[Steve499]

I loaded my Pietta 1858 Remington just before deer season and didn't wind up shooting it until yesterday. It was loaded with 32 grains of Swiss 3F, a card wad, lube pill and .451 ball with Remington caps on the nipples. All chambers went off normally. The only thing I did was to ensure the chambers were absolutely dry before I loaded them.

This revolver is the most accurate handgun I own. I get better groups with it than I do my S&W K-38 and K-22, both with match ammo, and they have better sights! I own several others also but my two Smiths were the best of them all before I got this one.The target posted isn't an unusual one. If I could do it, I'm not sure it wouldn't shoot into one ragged hole. This one was shot with the 40 day loads from a bench with my wrists rested at 24 yards.(I thought it was 25 but the laser rangefinder said different)

Steve

[mec]

more excellent and educational data!

[Flintlock Tom]

Damn, Steve, that's fine shootn'!

[happybrew]

Now those are some good results. With CCI caps it just hasn't happened for me leaving it loaded for any extended length of time. Do you live in a dry climate?

happybrew

[Steve499]

No, Missouri is usually pretty opposite of dry, but it was inside and the humidity in the house gets low when heating is required. I loaded a pistol in 1994, or maybe a year or two even before that, and it fired normally in 2006. The chambers were dry, loaded with powder and ball only, and caps & chamber mouths were sealed with beeswax. I'm fairly confident that most cases of misfires after some extended period of loaded storage can be blamed on petroleum contamination, probably of the cap and maybe the powder near the nipple. If everything is clean, dry and sealed, the caps and powder should store on/in a revolver cylinder just as long as they store in the cans they came in. If a stored revolver misfires, my opinion is one of those three requirements wasn't met.

Steve

[Low Key]

In February of this year I loaded up one of the cylinders of my 1858 Remington with one of my typical “leave the cylinder loaded just in case I really need it” loads. (40gr pyrodex p, dry card wad, lube pill, .454 ball, and CCI #11 cap). The chambers were pre-cleaned with alcohol and dried so that no lubricant remained inside the chambers themselves. CCI #11 caps fit tight on the cones of this particular weapon so there should have been a nearly airtight seal.

The gun stayed in the house most of the time, but I carried it with me whenever I’d go on one of my short hikes around my property, (I have 10 acres of mostly woods). The cylinder stayed loaded for about six months before I fired it out in August. I loaded up a spare cylinder with the exact same load before firing out the first for comparison and I could tell absolutely no difference between the freshly loaded cylinder and the one that was loaded for six months. If you had shut your eyes and mixed the two up, you wouldn’t have been able to distinguish which one was which by firing them.

If you do it right, you could leave a cylinder loaded for years, (as Steve has done), with no reduction in power or reliability.

[fineredmist]

Just goes to show you that newer isn't always better. I looked down my nose at the charcoal burners until I shot one some 30 years ago and realized that these are serious firearms with fine accuracy when used by people that know what the are doing. I really enjoy seeing the look on faces when you show them targets that they can't duplicate with their modern guns.

[Steve499]

I don't believe the era of muzzle loaders in common usage and that of petroleum lubricants had too much overlap. Sperm whale oil or any of the other available lubricants probably didn't protect against rust as well as, say, WD-40, but for the same reason they didn't, they also didn't kill caps and powder as easily. I'm sure the old timers had their share of misfires. ( an 1858 Remington to Wild Bill Hickocks head misfired some time before another fellow finally pulled it off) I don't think they had as many, proportionally, as we seem to today. I think we would have a lot more mention in the records about it if they had.

I use olive oil as a lubricant. When I use the bottle up, I'm going to try canola. If I could get Low Key to stop killing all the sperm whales in their northern migration before they make it up to me, I'd like to try some sperm oil. (How bout it Logan, couldn't you just let ONE go on by?)

Steve

[Low Key]

The next one I see gets a free pass, It's all up to you after that, just don't let the eskimo's get him first! :p

[dstorm1911]

the story has been told on a couple other forums about the 6 civil war guns I bought a couple years ago, they had been hidden on a farm north of Joplin Missuri by a farmer, they were his 4 sons rifles and 2 colt 44s the union troops were searching for rebs and the farmer hid the 4 rifles in an area under a stall in the barn used for storage, the rifles had been packed in axle grease then wrapped in sack cloth the two pistols had been hidden inside the wall behind the kitchen stove, 140 years later great grand doughter and husband are carefully dismantling the old family farm as the property has been sold to developers they discover the guns along with 2 20lb wooden kegs of powder... a few years later I hear of these guns that are about to get put up for auction and end up buying them, also am supplied with copies of pictures showing the sons along with other members of their unit holding the 4 rifles as well as a diary describing the week the union soldiers took over the farm etc...

Anyhow, one of the colts was loaded as well as 3 of the rifles, I tried blowing them out with air from my trucks brake system no good sooooo I put caps on the colts nipples and we bungi cord the gun to a spare truck tire and pull the trigger with a string the first few attempts did nothing but pop the caps then.... boom boom boom boom boom all chambers are fired perfectly, next a trip to wally world were musket caps are purchased and the rifles are fired off!!


140 years!! These guns are now cleaned up, it took a month of careful cleaning to get the grease outa the wood but in the end all six look like they were stored just last week, they have not been fired since, As it was a foolish thing to do considering the risk to the guns but man was it impressive. All that witnessed the fireing were very impressed and the lady.... she is in her late 70s and suddenly became worried what could have happened if a spark had detonated those two kegs of powder during all these years of being under that floor.... that storage stall was one of her favorite places to play as a child!!

[SeanSw]

That's a great story dstorm, do you have any pics to share?

[CZguy]

they had been hidden on a farm north of Joplin Missuri by a farmer, they were his 4 sons rifles and 2 colt 44s the union troops were searching for rebs and the farmer hid the 4 rifles in an area under a stall in the barn used for storage

Darn Yankees :D