People overestimate how often percussion revolvers were reloaded...

[Stantheman86]

The Baby Dragoon , without a loading lever , is actually a good design feature by Colt given the revolver's intended use.

Marketed as a carry piece for the Civilian market......the average guy who spent the extra $$ on a Colt .31 Baby Dragoon would most likely have just loaded 5 balls into the cylinder and carried it.

No loading lever to snag on a coat pocket and few if any users of this gun would have carried extra nitrate cartridges, caps, or loose balls and a flask.

I have many coworkers who are firearms enthusiasts and they know I'm the "guy who's into old guns" so they ask about the cap and ball revolvers....all like "how did they reload them things in combat or in a gunfight " I tell them....it was rarely done , in the period. Especially outside military use.

There's a reason serious gunslingers carried a pair of them. Or multiple revolvers. Also the fact that these revolvers get fouled up after a few cylinders is often overlooked.

This whole concept of gun fighters and soldiers jamming cartridges into chambers and capping nipples under fire , in my opinion, rarely happened. People into modern weapons can't get away from the idea of people firing dozens of rounds and moving around, and reloading. It's apples and oranges.

We do far more reloading of these revolvers now than was likely done in the original period, outside of the rare guy who used them for target shooting.

I believe, from what I read, that when the NYPD issued the 1862 Colt Pocket Police .36 , it was carried with 5 rounds in it and no extra rounds were carried.

 

[necchi]

What?!!
You mean hollywood movies ain't real?

 

[rafterob]

The movies back up the posters theory. You never see them reloading, they just keep shooting.

 

[mushka]

When I take my BP revolvers out to shoot, about two complete loadings is all I do. I like to shoot them but don't much care for the loading them. Also after two loadings I've found that the chambers on mine have residued up and a third loading of the ball is hard. I don't dis mantle to load the chambers.

 

[Stantheman86]

When I take my BP revolvers out to shoot, about two complete loadings is all I do. I like to shoot them but don't much care for the loading them. Also after two loadings I've found that the chambers on mine have residued up and a third loading of the ball is hard. I don't dis mantle to load the chambers.

That's about it for me too

I rarely take them down to wipe them out and keep shooting. I usually also have some type of long gun with me and the revolver or couple revolvers is for ending the range day by capping off 6 or maybe 12 rounds at the pistol pits or at a 100 yard swinger

This is a pic from when I put about, probably 50+ rounds through this Uberti 51 Navy but I had to wipe it out a few times. It's loose enough to pop the wedge out with finger pressure. It's a rare event that I cap this many off through a cap and baller.

I've even loaded 3 or 4 of them at home and brought them to the range and just fired them, then just left. I have 4 brass frame Navies I use for this. Just bring extra caps in case a chamber doesn't go off or something.

 

[dickydalton]

I took this 2nd Gen Colt 1851 out and shot about 100 rounds through it to see if Mike (The Goon) was right after he worked on it. 380 round ball over a Gatfoe lubed wad and 21 grains of Swiss 3F. Treso nipples and # 10 Remington caps. Not a single hitch.

 

[Stantheman86]

I took this 2nd Gen Colt 1851 out and shot about 100 rounds through it to see if Mike (The Goon) was right after he worked on it. 380 round ball over a Gatfoe lubed wad and 21 grains of Swiss 3F. Treso nipples and # 10 Remington caps. Not a single hitch.
View attachment 127176

I'm mostly impressed you were willing to burn 100 #10 caps ....I hold on to those things like they're made of gold....

100 rounds without wiping the gun out is impressive .

My Walker gags up after about 12 through it

 

[Stantheman86]

My solution to reloading , just bring 4 loaded revolvers to the range.

Not to offend Pietta fans but I picked these up back when you could get 'em for $200 a piece and I don't obsess over detail cleaning them like I would with something like my Uberti Dragoon or Walkers.

I just break them down, clean them and put them back together for next time. 24 rounds is a quick , fun range trip. If I bring a powder flask , balls and caps I'll reload them all for one more 24 round barrage...... . If you're gonna clean one might as well make it 4.

 

[William P Sepessy]

In John Wesley Hardin's autobiography he mentions an incident which took place during a cattle drive. A conflict arose with another cattle outfit which prompted Hardin to pull a percussion pistol "that I had worn out from shooting on the trail" or words to that affect. Hardin also mentions that when the gun was cocked he had to hold the cylinder in place with his other hand and when he had emptied that gun at his adversaries he went back to camp to get better armed. So I guess someone was doing some shooting and reloading. But I understand the original point--there probably wasn't a lot of "tactical reloads" during a gunfight.

 

[Sixgun_Symphony]

Bowie knives were still carried by civilians.

