Hypothetical situation

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jtscuba02

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What if you were in a situation that left you with a BP revolver but no powder. You had caps and balls and had access to smokeless powder. Would you attempt to fire the smokeless powder if you had to defend your life? Just imagine something like a "The Walking Dead" situation.
 
Keep in mind that ANYONE answering your question in a positive manner would expose themselves to some IDIOT reading the post and possibly trying it.

Any attempt to load a CB gun with smokeless makes you a "Crash Test Dummy" litterally!! It might work once or you might find yourself wondering where your shooting hand landed or if you can find enough pieces of it for the surgeon to sew it back together.

Please keep in mind that there are many more people out there reading these posts than are actually registered. Some of them might not be too bright either. Darwin will deal with them in his own time, please don't try to help.
 
Smokeless powder(s) vary greatly in composition, form and burning characteristics. Far, far more so than granulations of gunpowder/blackpowder.

If you want to invest the time to learn about the many, many smokeless powders, you will be able to answer your own question.
 
this is something that many people think is cut and dry. as im sure many of you know, there are cartridge conversions for these BP revolvers that are proven to work well with lower powered loads. Its my understanding that if you were to load (in the bp cylinder) a low powered smokeless load then it would work fine. just look at lower powered loads for the cartridge equivalent to these bp loads, its around 5-7 grains of smokeless.

I may have to try it out, it could be a way to shoot these revolvers in a way that requires less cleaning...
 
btz said:
I may have to try it out, it could be a way to shoot these revolvers in a way that requires less cleaning...
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that conversion cylinders DO NOT use nipples. A blown primer on a smokeless cartridge is a serious problem. You're about to start the process with a hole already aimed at your face.:what:

I will repeat, Darwin was on to something.:banghead:
 
Or you could just buy the conversion cylinder and shoot smokeless loads the right way.

Even if you could work up a load that should work, the variables involved with seating depth, primer compound, ect, would leave way too much doubt in my mind to try it. I for one am just not that desperate to loose body parts.
 
BTW, The steel in most black powder revolvers doesn't match the strength of a modern steel cartridge revolver. The reason it doesn't have to be as strong is because of the lower operating pressure of black powder. So using smoke-less in a black powder pistol might not handle the higher pressure spike of smoke-less powder compared to black powder. Thus you could have a Kaboom!
 
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btz said:
I may have to try it out, it could be a way to shoot these revolvers in a way that requires less cleaning...
Click to expand...
:eek: No no no no no no no no no no no no -- PLEASE DON'T!

Cleaning BP guns is half the fun. If you don't like cleanin' them ya shouldn't be shootin' them!
And as others have said you are GOING TO BLOW YOURSELF UP!
 
I would never try to load smokless in my bp gun. and yes cleaning it is half of the fun. Also if I were in a "walking dead" type situation and and no BP for my revolver I think I would do better to use my revolver as a club rather than a pipe bomb.
 
The Firing Line has some threads where folks have successfully fired smokeless powder in the Ruger Old Army. It's said that the ROA design was initially proofed using full chambers of Bullseye powder which is the 6th fastest powder. And there are also many much slower smokeless powders so not all smokeless powders are the same. For instance, Black Horn 209 is an approved smokeless black powder substitute. And in the distant past there was at least one weaker smokeless powder that was used for reloading black powder cartridges for some of the older, weaker guns made before the transition to smokeless cartridges.
As well some folks have posted here about loading smokeless powder in their NAA mini revolvers.
So establishing which smokeless powders, which guns and what loads are being discussed are all relevant before any conclusions can be drawn about whether it's a safe thing to do or not.

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=356221&highlight=smokeless+ruger

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3445408&postcount=29

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4316277&postcount=23
 
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Well...this can be an emotional topic of course.


I have thought about this privately, and, my conclusion, was that so long as one observe or calculate correctly, the relationship of Bullet Weight to Charge, and, the Loading density the Chamber will occasion once the Bullet is Seated...then, there is no reason it would not be alright to do, provided the Charge used is sensible for the application.

Because these are fairly sophisticated relationships to calculate, and, there is no Cartridge Case to automatically occasion a correct Loading Density for a specific Charge from a Published Loading Table with a specific Bullet type and weight, there is not much margain for error on over-charging, so, one could easily go wrong and damage the Revolver or injure one's self or a bystander, if one does not have things right.
 
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What if you were in a situation that left you with a BP revolver but no powder. You had caps and balls and had access to smokeless powder. Would you attempt to fire the smokeless powder if you had to defend your life? Just imagine something like a "The Walking Dead" situation.
Click to expand...
Another way of asking the same question:
What if you were in a situation that the only option you had to save your life was to cut off your strong hand - would you do it?

Because it certainly is possible to engineer a smokeless powder load that will not be catastrophic in a black powder revolver, but as Oyeboten very clearly said, doing so successfully requires a great deal of information and sophistication. The odds of one of us hobbyists doing it successfully are very, very small.

I don't think you'd die from shooting the gun, but in the life-or-death gedankenexperiment you would die because the threat would ultimately be successful, as you'd have only maimed yourself and not stopped the threat.
 
I am absolutley not advocating using smokeless in a BP revolver.

