Why add caps last?

Status
Not open for further replies.

sigwally

Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2021
Messages
95
Location
Florida
This is probably a dumb question with an obvious answer so please forgive me. But during the loading process of a percussion revolver why do we add the caps last? I mean they ARE pressure sensitive . And we are pressing them onto fully loaded chambers. However I read constantly to be sure they are fully seated. With some (most) suggesting fully seating the caps down with a piece of wood or even a horn or antler.
Even Elmer Keith himself said one exploded on him while seating it. So why do we do it this way? Wouldn't it be safer to fully seat all the caps then load ? I am fully bracing myself for the obvious answer, and ready to slap myself in the forehead and say "DUHH"..:confused:. so fire away.

P.S. I did search but could not find the answer.

.
 
If the cap goes off while you're seating it as long as the barrel is pointed in a safe direction and the cylinder gap as well, then you don't have a problem. If it goes off while loading you have a very big problem.
 
sigwally...

Welcome to the forum...!

There are no dumb questions in regard to safety and curiosity.

My answer to your question is “Tradition”.

In the old military drill of loading muzzle-loading arms, priming was always done last as a way to keep things safe until the time to fire.

Loading a barrel of a musket or cannon is a bit less stressful when it is not already primed.

And besides, that’s the way its been done for hundreds of years so why change...? :)
 
My answer to your question is “Tradition”.

In the old military drill of loading muzzle-loading arms, priming was always done last as a way to keep things safe until the time to fire
.

UH nope. It ain't tradition.

The military method of loading was first to PRIME the flintlock, and then to load the piece. This was dangerous, but it was combat, and privates were a dime a dozen. They were expendable, and besides the fellow would only lose part of his hand if there was an ember and the round cooked-off. The round was also loose in the smoothbore muskets, and the rammer did not need constant pressure to seat the ball, which meant only a very small fraction of the time was the soldier's hand over that muzzle.

When they switched to caplock, rifled muskets, the soldier was shoving a relatively snug, lubed bullet down the barrel. Even with the coarse 2F powder, placing a cap over the nipple and then ramming down the minnie bullet did have a chance to force enough air through the nipple to force the cap off the nipple, and onto the ground. Further, the soldier had to keep a good grip on the rammer to force that snug bullet home. IF that rifle had a cook-off..., of if there was a problem with the half cock notch or the private yanked the hammer back to full cock, and the bumping and jostling during the loading process dropped that hammer onto a live cap..., it would likely be bad for the soldier. IF that soldier was in the second rank, the poor bastard infront of the second rank soldier having the accident would also suffer an injury.

So you cap the piece or the revolver chamber after all the loading is done, and you lower the hammer on a pistol to a safe position.

LD
 
Loyalist Dave...

You are correct.

After tearing the paper cartridge powder would be poured in the pan before the rest being dumped down the barrel.

My apologies for putting less than accurate info out there... it is never my intention.

That’s what I get for posting before the first cup of coffee is fully consumed...!
 
Forgive me, I am not one of those people who posts questions just to get people riled up and upset, but none of the above answers really make sense to me. I fully understand how a single shot percussion RIFE should be capped last. But the answer that the gun can go off while pushing in a ball I don't understand. Of course you will suffer serious injury or death if the gun explodes while seating a ball. But while actually seating the ball the cap ( if gun is capped first ) will be in the six o'clock position and fully protected by the frame. Are you saying that the cap can go off by hydraulic pressure, a form of dieseling if you will, as the ball is pushed in? I don't believe the caps seal the chamber enough for this to actually occur. And the pressures can't be that high to ignite powder, Could it ?? Please help me understand this...
 
Interesting question. The cap for some unknown reason being fired by what ever happen stance would not be on a loaded round until the 3rd chamber was loaded. The hammer is on halfcock so what’s going to fire the cap. Hammer being jostled out of half cock (?) seems far fetched to me. A cap on the chamber being loaded could quite possibly be pushed back against the recoil shield but with enough force to fire it....:what: Mind you now I’m not going to change the way I load my cap guns, charge wad, ball, cap, but it’s still an interesting question.
After all we do seat the primer first In metallic cartridge loading and it’s just a cap in another form.
 