Military officers still used swords.

 

[maillemaker]

I tend to agree. I suspect that most civilian gunfights are brutal, fast affairs that are over in seconds. You probably never need to reload because nobody has stuck around to be shot at a second time.

You can watch dozens of YouTube videos of security camera footage of what happens when the very first gunshot rings out. The perpetrators invariably absolutely lose their minds. I mean that literally. There is one footage of a bad guy who is trying to rob a store. After a shot rings out, the guy is in such a hurry to flee he runs through a plate glass front window instead of the door.

Most civilians are not combat trained and do not have the nerves or planning or training to respond rationally and coherently when in a firefight. Especially "bad guys" who are generally very much nervous and on edge when doing the bad deed anyway. When the first shot rings out, most of the people's brains go right into "flight" mode and they lose all rational thought and run as fast as they can to get away. Like I said - go watch the self-defense videos on YouTube. It's actually comical watching perpetrators lose their minds and run over/through each other and obstacles once the shooting starts.

Most self-defense situations look a lot more like The Three Stooges than John Wick.

 

[Stantheman86]

In John Wesley Hardin's autobiography he mentions an incident which took place during a cattle drive. A conflict arose with another cattle outfit which prompted Hardin to pull a percussion pistol "that I had worn out from shooting on the trail" or words to that affect. Hardin also mentions that when the gun was cocked he had to hold the cylinder in place with his other hand and when he had emptied that gun at his adversaries he went back to camp to get better armed. So I guess someone was doing some shooting and reloading. But I understand the original point--there probably wasn't a lot of "tactical reloads" during a gunfight.

Isn't John Hardin the guy who spent 3 hours per day practicing his draw ? He probably shot a lot too but being a gunslinger it made sense that he was an avid target shooter, or shot at trees , or whatever he did.

 

[Stantheman86]

I tend to agree. I suspect that most civilian gunfights are brutal, fast affairs that are over in seconds. You probably never need to reload because nobody has stuck around to be shot at a second time.

You can watch dozens of YouTube videos of security camera footage of what happens when the very first gunshot rings out. The perpetrators invariably absolutely lose their minds. I mean that literally. There is one footage of a bad guy who is trying to rob a store. After a shot rings out, the guy is in such a hurry to flee he runs through a plate glass front window instead of the door.

Most civilians are not combat trained and do not have the nerves or planning or training to respond rationally and coherently when in a firefight. Especially "bad guys" who are generally very much nervous and on edge when doing the bad deed anyway. When the first shot rings out, most of the people's brains go right into "flight" mode and they lose all rational thought and run as fast as they can to get away. Like I said - go watch the self-defense videos on YouTube. It's actually comical watching perpetrators lose their minds and run over/through each other and obstacles once the shooting starts.

Most self-defense situations look a lot more like The Three Stooges than John Wick.

I agree 100% , when I carry, whatever it is , it's either with just the rounds in the cylinder or the mag. I rarely carry a reload.

I mean what is going on that I'm gonna fire more than 5, 7 , 10 rounds, etc and then need to reload ? Either I'm dead, they're dead, they ran, or I ran at that point.

If this were 1867 I'd probably have my little .31 pocket with the 5 shots I loaded into it 2 years prior , walking around going about my day. Or if I were wearing something like a 51 Navy I'd probably still just have 6 rounds in it for shooting coyotes or as a defensive piece. I highly doubt Wild Bill carried any nitrate cartridges on him to reload, he probably never once fired all 12 rounds out of his .36 Navies.

 

[springfield art]

View attachment 126919

The Baby Dragoon , without a loading lever , is actually a good design feature by Colt given the revolver's intended use.

Marketed as a carry piece for the Civilian market......the average guy who spent the extra $$ on a Colt .31 Baby Dragoon would most likely have just loaded 5 balls into the cylinder and carried it.

No loading lever to snag on a coat pocket and few if any users of this gun would have carried extra nitrate cartridges, caps, or loose balls and a flask.

I have many coworkers who are firearms enthusiasts and they know I'm the "guy who's into old guns" so they ask about the cap and ball revolvers....all like "how did they reload them things in combat or in a gunfight " I tell them....it was rarely done , in the period. Especially outside military use.

There's a reason serious gunslingers carried a pair of them. Or multiple revolvers. Also the fact that these revolvers get fouled up after a few cylinders is often overlooked.

This whole concept of gun fighters and soldiers jamming cartridges into chambers and capping nipples under fire , in my opinion, rarely happened. People into modern weapons can't get away from the idea of people firing dozens of rounds and moving around, and reloading. It's apples and oranges.

We do far more reloading of these revolvers now than was likely done in the original period, outside of the rare guy who used them for target shooting.

