How long can you keep percussion revolver loaded?

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Depends on humidity and how well it's sealed. Conditions will vary throughout the nation.
 
Ball park number? A hour, a week a year? Michigan is pretty humid.
 
junkman_01 said:
A hundred and fifty years in some cases. Is that ball park enough for you?
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+1

BP is a simple mixture, not a compound. It doesn't break down and many people have found that guns loaded well over 100 years will still fire. The Cap is what will go bad. If you protect the powder from oil or being inundated with water it will be good for centuries. Even powder that was once damp will still fire when dried out, the power and performance of that dried powder will be dependent upon whether or not the powder was wet enough to clump. Solvents and oils can either "kill" the powder or attenuate the power to the point it's useless.

One of my friends who happens to post under the alias w30wcf (w44wcf on a lot of other forums) commonly disassembles old (19th century if possible) cartridges and reports on them. After he records everything he can about the powder he then loads it in a modern case if the old one isn't serviceable. Sometimes with the same bullet sometimes a new one of the same weight and style he will shoot it over a chorongraph to determine actual velocity of the original load.

From w30wcfs' and others tests we can now see that the old powders are very similar in performance to the ones we use now. And, we get actual velocities of what the original loads really were.

I use lubricated wads in my cap guns, if I were loading for extended periods of time I would probably use a dry felt wad over the powder and pure beeswax over the ball or even dry. I would use pure beeswax because it will last for decades. Just put fresh caps on it every few months if it isn't carried, more often if it was. But if it were being carried I would think you would shooting and reload it every so often.

~Mako
 
Thanks for the info. I am going to be bedridden for about a month or so and I hate be utterly defenseless for that long. My rifle just won't do under these circumstances.
 
a thin layer of nail clear nail polish can keep the cap good until it is fired. longest I have gone with this style is a little over a year on an old clinker I pick up just for the test.
 
I was once given the task of looking over and evaluating an old revolver that a neighbor said was in her family for generations. Her son brought it over in a brown paper bag for me to examine. Well the first thing I noticed was that the chambers were still loaded. I pulled the balls and literally scraped the powder out in to an ash tray. It had turned into an almost solid mass. The revolver turned out to be a Pettingill's Patent .44 cal. double action revolver in fair shape. I wrote all the information down that I could find for the neighbor woman, but before sending the kid home with the gun, I decided to see if the powder was still viable. I struck a match and lowered into the pile of powder in my ash tray and sure as ****, it went off as well as if it had been made yesterday! I'm sure if I has capped it, it would have shot just fine. It had been loaded since about 1862-63.

3084.jpg
 
When I lived in Pensacola Fl. many years ago, there was an article in the local paper about someone finding a civil war cannon ball and he decided to drill out the fuse hole for some reason, it took out him and part of his house. The ball was found on the beach under the sand and was well rusted, based on the shrapnel shown in the photo of the remains of the house.
 
JustKen said:
Thanks for the info. I am going to be bedridden for about a month or so and I hate be utterly defenseless for that long. My rifle just won't do under these circumstances.
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If you expect to be whacked out on painkillers and experiencing impaired judgement, maybe having a loaded gun handy isn't such a good idea...good caregivers are hard to come by!

Sorry you are facing such an ordeal, hope it does not last that long.
 
I know this thread was meant to be about percussion revolvers, but this pic is pertinent to the subject of how long blackpowder firearms can be loaded and still fire after prolonged storage.

Pete from Middlesex Village Trading Company posted this pic on his facebook page some months ago.

31173_1457996577563_1462839536_31203819_4741543_n.jpg

He bought an antique Spanish fowling piece from someone. It's dated from the 1700's and had been hanging over a mantle for decades. He checked to see if it was still loaded and sure enough, it had a full load. It is unknown how long it was loaded, but you can see from the varied size of the shot, it had been loaded for more than a hundred years, but looks like it was loaded the other day.
The use of tow, the varied granularity of the powder, and the random size of the shot is pretty interesting.
 
When National Park Historian Ed Bearss hauled up the U.S.S. Cairo, an ironclad that sank from a torpedo (underwater mine), they found a lot of shells. The pull out the blackpowder and dried it. It was still viable.

Einstein was wrong about World War IV being fought with sticks 'n stones. It will be fought with blackpowder that somebody dugged out of someone's long forgotten cache.
 
Justken,
Be sure to have absolutely no oil in the chambers or flash holes of the gun. Be sure the flash holes are clear before you charge it and run a nipple pick a bit into the powder before capping with reliable fitting caps. After your recovery in a month or so, then take it out and shoot it. I kept my navy under my pillow for a month or two when living in a seedy neighborhood on a summer job. finally took it out and shot it and a couple chambers didn't even go off and another was a poofer. That was back in about 1972 and I now know a lot more about the C&Bs but I'd rather keep a .357mag handy with fixed ammo if my life depended on it.
 
There's no doubt in my mind that if properly loaded a cap/ball revolver will stay loaded and can be kept loaded for a very long time (150 years in some cases). In order for it to be reliable it must be where water, moisture, or oils can't get to the powder. So what is the best properly step by step process to load a revolver.
 
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Hey, Ken, I'm too new to BP to be able to give you a credible answer; I'll leave that to others. Just want to wish you well, and a complete and rapid recovery.
 
perc. revolver loaded

I read where Wild Bill, would empty out and reload his Colt Navy's every morning. The article said he was aware of the fact that the weather could affect the powder in the cylinders.
 
I imagine one day I'll findout for sure. I've had my stainless Ruger Old Army loaded since late 1992. I remember the year because I was going through a divorce. I loaded it for a special BP hunt and have never fired it since. It's been in a safe ever since with a Golden Rod. I'm sure it will fire like the day I loaded it.
 
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