Introducing family members to black powder

[tom in nc]

I shot my "new" Philadelphia Derringer several times today. Then, later this afternoon I took it to a family get-together. A couple of my brother-in-laws and a nephew that had never fired a muzzle loader were there. I loaded and shot the pistol, showing them what to expect. After reloading it and capping it, with the cock down on the cap, I handed to the first, first timer. He cocked it and pulled the trigger, and nothing. Recocking, pulled the trigger, nothing. Keeping it pointed in a safe direction, he handed it back to me. I examined the cap and found it to be empty, just an empty copper cap. With a fresh cap it fired as it should. Reloading it several more times, we passed it around and shot it a few more times with no problems. That was the first dud cap I have ever found.











With

 

[Eterry]

Back in the day when Remington caps were all you could find it was very common to open the lid on a tin of caps and see many foil primer cakes missing from the caps. You threw the empty ones and the cake away. I tried to put them back together but it didn't work well.

I'm glad you had fun and introduced others to black powder shooting.

 

[SDSmlf]

Dud caps are not a rare occurrence if you get a not a so good lot. Have group of over 1000 caps from one manufacturer with nearly 5% no bang because charges are missing from caps. Waiting to hear back from their customer service.

 

[tom in nc]

I guess I've just been beating the average so far. I've used a few tins of caps over he past few years. Here's what we were using yesterday.

I believe I'll start looking inside before I put them on the nipple.

 

[hanshi]

It's been a long time (many years) since I've found a dud cap. But it was an old cap that had been tossed around and lost some of the compound. Never had a bad CCI cap.

 

[tom in nc]

That could be the case (tossed around) with these caps. I have no idea where they've been. They came with another gun I bought at a flea market.

 

[rp77469]

Decades ago I gave up on Remingtons because the ignition compound fell out on so many. I even bought a set of Uncle Mike's replacement nipples for my ROA, as the originals were sized for #10 caps, and only Remington made that size. I settled on CCI brand to replace the Rems, and have shot them almost exclusively ever since. A few years ago I found some Winchester Magnum #11 at wallyworld on end of season close out and bought a dozen tins. They also worked well for me, not changing group size or point of impact for my favorite percussion rifle. I still have a few partial tins of old Navy Arms caps and a couple other unknowns from the late 70's squirreled away somewhere.