I believe, from what I read, that when the NYPD issued the 1862 Colt Pocket Police .36 , it was carried with 5 rounds in it and no extra rounds were carried.

You, Sir, are correct!

 

[William P Sepessy]

Stantheman86, Hardin himself mentions that later in his life, after being released from a long, brutal prison term, he had to practice constantly in order to preserve some of the speed he had as a young man. Credible witnesses attested to Hardins' speed and skill with a sixgun. After Hardins' death in El Paso, his landlady was interviewed and she described how she heard the clicking of his pistols--he was using the 1877 Colt double actions at that time(1895)--as he practiced daily with empty guns. She also apparently witnessed some of it as she said he would pull both pistols, "spring around" and begin pulling the triggers. I believe at that time he also had a custom leather vest made with pockets deep and wide enough for the 1877's.
But back to the original points, Hardin spent most of his career with percussion pistols and was in plenty of scrapes, many times carrying only one gun. I never heard of him mentioning a reload in the middle of it.

 

[Timber Wolf]

Always carry a reload, even if a “New York” reload. His buddy’s may show up before the cops. : )

 

[Gee Dog]

That's fine, pure speculation can be fun too, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Whether old timers reloaded their revolvers in the course of a fight probably depended upon the nature of the fight. It can be safely supposed that if they needed to reload, they did.

 

[FishDFly]

I tend to agree. I suspect that most civilian gunfights are brutal, fast affairs that are over in seconds. You probably never need to reload because nobody has stuck around to be shot at a second time.

You can watch dozens of YouTube videos of security camera footage of what happens when the very first gunshot rings out. The perpetrators invariably absolutely lose their minds. I mean that literally. There is one footage of a bad guy who is trying to rob a store. After a shot rings out, the guy is in such a hurry to flee he runs through a plate glass front window instead of the door.

Most civilians are not combat trained and do not have the nerves or planning or training to respond rationally and coherently when in a firefight. Especially "bad guys" who are generally very much nervous and on edge when doing the bad deed anyway. When the first shot rings out, most of the people's brains go right into "flight" mode and they lose all rational thought and run as fast as they can to get away. Like I said - go watch the self-defense videos on YouTube. It's actually comical watching perpetrators lose their minds and run over/through each other and obstacles once the shooting starts.

Most self-defense situations look a lot more like The Three Stooges than John Wick.

Have ever been in an enclosed structure when a pistol was fired or fired multiple times?

 

[Stantheman86]

Stantheman86, Hardin himself mentions that later in his life, after being released from a long, brutal prison term, he had to practice constantly in order to preserve some of the speed he had as a young man. Credible witnesses attested to Hardins' speed and skill with a sixgun. After Hardins' death in El Paso, his landlady was interviewed and she described how she heard the clicking of his pistols--he was using the 1877 Colt double actions at that time(1895)--as he practiced daily with empty guns. She also apparently witnessed some of it as she said he would pull both pistols, "spring around" and begin pulling the triggers. I believe at that time he also had a custom leather vest made with pockets deep and wide enough for the 1877's.
But back to the original points, Hardin spent most of his career with percussion pistols and was in plenty of scrapes, many times carrying only one gun. I never heard of him mentioning a reload in the middle of it.

That's neat, he was one of the few dedicated , real gunslingers and he made sure he kept his skills up. I'd feel like the average guy probably would struggle to hit anything, wasn't interested or worried about quick drawing and carried more as a deterrent or for shooting wild animals, than at people.

I'd imagine very very few of the gun fights back then were any more than drawing your piece at very close range and someone getting shot, or running away to avoid getting shot. All the Young Guns running gun battle type stuff and Spaghetti Western " bad guys on every rooftop" thing was just movie lore that a lot of people like to romanticize about. Even the recorded accounts of the real gun fights like OK Corral or the stuff Wild Bill , etc were involved in were relatively few shots fired. I think the William Tutt incident was one of the very few recorded events of an actual "showdown in the street" and modern historians believe there were far fewer gun fights than we believe.

 

[Stantheman86]

That's fine, pure speculation can be fun too, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Whether old timers reloaded their revolvers in the course of a fight probably depended upon the nature of the fight. It can be safely supposed that if they needed to reload, they did.

I can see it more in an actual combat scenario, like Civil War, Indian Wars, etc when sure, you had to re-stuff your six gun to keep shooting , of course it was likely done but probably not very often. The movie Gettysburg which , for it's time tried to be totally correct shows Col. Chamberlain reloading his Colt in between Confederate charges but I don't think he'd be doing that while actively engaged. I have a hard time capping a revolver when I've had too much coffee let alone while getting shot at

But yes it would all depend on the situation.