Hot snail capper

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AbitNutz

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So I went shooting yesterday. It was about 93 degrees. Maybe 293 degrees....either way, you get the idea; it was hot

I had just filled my Ted Cash brass snail capper with a 100 RWS 1075+'s and began to load my ROA. I noticed how quickly the lube melted off my bullets.

I fired my 6 rounds, with no problems. But brother, when I went to pick up my snail capper, that had been sitting in the sun....it was too hot to hold, even remotely hold.
.And I don't mean a little too hot, I mean like "Africa Hot" (from Biloxi Blues).

This made me wonder...has anyone had caps go off in a capper due to heat? I believe that if I can waited much longer one of them would have had to kablam on it's own. Chain fire hell...a 100 or so RWS magnum caps would have put a hole in the trunk of 1993 Cadillac Allante. That ain't sayin' too much as a Cadillac made in Italy is not what one could be called robust.
 
AbitNutz said:
So I went shooting yesterday. It was about 93 degrees. Maybe 293 degrees....either way, you get the idea; it was hot

I had just filled my Ted Cash brass snail capper with a 100 RWS 1075+'s and began to load my ROA. I noticed how quickly the lube melted off my bullets.

I fired my 6 rounds, with no problems. But brother, when I went to pick up my snail capper, that had been sitting in the sun....it was too hot to hold, even remotely hold.
.And I don't mean a little too hot, I mean like "Africa Hot" (from Biloxi Blues).

This made me wonder...has anyone had caps go off in a capper due to heat? I believe that if I can waited much longer one of them would have had to kablam on it's own. Chain fire hell...a 100 or so RWS magnum caps would have put a hole in the trunk of 1993 Cadillac Allante. That ain't sayin' too much as a Cadillac made in Italy is not what one could be called robust.
Click to expand...
Nothing to add except I love how this post is written. LOL :D
 
I have never had caps go off on me from normal ambient heat, however I have wondered about that one myself. I mean, I have come back to my car, in the heat of the day, with various plastic items sitting on one of the seats, only to find that they had melted in the heat of the sun. So, I think it could be possible for something like caps detonating from high heat to actually occur.

(This could make a good episode for the TV series, "Myth Busters"... Ya think???, Maybee someone should email the link to this thread into them, I am sure they have a web page out there, and it would be uber-kewl to see something like this on their show !!!)

On a side note however. Some years ago, I had the misfortune of a house fire in my home. Somehow a fire started when I was away. When I opened the door to my house, the entire inside of the house had been charred and gutted, floor to ceiling... But, somehow, the windows and doors sealed so well, that all of the structural elements of the house were still intact, as the fire exhausted the air in the home, and put itself out by suffocation. (Sometimes I have the blind luck of a drunk Irishman wandering in a train yard, and passing out on the tracks, waking up just in time to dodge a speeding train, this was one of those days !!!)

NE Ways, in my bedroom closet, sitting on the top shelf, was a metal military cartrdge box, with several tins of caps, several flasks of BP, and a couple of pounds of BP in their cans...

According to the firemen that inspected the house, after the fact, they estimated that the internal temperature of the house was somewhere around 1,300-1,400 degrees at the fires peak, by the evidence of the fire damage. Neither the Black Powder, nor the caps, ignited, however I don't know if they were still intact, as I called the hazmat team and had them disposed of, as I had read, that Black Powder, that has been exposed to extreame heat, will crystalize and become very unstable, dangerous, and ultra sensitive to shock. Don't know what extreame heat can do to the ingitor formulas of percussion caps, but, I am sure, some kind of a chemical change occurs in those as well.

Just a little something I thought I should share here.

Sincerely,

ElvinWarrior... aka... David, "EW"
 
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chemical change

I dont think there is a chemical change at all. I think all remains the same untill heat & pressure curves meet then explosion occures. I think it is kinda like the air fuel ratio. Let me check my blasters manuels and get back.
 
du Pont on black powder

1) Black powders are relatively insensitive to shock, friction, & static electricity; however, any treatment that produces a spark or heat of sufficent temperature and quanity will ignite black powder.

