1858 NMA failure to fire procedure...

[JoeeoJ]

The set up…

While at the range with my Pietta 1858 MNA I had a cap that failed to fire. I waited the prescribed one minute for a hang fire then rotated the cylinder and attempted to remove the cap. I wouldn’t budge with my fingers or nails. I rotated the cylinder and hit the cap a second time. Nothing.

I ended up having to use needle nose pliers to ease the cap off. Actually, I was more prying than pinching to do this. Even so, I was extremely nervous as I was playing with a potentially live cap and a chamber that was out of alignment with the barrel.

Now the questions….

1. Other that using water or oil to neutralize the cap / charge, is there some trick for doing this safely?

2. What is one to expect when a chamber discharges whilst out of battery. I would imagine that the cylinder pin would be destroyed, what else?

3. Assuming a weapon is pointed down range during such an incident, is there significant risk to bystanders?

4. Have you personally witnessed a chain fire or been firing a weapon when one occurs?

 

[mykeal]

1. Percussion caps are impact sensitive. If impact did not set it off, prying on it with something is very unlikely to set it off. However, the safest thing to do is to wet down the charge. Not a big deal and worth the effort.

2. Actually, the majority of the time there is little to no damage to the gun from a discharge out of battery, and when it does happen it's to the frame forward of the chamber. I see no likelihood the clinder pin will be damaged.

3. You're referring to people standing to the side on the firing line, I assume, thus they have ear and eye protection in place. There is the possibility of being struck by shaved lead. Low mass, low velocity particles; the likelihood of serious injury is nil. Annoyance, yes, injury, no.

4. I have personally seen two chain fires in 35+ years of bp shooting. I have never had one occur with a gun I was shooting. I have seen pictures of one individual whose hand was burned (2nd degree) by a chain fire.

 

[Ginormous]

When in doubt, wear gloves.

http://thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=445634&highlight=chainfire

 

[JoeeoJ]

Good enough... I have been shooting conventional smokeless for many years and have just begun shooting BP. I got the bug and my 12 year old son has it with me.

I don't mind learning by others mistakes......

 

[JoeeoJ]

Oops, the 'learning' comment should have been a signature line. It was not directed to either of the replies...

Fixed...

 

[Fingers McGee]

1. Other that using water or oil to neutralize the cap / charge, is there some trick for doing this safely?

Why would you want to wet down the charge? That would cause it's own set of problems in emptying the chamber.

Caps are set off by impact. If you hit it twice with the hammer, chances are it was dead. Even so, using a screwdriver/knife/pliers/fingernail to pry it off of the nipple would not have set it off.

2. Actually, the majority of the time there is little to no damage to the gun from a discharge out of battery, and when it does happen it's to the frame forward of the chamber. I see no likelihood the clinder pin will be damaged.

3. You're referring to people standing to the side on the firing line, I assume, thus they have ear and eye protection in place. There is the possibility of being struck by shaved lead. Low mass, low velocity particles; the likelihood of serious injury is nil. Annoyance, yes, injury, no.

+1

I have had one chainfire due to a mssing cap, and seen/been around numerous others. Some were inexplicable; but most caused by poorly fitting balls or caps; or missing caps.

 

[Hellgate]

Whenever I have a dud cap I just hunk it off with an empty brass cartridge case (38spl works fine but many others will do). I hook the mouth of the brass case along side the nipple and pry up the edge of the cap to dislodge it from the nipple. Then use a nipple pick to clear the flash hole, recap and fire the danged thing.

 

[rcflint]

I've had chain fires, years ago with an original Remington and an original Starr, owned by my black powder mentor back about the time of the Civil War Centennial.

The Starr had a bit too much endshake and nipples a bit too long, the recoil fired adjacent chambers against the recoil shield. The adjacent balls smeared lead down the sides of the frame and barrel, and increased the recoil about double. No harm done.

The Remington perhaps had a flashover, but also just smeared lead against the frame beside the barrel. No damage to the gun either.

If you're prying at caps, or pushing them on, keep your fingers/hands away from the cylinder gap at the barrel, the gap blast can open you up to the bone. That's why the revolving rifle was held with the support hand back at the triggerguard area.

 

[JoeeoJ]

Why would you want to wet down the charge?

I didn't / don't want to, that is why I am seeking information on alternatives.

chances are it was dead

That is part of my issue, I'm willing to take chances just not willing to take un-necessary ones. I didn't have any real information on how sensitive a cap is to impact or possibly to pressures associated with torsion.

That is until I just read: http://www.thehighroad.org/showpost.php?p=5668418&postcount=25

I was willing to go with fingers, fingernail and finally gentle use of pliers. I was at a public range, so it was not only my safety that I was worried about.

I appreciate the input from everybodu here and I think I will replicate, in some way, Ginormous' experiment.

 

[mykeal]

Why would you want to wet down the charge?

As I said, because it's easy to do and worth the effort.

If it's easy to add safety, then there's no reason to not do it. I don't see why wetting the charge in one chamber when the others have fired is so difficult. Now, I notice he did not say whether he fired the other chambers, but there's no reason not to go ahead and do that, so I assume it was done. If not, it should have been.

 

[BCRider]

At my first day of BP shooting I had one cap that failed to fire after THREE hammer strikes. It was during a cowboy action stage so I just looked at the RO timing me with a "what now?" comment. Based it it being hit 3 times and then held in place for some 5 seconds since the third time he suggested I just holster it which I did. Now this isn't in line with the whole hang fire procedure but at the time and given the THIRD time around the clock to get to this duff cap it had been a fair time since the first and second strike. As it turned out all was well, I pryed off the duff cap, replaced it in prep for the following stage and it fired just fine on command.

