Shot load for cap & ball revolver?

I just started fooling around with a 1851 navy revolver. I was thinking that it might be fun to throw it in a holster the next time that I head out into the desert. I usually like to carry 1 round of snake shot followed by regular ammo in my desert gun. I was wondering if anyone here has any experience loading shot into a cap & ball revolver. I looked into taking one of the shot capsules that I load into my .38 & stuffing it into a sabot, but that would just be way too long. I know that black powder shotguns use a powder charge covered by a wad, covered by shot, covered by an overshot wad. Is something similar available in .44 cal? Is there another way to do it?

Sam Fadala's excellent book on shooting Blackpowder Handguns (has Ruger Old Army's on the cover, if I remember right) has a section on shot loads in revolvers. It gives loads and "how to" and expected results at various ranges too.

There's numerous other interesting tests and info in that book, I highly recommend it. :thumbsup:

Old No7

I experimented a little with this, and was going to try again with wonderwads. I was at the range and out of wonder wads. I found a spent steel .45 auto casing and used it as a wad punch to cut wads from a thin piece of cardboard.

I loaded 25 grains of powder, a cardboard wad, topped the cylinder off with shot, and then put another cardboard wad on that. I only tried on shot at a time and only shot five or six shots because the wads were a pain to full with.

The closest target at the range was at ten yards. That was too far for my load, but it held up okay at about half that range. This load should work for snakes, but I don't shoot them. I just wanted to see what it would do.

I would stick with only loading the first chamber with this though, because I don't know if the load will stay in place when the revolver recoils.

BTW, I used a second model dragoon for my experiment with shoot loads, so I got a little more shot on top of 25 grains of 3F than you will with an 1851 Navy. You may want to reduce that load or use Pyrodex P, which seems to compress a little more to get ana dequate amount of shot in the load.

I should also mention that all I had available was 4 shot; so I'm that you could get a lot better results with 8 or 9 shot.

Hmmm....seems to me that shot would not be good for a rifled barrel..... I would shoot shot out of a smoothbore.

*** wv scrounger ****

Hmmm....seems to me that shot would not be good for a rifled barrel..... I would shoot shot out of a smoothbore.

*** wv scrounger ****

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Scrounger, this comes up allot when talking about slug bores in modern shotguns, IIRC it will make it scatter much more randomly than if it was shot out of a smoothbore but it won't hurt the rifling... :m2c:

Old #7,
Do you happen to remember the title of that book? I think that I just bought the wrong one. The one I got is called Black Powder Loading Manual Expanded 4th Edition by Sam Fadala. I can't find anything in there about shot loads for revolvers. I now see on the propaganda page in the back of the book that there is another publication written by Sam called The Complete Black Powder Handbook. There's also another one that he co-wrote called Black Powder Hobby Gunsmithing. I think that I need to get my facts straight before I make another purchase.

Thanks,
Jim

As for Scrounger & the SKS guy, you’re both right. I load shot capsules for my .38. Rifled bores are not particularly good for that. They pattern terribly. Since I’m just looking for something that is effective against snakes at 6 feet, I can live with the lousy pattern. I haven’t seen any damage to my .38 barrel from doing that yet, so I see no reason why it shouldn’t work equally well (or poorly) in a C&B revolver once I find out how to hold the shot in the cylinder.

Maybe 2 .45cal sabot bases would work. I could cut just the bases off the sabots. I could put one under the shot & use the other as an overshot wad. They will fit in the cylinder fine, but I don’t know what will happen to the pressure when they neck down in the forcing cone & barrel. It’s a little too risky for me to just go running off into uncharted waters like that without first having some sort of reliable reference data to work from. I guess that I’ll scratch around a little more.

There just isn't much room in a C&B chamber for powder shot and wads. In my 1860 with 20 gr. 3f, and a thick leather wad, I can get just 80 gr of #8 shot and still have room for a thin overshot card. That is 80 gr. actual weight which works out to about 80 pellets of #8 shot. That is only about 1/6 of an ounce or 1/3 as much as a 1/2 oz. .410 skeet load.
Add to that the wide scattered doughnut pattern common to shot from rifled barrels and I think you're flogging a dead horse, not to mention the likelyhood that the overshot card will not hold under recoil of firing another chamber and I doubt you'll have much luck. But experimenting is fun. :v

I agree with your thoughts on the recoil. I only loaded one chamber with shot when I was experimenting with it.

I think that if I were going to use a BP handgun for snakes, I would just get one of the single shot smoothbores and use wonder wads as overpowder and overshot wads. The rattlesnakes I have encountered though are just as anxious to avoid confrontation as I am, so I don't bother them unless I have to. Even then I would prefer to move them a safe distance away rather than kill them.

A couple of thoughts. You might try gas checks for over and under wads. another thought would be to cut sheet lead with a gasket punch and stack them. Depending on the thickness of the lead you might get 8 pieces or more in the chamber. A small amount of dry lube between them to keep them from sticking together.
The old teacher told me that if the shot will not go through a tin can then it will not kill small game reliably.

Info for JIM:

The Sam Fadala book that has revolver shot loads in it is:

The Black Powder Handgun
by Sam Fadala
DBI Books
c1981

It has a BEAUTIFUL brace of blue & stainless Ruger Old Army's on the cover (care to guess what I shoot???). Cover price was $8.95 back in the day. Guess I'm dating myself, but I think that's the year I got my old OLD ARMY.