I watched the tv show with my son and he asked me if I thought we could survive in a situation like that. Of course I told him yes, but this got my mind thinking. Eventually you would run out of ammo, then what? I know you can buy the device to make your own caps. Yesterday I saw the little red caps for sale at a gas station here in Columbus, GA. You would be able to get lead off all the car tires, so there is the lead for round balls. This just leaves the problem of powder. There was fighting positions all around the hospital with M2s and boxes of ammo. Why not grab a couple cans and use that powder?
 
Smokeless in a black powder gun!!! Hum??? Nope ~ don't think so.

I'd either make my own black powder in that "survival situation," or take up archery. Long bows are are kind of an interesting concept.
 
If you look up the R&D conversion cylinders the recommendations state that it's for "Black Powder, Black powder substitutes and reduced load Cowboy Loads.

As stated previously you could "engineer" your own smokeless loads if you have the proper knowledge about pressures. Although I consider myself quite knowledgable in this area I have to ask myself ... WHY DO IT ? People far more knowledgable in the firearms arena know that it's unsafe and can present a condition not favorable to keeping body parts.

I have a R&D cylinder and it only gets what the manufacturer suggests. Black powder or Pyrodex and you know what ? The projectile still makes it to the target with a satisfying BOOM and smoke cloud. Then I can reach in my range bag and pickup a firearm designed for smokeless and shoot all I want.
 
the nipples in the cylinder are the only real thing that could be a danger for light smokeless loads, I'm glad that was pointed out to me. Im not saying that smokeless is a good idea, on the contrary I think people should make their own blackpowder. I make bp thats about the equivalent of FF, and its pretty fun.
everyone needs to keep in mind that with a full load of smokeless (or a full cartridge, just for comparison), things ARE going to go very wrong. thats not at all why I was saying would make a decent experiment.
 
At least with an 'Open Top' design, if it blows, you would not loose the Top Strap!


Lol...


I am confident that many people in the late 1880s and into the 1890s, used early Smokeless offerings in their erstwhile Black Powder Cap & Ball and Metallic Cartridge Revolvers, as well as in their Long Arms.


Several Brands of early Smokeless were in fact advertised for just these applications, and, had cautions and Loading data on the Can.


Overall, as far as I have been able to find, these early Smokeless POwders were well received and well thought of, and, likely, there was little misadvanture in their use.


How many people goofed up and bulged or blew their Gun, is anyone's guess! But, probably not a whole lot.


In my opinion, to do it safely and well, now...the amount of knowledge and experience necessary, would also be more than enough to find an alternate solution anyway.


Like that guy in the movie "The Road".

For Pete's sake, if the people-populations had been decimated, and, Cities abandonded, would there not be a lot of Guns and Ammunition to be found by merely looking in likely places?


Yet he was stuck with that albeit nice enough old Model 10 S&W Revolver, he was hard pressed to find any Ammunition.


He was an intelligent resourseful man, and, he could have just done some dedicated looking for regular boxes of .38 Special Ammunition, and, found all he wanted, I am sure.
 
In addition to the various cautions above, it would be very easy to double charge a cylinder with smokeless - the relatively tiny amounts of powder used would be easy to miss and to put 6 or 10 grains of Bullseye or whatever instead of 3 or 5 would be bad news pressure-wise.

The very specialised smokeless converted m/l revolvers we have here in the UK generally have stepped chambers that help to mitigate this. Incidentally they are all required to be re-proofed with a nitro cellulose proof load at one of the proof houses too - hence they are tested under safe conditions with a very heavy load before being used.

Even so, the prospect of measuring a few grains of powder on the firing point without making an error fills me with dread. I'll stick with Pyrodex, BP or 777 thanks.
 
The steel isn't really the issue. Plenty of modern black powder arms have modern steel barrels and parts. Some, like the ROA, are stronger than most smokeless firearms. But they're not set up to take compact charges of smokeless powder. It's the wrong material for the job, with no real reference points to go by. The chamber is not a cartridge, and there's nothing in common between black powder and smokeless. They're utterly different chemicals.
 
Like others stated, it is best to NOT EXPERIMENT in my book. That is precisely why my signature is what it is.

Now, if it is such that you are going to get killed no matter what, then it seems you really have not much to lose, even if it was your hand, that is, like I stated, if you knew for 100% sure that without this one BP shot, you are already dead.

In that case you better come up with something, ANYTHING.
 
In such an hypothetical situation, I think I'd make some homebrew and some white powder.

Or, I'd grab my scuba tank or my Axsor hand pump and my Sam Yang 909. It's a .45 caliber precharged pneumatic air rifle that runs off 3,000 psi from a hand pump or scuba tank. It launches .454 round balls at 700-750 fps.
I shot it yesterday, and changed my buddy's perception of air guns.
That means he likes it. I didn't shoot him with it. That would be stupid, illegal, and wrong.

He was impressed by the way it puts those soft lead balls through both sides of a steel 55 gallon drum without thinking of stopping.
It doesn't sound like a firearm, either. Makes more of a "SPRONG" noise.

In a situation like that, a baseball bat, axe handle, machete, short sword, etc, would be better (imo) than guesswork with smokeless.
Remember, I don't have to outrun the zombies. I just have to outrun YOU. lol
 
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