1851 Navy & beginner

1861 said:

The official Pietta Instruction and Safety Manual for .36 revolver, .375" ball, FFFG:
SUGGESTED GRAINS: 9-12
THE MAXIMUM GRAINS OF BLACK POWDER: 22

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Not really sure why they list less than max charges as the max one should use. Uberti, for a long time, claimed their Walker was much stronger than the originals but stated something like 30 grns was the max despite the original max being 60 grns with a ball.

I'm certainly not going to suggest to you to use more than what the manufacturer states but they can certainly handle a full load which is closer to 30 grns of 3F with a ball. Maybe someone should email them and ask if their metallurgy is lacking since it's supposedly using better steel than they did in the mid to late 1800's... They even use undersized chambers.

The Hazards Powder paper cartridges used a 141 grn bullet under 21 grns of their 4F "pistol powder" which was found to be quite similar to Swiss powder's 4F.

Looking online I found this:

https://s20.postimg.org/d1662zzfh/IMG_3281.png

Where did you find a max of 22 grns?

I'm wondering if the min (or even max) load can be used without a filler and have the projectile seated on the powder.

Regarding the powder, if the Czech powder is less expensive than the German powder. I'd buy the Czech powder - buy a pound or 3. I have to drive about 1.5 hours to find a shop that sells real black powder. They carry 1 brand (Scheutzen) but all sizes. I pay $20 USD per pound.

Remington #10 caps work best with Pietta nipples. If you can find them or order them, I'd recommend you buy 1000 (10 tins of 100 caps) if it wont make you go poor. 1 tin of 100 caps won't last that long.

You'll need to invest in some tooling.

Bare minimum:
A powder flask w/ 20grain spout.
A powder measure.
A Nipple wrench.
A suitable holster.

Get a capping tool. Polish cappers makes a real nice one. You might wait for his Colt specific one to come out. The Ted Cash Snail capper works good.
Along with those accessories. You'll need - powder (FFFg is best, FFg will work). Caps (Remington #10 as previously mentioned), Round ball .375 inch diameter to .380 inch diameter, and ideally .36 cal wads that go between the ball and powder.

I'd recommend you pick up a tube of Thompson Center - Bore Butter. I use that on the arbor (aka cylinder pin) and nipple threads.

This video walks you through all the steps of loading and shooting an 1851 Navy.



You need to learn to take the gun completely apart and put it back together for cleaning. Black powder is corrosive and will rust / rot the barrel and cylinder / nipples if not properly cleaned / neutralized.

Here's 2 more excellent videos that show how to do that:

I learned a great trick for those few times you may not have the time to clean your gun afterwards. Oil. Ballistol is what I use and what was recommended, however the idea is to saturate the black powder fouling with an oil so as to keep moisture from getting to the metal.

I tried it and it works. I left both pistols in my hot and humid garage for a few days. Ballistol in the aerosol can is better for this as you can more easily get it all over and down inside.

When handling metallic lead balls you don't want to put your fingers into your mouth or rub your eyes until you've washed your hands.The lead isn't toxic if you keep it outside of your body and it does not soak in through your skin and it does not give off any fumes when in bullet and ball form. So basically wash your hands after handling it before you use your fingers to hold food. Other than that you don't need to take any sort of precautions about the lead other than being sure that an ingot of the stuff does not fall on your foot... You could keep the lead balls in a dish on your bedroom dresser exposed to the air for literally years and not suffer in any way. As mentioned it's a different story if you get into casting your own round balls. But if you buy them it's simply not an issue provided you wash your hands before eating.

You keep asking about the priming compound in the cap. I don't really know but at one point in the past it used to be fulminate of mercury. But these days it's something else. But really why does it matter? You buy caps and you push them onto the "chimneys" and you shoot the guns. The only really important thing about caps is that they fit the nipples so the compound in the end is resting against the pressure ring of the nipple so the hammer can set off the compound. If they wedge tight before they seat fully then the hammer won't set off the cap. But typically the first hit seats the cap and the second will fire it.

I use a wood push stick to push the caps firmly into place just for this reason. Pressure will not set off the compound by itself. It needs a sharp, fast strike to ignite. With the longer caps they can push against the nipple taper and not seat until pushed hard or struck by the hammer. If in doubt buy ONE tin of the shorter caps and just pinch them to a somewhat oval shape so they grab the taper at least slightly. That's all you really need. And if they do need to be pinched then the next time by the longer caps.

The length of the cap plays no noticeable role in how well the cap ignites the powder. It's purely an issue of fitting the nipples.

Being over in Europe it's highly likely that you'll run into the 1075 and S&B caps more than you will CCI or Remington caps. From your pictures above it seems pretty clear to me that the 1075 caps are a close equal to the CCI #11's.

As mentioned you do NOT want an air gap. Black powder needs to be firmly compressed to burn correctly as we desire it to burn in the handguns. So the MINIMUM charge is one which results in the powder being compressed a little. With felt wads as mentioned this means you can use less. But you don't get much noise or smoke from a 10 or less grain load. 20gns is fairly perky but it won't rip the gun out of your hands by any means. The recoil from 20 grains will feel sort of like a firm fairly strong hit from a tennis racquet. Or the sort of feel you get from a nice firm hit through the bat when playing baseball.