Hope you get some use from the book you bought! :thumbsup:

Old No7

Space seems to be the killer here. Shot shells work in my .38 Special because I load those with Bullseye, which is a very dense powder. 3/16” of powder charge is about all that I dare put into a shell. I have lots of room left over for #9 shot. With the bulk of black powder, I don’t have the same luxury. I think that I’m going to abandon the shot-load for a cap & ball revolver quest for the time being. If I decide to take it up again sometime, I’ll post my results. Thanks for all the info guys.

Regards,
Jim

JIMinPHX said:

Space seems to be the killer here. Shot shells work in my .38 Special because I load those with Bullseye, which is a very dense powder. 3/16” of powder charge is about all that I dare put into a shell. I have lots of room left over for #9 shot. With the bulk of black powder, I don’t have the same luxury. I think that I’m going to abandon the shot-load for a cap & ball revolver quest for the time being. If I decide to take it up again sometime, I’ll post my results. Thanks for all the info guys.

Regards,
Jim

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If we're talking about space for shotloads in a .36cal 1851 Navy, you are correct. There is NOT enough space to load an adequate charge of powder or shot in the .36's chambers. Now the .44 versions are a different matter.

I have seen this done, but never owned one myself, if I should ever let my barrel get to the point where I can't put a single .454 round ball into a snake's head, or that my eyes or old age can't hold steady enough to shoot, THEN I just might have to try making a "snake revolver".

Using a barrel assembly that had been rusted up inside, the owner cleaned the rifling out with the appropriate drill/reamer so that it was something like a .47 caliber. (I think they used a 15/32" bit). What this did was to make an overbored gun that would handle shot loads quite nicely.

The load was about 22-23gr of FFFg, a wad, then #9 or smaller shot, another wad and then the chamber was sealed with melted wax transferred by spoon from a candle safely away from the powder source!

The effect was about like that of a 2 3/4 .410 bore shotgun load. It really was surprisingly effective and I saw it take out targets a lot further than the sporadic doughnut spiral shot patterns from a rifled barrel.

AFAIK, there is no problem with it being smoothbored, as many muzzleloading single shots are smoothbore and much shorter barrelled than typical revolvers. You may want to contact a gunsmith about the procedure and make sure that in your state and locale that this unit is legal to have and use.

Good Luck on your project, and Shoot Safely!
Also have a Happy Thanksgiving!
WV_Hillbilly

PS Here would be the best thing!!! If you use a second barrel assembly, AND have a second cylinder, you can still keep your revolver as a rifled pistol and have the other cylinder loaded up with solid ball. This would only work with the Colt sytle frames though... still it would be fun!!!!

I love it when that hillbilly chimes in. :thumbsup: I like his perspective. Maybe I will give it one more shot. That wax sounds like a good idea. I think it just might do the trick.

Interestingly enough, I recently found that if I keep the powder charge down so that my muzzle velocity is only around 1,000 fps or so, I do not get the typical donut shaped patterns out of my 4 inch .38 Special. I actually manage to get about 20 inches of even coverage at 10 yards. I was really surprised to see that. I had always assumed that the donut shape was caused by the load spinning when it left the barrel. I’m now wondering if it had actually been caused by the undershot wad pushing through the middle of the shot column. Seeing is believing.

This brings to mind a story about the 38 charter arms and shot. This little 2" 5 shot belonged to my brother. He saw a rat in the front yard and went after it with the little pistol, 4 shot loads and one hard ball. He hit the rat with the first 3 shots and all it did was send the rat in a new direction, the last shot had the rat going toward my brother. As the rat ran between his feet he fired again and the plastic wad from the shot capsel killed the critter. All the shot BBs just bounced off.

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Rats are tough little critters. It usually takes 2 or 3 solid hits from a .20 caliber Silver Streak air rifle at 750 fps to stop one. I’ve even shot one square in the face with a slug out of a .22 LR pistol & seen him do an about face & disappear back down his hole. Now, there was rat blood 360 degrees around that hole, so I am sure that I got him good with that shot. He was just a tough critter.

Those shot loads will drop a rat, but you need to be right up close. A .22 shot load is reliably lethal to a rat at 2 or maybe 3 feet. Point blank shots stop them cold. A .38 shot load is lethal to a rat at about twice the range of a .22 shot load. Snakes usually drop a little easier.

John Taylor said:

the last shot had the rat going toward my brother. As the rat ran between his feet he fired again

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He shot when the rat was between his feet? Wow! That sounds risky!

It does remind me of a time that a raccoon, with 5 shots in him, came at a friend of mine who only had one shot left in his .22 revolver. That last shot was taken at VERY short range & he had a positively petrified look in his face when he pulled the trigger. Fortunately, ol’ Mr. Ring-tail did drop after that one. You should have seen my buddy scrambling away from that critter after taking the shot. It was hilarious. :grin:

I shot a pack rat in the house with a 22 short in a #4 remingtion. He was looking at 2 cats and didn't see me put the muzzle about 2" from his head. I pulled the trigger and he took off, no blood and no hole in the wall. The next day I saw him and he had one eye pink and the other blue. The cats stayed away from him. Finaly got him in a rat trap using choclet for bait.