Forgive me, I am not one of those people who posts questions just to get people riled up and upset, but none of the above answers really make sense to me. I fully understand how a single shot percussion RIFE should be capped last. But the answer that the gun can go off while pushing in a ball I don't understand. Of course you will suffer serious injury or death if the gun explodes while seating a ball. But while actually seating the ball the cap ( if gun is capped first ) will be in the six o'clock position and fully protected by the frame. Are you saying that the cap can go off by hydraulic pressure, a form of dieseling if you will, as the ball is pushed in? I don't believe the caps seal the chamber enough for this to actually occur. And the pressures can't be that high to ignite powder, Could it ?? Please help me understand this...

May not be about exploding anything. As LD pointed out, seating the ball may cause air pressure to unseat the cap. So, why have to check caps after seating them in the first place?!
I know, you could test it and get back to us. I don't shoot cap and ball, all mine are converted to cartridge but, I'd let you do the testing of course!!

Mike
 
Why not? Because you are forcefully seating a device that is designed to go off by pressure, on a loaded chamber. So my question is why? As far as the Darwin Award ( ouch! Not cool o_O ) I feel you are taking a greater chance of your gun going BOOM when you seat a cap on a loaded chamber than an unloaded one. 45 Dragoon makes sense. Perhaps seating the ball might pop the cap off by air pressure. But I am using vented SliXshot nipples...
 
Why not? Because you are forcefully seating a device that is designed to go off by pressure, on a loaded chamber. So my question is why? As far as the Darwin Award ( ouch! Not cool o_O ) I feel you are taking a greater chance of your gun going BOOM when you seat a cap on a loaded chamber than an unloaded one. 45 Dragoon makes sense. Perhaps seating the ball might pop the cap off by air pressure. But I am using vented SliXshot nipples...

You're right. But, when I seat a cap, i do it with the gun facing down range. In that case, if the cap decides to go off, at least it's in a safe direction. When you're charging a chamber, you have your hand near the chambers themselves. So imagine if a cap does go off while you're charging, then there'd be bad juju.
 
The hammer is on halfcock so what’s going to fire the cap. Hammer being jostled out of half cock (?) seems far fetched to me. m.

Unlike the other guy, when my Spaceship arrived on earth, I lost my super power of X Ray vision. So, I can't visually tell if the half cock is worn, or the sear is worn, or if the sear is actually balancing on the tip of the half cock, instead of being in the notch. And sear tips do break.

Story: I was talking about half cocks and 1911's with a Master Class Bullseye Pistol shooter. He asked me "do you remember Frank?". Well I did shoot twice in Bullseye matches that Frank ran, but I actually don't remember Frank. I also don't remember what I had for breakfast either.

Anyway Frank was shooting timed or rapid fire, and on the load command, dropped the slide on his 1911. And the trigger sear tip broke. Frank's pistol fired five rounds full auto, and it was lucky that Frank only had five rounds in the magazine, because the fifth round went through the brim in Frank's cap!. A sixth would have gone through his forehead.

Anyway, I don't trust half cocks, and I have heard the historical slang of "going off on half cock" enough to believe, half cock failure happened.

Therefore, prime the nipple after the ball has been seated, not before.
 
UH nope. It ain't tradition.

The military method of loading was first to PRIME the flintlock, and then to load the piece. This was dangerous, but it was combat, and privates were a dime a dozen. They were expendable, and besides the fellow would only lose part of his hand if there was an ember and the round cooked-off. The round was also loose in the smoothbore muskets, and the rammer did not need constant pressure to seat the ball, which meant only a very small fraction of the time was the soldier's hand over that muzzle.

When they switched to caplock, rifled muskets, the soldier was shoving a relatively snug, lubed bullet down the barrel. Even with the coarse 2F powder, placing a cap over the nipple and then ramming down the minnie bullet did have a chance to force enough air through the nipple to force the cap off the nipple, and onto the ground. Further, the soldier had to keep a good grip on the rammer to force that snug bullet home. IF that rifle had a cook-off..., of if there was a problem with the half cock notch or the private yanked the hammer back to full cock, and the bumping and jostling during the loading process dropped that hammer onto a live cap..., it would likely be bad for the soldier. IF that soldier was in the second rank, the poor bastard infront of the second rank soldier having the accident would also suffer an injury.

So you cap the piece or the revolver chamber after all the loading is done, and you lower the hammer on a pistol to a safe position.

