite of my son's admonition to get a 1853 Enfield rifle for a variety of reasons. I simply had my mind set on the 1861 rifle.
The rifle arrived and I spent an evening cleaning it getting it prepared for its first range trip. I had picked up some CCI "Multiple Use" Four Wing Musket Caps, had ordered and received some Minie ball from Dixie while awaiting my bullet mold. With all my accoutrements in-hand and a brand new rifle I proudly loaded the first bullet. I capped the nipple, took aim, squeezed the trigger, and nothing happened. The great boom I was expecting to hear never came. I check the charge seating, recapped the nipple, took aim and tried another shot. Again - nothing.
Having fired many caplock rifles over the decades, I knew I could get some powder under the nipple and that may get the charge to fire. Fire it did with two distinct booms.
So went the afternoon with most charges needing to be seeded under the nipple. Rather than spend an afternoon on the range showing off my new rifle and bragging about it, I slunk back to the truck with the rifle cased and hidden from view. Something was terribly wrong.
An internet search revealed that there was a modest amount of dissatisfaction with the CCI brand of musket caps so I ordered some RWS caps with more horsepower - according to the internet experts. I returned to the range with the RWS caps and experienced fewer misfires but still, had about 4 in 10 fail to fire. I was now wondering how in the heck the Union Army won the Civil War with rifles that didn't shoot 40% of the time!
Deep and detailed investigation revealed that the larger snail on the 1861 rifles was never an optimum design and the 1853 snail makes this abundantly clear. I looked with more detail and discovered that the snail clean-out screw on my rifle was protruding well into the snail under the nipple and blocking a large part of the area directly beneath the nipple flame orifice. Clearly that is not a good idea and even I can deduce that with my non-engineering mind. Clear hole good. Blocked hole bad.
I removed the clean-out screw and reduced its length to just clear the screw channel and not block the flash channel. I also noticed that some of the nipples I had ordered as spare nipples had a larger throat size and some with the narrower throats had a dimple on the base of the nipple at the exit orifice. I took one of the nipples with a larger throat and cut a dimple on the base of the nipple like some of the other nipples had.
The rifle now fires the first time and every time with these few simple steps. The CCI caps fire the gun just fine as do the RWS caps. One would think that Pedersoli would figure out that a blocked flash channel can't be good and that all the manufacturers would, by this time, optimize the nipple design for the 1861 series of rifles.
If you are fussing with misfires on your Pedersoli 1861 Springfield, please check that the flash channel is not blocked by a clean-out screw that is too long and of course, try another nipple with a larger throat. I got my replacement nipple from Track of the Wolf.
Off to burn some powder!
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Originally Posted by Nobade