Since you've never shot any handguns before I think you're in for a bit of a treat. You SAY you're going to use this gun primarily as a historic sort of display piece. But I would not be surprised if you enjoy the whole exercise so much that you end up shooting it on a regular basis and burn your way through a few pounds of powder and a few hundred round ball per year. It IS a lot of fun!

I haven't found Balistol

1861 said:

Thanks drobs. In 10 days the black powder will be available to buy in my city, in the only shop which occasionally have it, they sell hunting rifles. Whichever powder they get I'll buy. Probably it'll be German powder. Unfortunatelly I can't find Remington 10 caps anywhere for order. I know I need to buy a bunch of tooling, we'll come to that too, soon. Yesterday I discovered those Polish cappers. So they work well? I'll see if I can order one, not too expensive and not too complicated to use, I hope? Already saw those videos how to take the gun apart, a few weeks ago. If it was any more complicated, I'd give up the idea of shhoting from it.

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As BCrider mentioned, buy a tin of what's available. #10 or #11 should work. Best bet would be to load the cylinder with just caps (no powder or ball) and try firing them off. Wear ear protection - caps are loud!!! Eye protection would be a good idea too. Point the gun in safe direction when firing the caps off. Note a practice is to fire a cylinder of caps off before loading with powder. As the caps will clean the nipples of any leftover lubrication from the factory or from cleaning.

A too tall cap could hit the recoil shield and detonate when the cylinder is turned. You might ask your local gun shop to order Remington #10 caps for you. I live in the sticks of Missouri but have found most gun shops and liquor stores will order just about anything I want (percussion caps and Warsteiner Beer) if I pay in advance.

Regarding Ballistol - I haven't found it in my part of Missouri and keep forgetting to order it. (Note to self order 4 bottles of Ballistol)

I use a generic glass cleaner like Windex in a spray bottle with additional water added. Water (with patches and brushes) is really all you need to knock fouling and lead out. I don't clean immediately after shooting because having my own target range (backyard) I'll most likely want to shoot again the next day. I'll shoot for a couple days then clean. Using the watered down windex, I'll hose everything down like Duelist1954 shows in his video, push some patches through barrel with a pistol rod, till they come out clean, then use cue-tips to clean the chambers of the cylinder - concentrating on the base where underside of the nipple meets the chamber. I use an old toothbrush to hit the nipples. I may or may not remove the nipples.

I don't do it every time but I'll occasionally disassemble the frame and clean everything off. Normally in addition to the cylinder and barrel, I clean the arbor, hammer, and recoil shield. I then hose everything down with gun oil.

Supposedly petroleum gun oil type products are bad for bp guns. Since I use water for cleaning, to me, the gun oil I use is for preserving the gun / preventing rust during storage.
As mentioned earlier, I will also take a dab of TC bore butter and slather it on the arbor (aka cylinder pin) before re-assembling my Colts.

Working in Africa, I've had good luck with the above cleaning methods and so far have come home find my guns in perfect condition in my gun safe.

One more thing. There is a requirement on this board and every other gun board - that you post a picture of your new gun.
We all want to see it.

If you can find Sellier & Bellot 4.0mm caps, do get them - they work fine on stock Pietta nipples and are well made. RWS 1075 are another very good caps readily available in the EU, but more expensive than S&B. 1075 Plus is the "magnum" version - more igniting charge that gives you bigger flame, but makes the cap sits higher on the nipple and less skirt to grab on that nipple. Regular 1075 work 100% with black powder, you really don't need the Plus variety. One more thing - if you decide to replace your stock nipples with the more enhanced aftermarket ones, Tresso (discontinued I believe) and Track of the Wolf fit great with both S&B and RWS. The German nipples, that I send you a link earlier to, should work OK with the mentioned caps also - the owner assured me that they were made specifically to fit RWS 1075 caps.

P.S. May I politely suggest, instead of asking all sorts of questions to read first? The Black powder section on this forum has most of the information that you need, you just have to search for it. Read first and then come back with more specific questions - it will be much more easier for the rest to answer you and to follow the thread.

Problem is we don't know the restrictions you have over there and what is available or unavailable. For instance if you can't get Ballistol, can you buy WD40? You need to talk with people over there because we really don't know what you are facing.

I think BCRider is correct in that you'll find yourself at a range more often than you think. It's rather addictive and a lot of fun, especially the learning curve and trying to find what your gun(s) like.

I'd be surprised if this ends up being the only one you own.

....You wrote "A too tall cap could hit the recoil shield and detonate when the cylinder is turned" - but if the cap is pushed all the way down, than - whether the cap is shorter or longer - that shouldn't happen (cap detonating while cylinder turning) - right?

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If they seat all the way so the priming compound sits against the end of the nipple there's no issue just as you're saying. What drobs is referring to is if the skirt of the cap rides up on the nipple taper too soon and it holds the cap too high.