2) Black powders ignite instantly at about 572 degrees Fahrenheit. they should not be exposed to temps above 212 degrees. ignition can be effected by any flame, spark, hot wire, or hot surface.

3) Black powders do not have true velocities and do not detonate, they deflagerate. Their rate of burning is affected by confinement. In the open black powders burn very slowly, measurable in seconds per foot. Confined speeds of explosions have been timed at values from 560 feet per secondfor very coarse granulations to 2,070 fps for the finer granulations.

4)When they explode they produce considerable amounts of smoke and several gases among which are toxic carbon monoxide & hydrogen sulfide.

From fifteenth edition du Ponts blasters hand book
 
I never tried it with percussion caps, but cartridge primers will pop at temperatures around 500 Fahrenheit.... just put one in the kitchen oven and ramp up the temperature slowly, say, a 50-degree increase every 15 minutes.
 
Reminds me of the Afrika Korps flick where a panzer crewman fries an egg on the hull of a tank. Like the folks at the Mariner's Museum in Norfolk when they tried to fry the egg on the steel (non working) replica of the USS Monitor, Rommel found it didn't work. Being a clever Hans, Rommel had a blowtorch applied to the hull. After it was heated, the crewman tried again for the cameras. The end result is what we see in this excerpt of a propaganda film made for the German homefront. So to the lyrics of Lili Marlene, here's a YouTube Link

Returning to the capper, don't put metal under the hot sun. It may not fry an egg, but it will be hot to handle.
 
oh, you guys are giving me bad ideas here. next i might try putting a cap in the oven to see what temperature it blows at
Click to expand...

Simple experiments like this were a good way to gather information 20 or 30 years ago..... but as Arcticap has demonstrated, searching out info on the Internet can be a lot more efficient.

It's still fun to do the experiments, though.....
 
The biggest hazard to putting a cap into the stove and determining what temperature it'll pop at comes from the wife finding out. There will be h*ll to pay and one may find themselves sleeping on the floor of their buddy's home. BTW, bringing home flowers probably won't assuage her anger. Might I suggest wearing a riot helmet in case she throw things and since tinnitus is not curable, earplugs?
 
Given the poor accuracy of the typical home oven temperature controls/sensors and the wide variation in temperatures within such an oven, how will you learn anything?
 
Ramping the temperature up slowly will negate part of the inaccuracies, but I agree, the results will never be "dead nuts" on. I might have been lucky that my past experiment yielded results within 40 degrees of the "textbook" answer.

I learned that the cook-off temperature for primers was higher than anything you would ever encounter in a car, or a storage shed, or a snail capper left laying in the sun.
 
Given the poor accuracy of the typical home oven temperature controls/sensors and the wide variation in temperatures within such an oven, how will you learn anything?
Click to expand...

Mykeal's question is spot on! Methinks the only thing one may learn in an experiment of this kind is the limits of humor of one's wife. Such limits might be easily exceeded in this type of activity. Best not to tempt fate.:D
 
Mykeal's question is spot on! Methinks the only thing one may learn in an experiment of this kind is the limits of humor of one's wife. Such limits might be easily exceeded in this type of activity. Best not to tempt fate]
Click to expand...

It definitely helps if your woman knows about your quirks before you get married :)

My kitchen oven experiments also established that the cook-off temperature for smokeless powder was approximately 300 F...... I wonder how that compares to the "textbook" answer?
 
Much more interested in your 1993 Allante. What color? Miles? Condition? Pics? Any gang banger can leave caps in the sun. But a man of good taste will be found in an Allante.
 
I did the Cell Controller software for the automated camshaft line for the V8 in your car. That was in G.M. Powertrain's engine plant in Livonia, Michigan (Detroit) at the corner of Plymouth Ave and Middlebelt road.

From what I saw of that engine, I'm amazed that there's still a '93 Allante still running!
 
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