LD
Also, military paper cartridges had no other allowances for priming other than using a pinch from the cartridge once the end was bitten off. Bite off end of paper cartridge (In the US army, it was a requirement for all inductees to have two opposing teeth. Not neccessarily more than two teeth, but they needed to oppose to allow cartride tearing), pour a small amount into the pan. Pour the rest down the bbl followed by the ball and ram the paper down on top.
 
Picture it this way

If you load it the way most people do. With a ball and a flask and no stand. You have it in hand pointing UP, so as to not spill powder.
It is pointing in your general direction. If it happens to break the tip off the half cock or you have something jammed between the cylinder and the recoil shield and it pushes on a primer. You'll get either a ball to the face or a face full of burning powder, smoke and embers.

Or if you drop it while loading and it's capped. It's pointing up again in your general direction. And unless you just started loading, the chamber under the hammer and the rest are pointing in your direction.

It's tradition and a ingrained historic safety memory of how to leave the range with the same number of holes you came with.


Warfare is completely different. Like above, privates are a nickel a dozen. Combat is already risky and that 1/5 of a second may save your life.
 
Hmm.
Why cap last?

Really didn't ponder that too deeply back when I was shooting cap and ball revolver or muzzleloading rifle. Always capped the rifle last with the gun down range.

Now I am forced into rethinking it all.

I believe that I had the impression that as I rammed a ball over powder in a c'n'b revolver cylinder chamber or rammed a patched ball or saboted bullet over powder in a c'n'b rifle barrel, the only path the air in the chamber/barrel was vented was through the nipple. If I capped first, it seems the air escaping the nipple could loosen the cap, requiring rechecking the seating of the cap after loading. Since seating the cap once was less work (and I am lazy), that is probably why I seated my caps last.

Or because everyone else with more experience did it that way, I thought they knew what they were doing.

As far as the Brown Bess musket was concerned, you bit the end off the paper cartridge and used part of the powder to prime the flashpan and closed the frizzen to keep the priming charge in place as you rammed a .69 caliber ball down a .75 barrel. Air escaped around the ball as you rammed it down. Bess had an enormous flintlock and didn't need fine priming powder in a separate flask like those delicate Pennsylvania York County rifles. Or, so I read. What the Brown Bess lacked in accuracy, it made up for it in volume fire.
 
Actually privates were not a dime a dozen, in the 17th and 18th Centuries was no surplus of labor-Frederick II liked to rely on mercenaries, he thought his subjects were too precious to waste, and the intense drilling necessary to turn a recruit into a soldier made generals much more cautious about engaging in combat than their 20th Century counterparts. There were usually only 1 or 2 major battles a year, marches, sieges, maneuvering was seen as more decisive.
With flintlocks, the Brown Bess, the Charleville the priming charge is part of the load, what goes down the barrel is what is left over. In RevWar artillery priming is the last step in the loading drill.
 
After all we do seat the primer first In metallic cartridge loading and it’s just a cap in another form.

Not the same as a metallic cartridge/primer set up. The primer in this instance is firmly seated and surrounded by the base of the brass (steel/aluminum) cartridge and must be physically deformed in order to create the friction/compression necessary between the primer cup and anvil to ignite the lead styphnate/barium nitrate (or whatever other specific chemical compound) primer.

If you don't physically deform the primer, then the primer does not ignite. And that deformation can only happen from one direction, within a very narrow angle of attack.

This is not, of course, to day that modern primers will never ignite under any other circumstances. However, with literally trillions of rounds of modern ammunition having been manufactured and used since their inception, such events are exceedingly rare indeed. Even rarer, perhaps to the point of non-existence, when talking about simply loading a weapon. Probably the closest would be an example of ammunition "cooking off" in a weapon that has been used so much that the receiver has become very hot...to the point of glowing, even. Outside of military weapons being used in combat, this scenario would be rare, indeed.
 
Also, military paper cartridges had no other allowances for priming other than using a pinch from the cartridge once the end was bitten off..

Well the soldiers could've all had flasks or horn, and prime at the end of the cycle. That's an added expense and a lot more training as the soldiers have to be fastidious about their horns. Light infantry carried horns in many cases as well as cartridges.

LD
 
Why cap last? Because a loaded chamber will not fire without a cap in place. In my years shooting black powder I've had more than one "incident" that never should have happened...yet did, despite my fixation on gun safety. "Don't poke the bear", as the saying goes. An uncapped cylinder is very unlikely to have an accidental discharge. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top