Once you get into this more I think you'll find more souls over your way that shoot BP revolvers. But yeah, us BP types are not all that common. It's like we're in some sort of secret society with a special handshake and everything..... except that we're more than happy to suck in....er.... ENCOURAGE newcomers...

Ballistol should not be too hard to come by over your way. It's made in Germany after all. But it's not one of the latest whiz bang cleaners or oils so locally it's sometimes glossed over and only shows up now and then. But in Europe if you don't find it on the shelf it should not be difficult to order.

Another lube which I've experimented with on a limited basis so far which SEEMS to be fine with BP is Fluid Film. But I've only used it in a limited way. So far so good though.

For day in to day out use where you know you'll be shooting again in within a week or so you can also use some cooking oils. I've only used Canola so far because my initial testing showed that it does not encourage corrosion and in fact resists it better than some other common shop oils. But being a grain oil it does polymerize to a sticky nature over time and eventually will turn into a varnish like film. But that stickiness takes literally weeks to occur.... or a couple of days if left out in the direct sun and heat during summer. But for a day at the range I find it does a fantastic job of keeping the cylinder free turning on the arbor. In fact as the cylinder starts to stiffen up from fouling on the arbor a drop of Canola applied to the front face at the arbor and given a spin frees things up very nicely. I've just made it a habit now that I put a drop at the arbor each time I load up. This keeps the cylinders running very free through a whole day of cowboy action shooting. And that's typically 30 rounds from each gun (6 stages with five shots per revolver). At the end of a day like that the gun is still ready and free running enough to carry on. It's getting terribly dirty to the point you don't really want to hold it any more but mechanically it's ready to carry on for another 30 shots.

My use of Canola oil came from a video on You Tube where it was used for the over ball lube. I had Canola oil and I didn't have bore butter. So I tried it out my first time shooting my own BP revolvers. This has worked nicely for me for nigh on 8 years now. I can shoot all day and the fouling in both the barrel and the cylinder washes away really easily. And it's far less messy since it's literally one drop on the ball where it meets the chamber wall and then let it wick around to form a little meniscus in the joint. This stays in place well even in a holster and seals well against any cross fire possibilities. I've never used any wads between the powder and ball. Just the drop of Canola right in the "V" between ball and chamber. But then I enjoy the smoke and kick I get from using enough powder that I have no need to worry about air gaps. If you're starting with the smaller light charges then a wad is a wise step just to ensure that you have enough fill in the chamber to ensure that there's proper compression of the powder.

The use of the Canola oil appears to work very well as I can't recall ever seeing any obvious leading coming out in the cleaning process from the barrel. If there has been any it was minimal and hid in with the BP fouling which rinsed away easily.

As folks above state water is the key cleaning ingredient for BP fouling. I use a dash of dish soap in with the water simply as an aid to cutting through the oil that is also present. And the cleaning properties of Windex would do much the same thing.

1861 said:

Hey drobs, appreciate your effort. Today I've ordered this:
View attachment 759526
It's the only caps available now in my country, it will be delivered from other city maybe next week. Made in Czech Republic, I'll pay around $8 for pack of 100, I think that's cheap. Black powder will come together with caps. I can't buy balls, none available, so I'll order some cheap balls from France soon, together with wads and cleaning set - I have yet to decide which set (which brand and from which shop, I'll leave it for the weekend).
I asked sellers about Remington No.10 caps - no luck, I can't get them. Maybe in the future. I will order some other caps too, from France, probably RWS 1075, so that I can compare them with these Czech caps.

You wrote "A too tall cap could hit the recoil shield and detonate when the cylinder is turned" - but if the cap is pushed all the way down, than - whether the cap is shorter or longer - that shouldn't happen (cap detonating while cylinder turning) - right?

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Give em a try - can always give them a squeeze.

Usually the too tall cap is from a nipple that is partially unscrewed. Unless the caps are the completely wrong size.

Just for informational purposes (don't run out and buy one) there is a company in the US that sells a cap maker and "re-priming" powder.
They ship internationally. If you're not really careful, handling the re-priming powder incorrectly, will result in loss of fingers and eyes - possibly worse.

#11 cap maker:
https://sharpshooter-22lr-reloader....ons/products/products/11-percussion-cap-maker

Re-priming powder:
https://sharpshooter-22lr-reloader.myshopify.com/products/prime-all-repriming-compound

There is a gentleman that posts here and has a bunch of youtube videos by the name of brushhippie that seems to have decent (maybe not fantastic) results with homemade caps and homemade black powder.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4keAx4qZJL907szrouTFfA

Something to keep in mind - but no need to rush out and invest in, yet.

By the way, that's a great looking revolver you have.

Curious what date code do you have on your Pietta?
http://www.dakotaskipper.net/ebay/Italian_Proof_Date_Codes_1945_-_2030.pdf

Edit: Disregard that date question.
The pdf chart is worth saving to your computer though. I find myself referring to it every so often.

From 1861's post #35:

1861 said:

Code on the right side: CP - what does it mean?

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He knows it is a 2016 pistol with the newer grip style.

Jim

That's a beauty 1861!!!!

I see why you're so proud of it, I would be too.