The point being here that there's no need to wet the charge. Just re-cap and shoot it out.

 

[mykeal]

BCRider - your anecdote does not prove the thesis that there's no need to wet the charge; it simply says that, in that instance, you didn't have a problem.

Let's understand something here. I'm not saying it's unsafe to remove an unfired or faulty cap without wetting the charge. I didn't say it NEEDED to be done. All I ever said was it adds an extra bit of safety, which is a good thing, and it's easy to do. So why NOT do it? Ok, you're on the firing line, you don't have a supply of water handy, etc.; in that case, it's not so easy, perhaps.

But, I have a small bottle of water in my kit, essentially for cleaning my hands. In that case it would be easy to put a few drops of water in the chamber. If the water was available, and if it was easy to do, wouldn't you do it?

I don't understand why people are so adverse to taking a little extra effort to be a little safer. What is it that I'm missing here?

 

[Mike OTDP]

I normally carry a pocketknife with me. If the cap doesn't fire, scrape it off, recap, shoot. No problem.

You don't have problems unless you shoot a matchlock...and the priming charge doesn't go off.

 

[arcticap]

I don't understand why people are so adverse to taking a little extra effort to be a little safer. What is it that I'm missing here?

I don't want to be argumentative, however while neutralizing a charge is part of standard operating procedure for pulling a ball, I've never seen that recommended by any manuals or guides for simply removing and replacing a misfired/unfired cap.
There are tools specifically made for cap removal say for instance, after a day of hunting and a charged rifle is being loaded back into one's car. In that case the charge is not neutralized, and the Remington removal tool that I have is made from brass and has a forked end that fits over the nipple nozzle to scrape off the cap. That tool may not fit a revolver's opening, and while many would use a steel blade to scrape off the cap, I would use a sharp plastic or wood edge to remove the cap to spare damaging the nipple, maybe a popsical stick or a piece of broken twig, edge of a credit card, driver's license, fingernail etc...
I don't recognize the difference between a misfired revolver cap vs. a rifle cap, whether the cap is still live and fireable or not. If the safety procedure is followed, once the time period elapses for a misfired cap, then with proper handling the powder charge shouldn't require neutralization. Not because it's not safer to do that, but rather because it's not necessary.
Other problems would be created by doing it that way. How would one know whether the charge was neutralized or not if putting water over the ball in the chamber and it didn't soak down enough to saturate all of the powder?
And any resulting wet powder just may bring someone's range time to a premature end because of the messy wet powder being left in the chamber without a good way to clean it out.
In this hypothetical case it wouldn't be absolutely wrong to neutralize the powder, it would mostly just be an unnecessary procedure that hasn't been acknowledged as being vitally necessary to maintain safety in order to simply remove a cap in completely safe manner.
In short, the cap's priming material is not located under the thin edge of the lip that is having reverse (or outward) pressure placed on it in order to remove it.
I'm trying to be as clear as possible that a misfired cap need not present a dangerous or hazardous situation. IMO it's not even as hazardous as dropping a live round of centerfire ammunition on the ground as long as all of the standard safety rules are always observed.

 

[Fingers McGee]

What Arcticap said +1. I am also curious how you would wet down a charge behind a seated ball and stuck cap. Thus far, I have not seen the need for, nor tried to, wet down a charge in a flint or percussion muzzleloader or C&B revolver.

Back to the initial post. Hang fires are only casued when the cap pops or the pan charge ignites and the main charge fails to. In this instance the cap never popped leaving no possibility of a hang fire.

 

[BCRider]

I'm sorry but I also don't see how wetting the charge would add any additional safety in the case of a percussion revolver.

How would one wet the charge other than to remove the cap and inject water into the nipple in the first place? And if the cap has to come off first anyway why not just re-cap it and shoot the ball out? It's just as safe and certainly it's a lot less fussing around.

Perhaps with a patched ball water down the barrel would soak in and wet the charge but with revolvers the ball is swaged into place and sealed with lubed wads or dollops of lube placed into the open end of the cylinder over the ball. No way water will get past either of these sealing options in any sort of reasonable time frame short of days of soaking. So the only way to wet the charge would be to remove the cap and inject water into the nipple. But if the nipple is already uncapped and you're still at a range the easy and equally safe option is to re-cap and shoot either right away or leave it uncapped and re-cap and shoot later as I ended up doing. I do not see how wetting the charge would add any measure of additional safety to the situation.

Truth be known I was actually thinking of just not finishing the stage and deal with waiting a bit more and then removing the offending cap after about a minute as per a hang fire. That's what I figured the RO would require. But many of these guys all have been through their BP gun phases and likely went thru the same situations as I was at the time so I gave in to their experience. The RO saw and heard the hammer hit and not fire the cap the whole three times so I'm guessing he thought the same thing as Fingers has related above when he told me to index the cylinder so the duff cap wasn't under the hammer and then holster the gun.

 

[Mike OTDP]

If you have a nipple wrench, it is no big deal to pull the nipple and wet the charge down.

But it isn't necessary. Unless the charge is already wet (can happen if you are loading in the rain), a fresh cap will solve the problem.

 

[JoeeoJ]

I am also curious how you would wet down a charge behind a seated ball and stuck cap.

I have a needle oiler in my bag and I was about to place a couple drops of oil at the base and allow time for the cap to be fouled. But then alas it finally came loose with out a bang.

I have no problem removing a unfired cap from the nipple. It is just the amount of force that was necessary.