open carry for blackpowder revolvers ?

[TTv2]

If you can carry something that uses cartridges, carry that. If you have nothing else, then I can't imagine a knife and some harsh language would be better than a percussion revolver. For open carrying, it'd be pretty hard to beat the Remington design due to the fast reloads with a spare cylinder, but if concealment or weight were an issue, the 1862 Colt Pocket Police that Uberti makes is impossible to beat, at least until the Italians finally come out with a Remington Police model.

 

[OrangePwrx9]

Well I can see one advantage to open carrying a BP revolver; a bad guy knows he won't have acquired a weapon useful to his purposes if he takes it away from you...at least after the first 5 shots. Sort of like a stick shift car in that regard.

 

[brewer12345]

Well I can see one advantage to open carrying a BP revolver; a bad guy knows he won't have acquired a weapon useful to his purposes if he takes it away from you...at least after the first 5 shots. Sort of like a stick shift car in that regard.

If you are carrying a full size bp revolver it will make a decent sap or short club should you fire all loaded shots.

Realistically though, how much different is a bp revolver from the ever popular 5 shot 38 snub in effectiveness?

 

[rodwha]

Realistically though, how much different is a bp revolver from the ever popular 5 shot 38 snub in effectiveness?

Well, if we are talking about a .44 and using an energetic powder the .44 will be more effective than a .38 Spl. A .36 loaded with energetic powder can produce .38 Spl +P performance.

 

[woodnbow]

If you can carry something that uses cartridges, carry that. If you have nothing else, then I can't imagine a knife and some harsh language would be better than a percussion revolver. For open carrying, it'd be pretty hard to beat the Remington design due to the fast reloads with a spare cylinder, but if concealment or weight were an issue, the 1862 Colt Pocket Police that Uberti makes is impossible to beat, at least until the Italians finally come out with a Remington Police model.

Well, you’ve never heard MY harsh language obviously... be that as it may, a properly loaded and maintained c&b revolver should be close to 100% as reliable as your favorite cartridge revolver. If you’re picking caps out of the works there are modifications that will virtually eliminate this problem. A .44 round ball over 25 grains of 3fg is an absolutely deadly weapon out to 50 yards and more. The limitation is really the capacity of 5 rounds and there’s no way to reload under duress and while possibly under fire or in a hand to hand combat situation.

Yes, I know about the spare cylinder reloads but it’s not viable for the average shooter engaged with an assailant. Unless you’ve experienced the loss of most of your fine motor control due to the massive adrenaline dump you don’t understand how much of a problem that is... I’ve watched guys trying and failing to reload an M16 while under fire. Multiple tries and just couldn’t get the box into the receiver.

All that said, if you are limited to a c&b, for whatever reason, you would be advised to carry two of them for the fastest, easiest reload. Possibly practice sprinting away from trouble as well. As others have said, it’s better than a knife, or fists, teeth, and fingernails... practice situational awareness every day. It’s easier to win the fight you saw coming from far left of bang. Easiest of all if you see it coming from so far away that you’re not even there when it would have happened.

 

[woodnbow]

If you are carrying a full size bp revolver it will make a decent sap or short club should you fire all loaded shots.

Realistically though, how much different is a bp revolver from the ever popular 5 shot 38 snub in effectiveness?

Better killing power certainly. It’s a bitch reloading the Chiefs special under duress too!

 

[Ugly Sauce]

Truth. The biggest bugaboo would be a cap-jam, which might require getting out the pocket knife to clear it. !!!! I have an 1860 that has been quite reliable. I've had it forever, but I think I've only really perfected my cap-n-ball loading techniques in the last five or ten years. It used to shed loading lever latches on a semi-regular basis, but since I shortened the barrel to 6", and stopped trying to cram as much powder as possible in it, it's been very reliable.

Talk about "recently bought", the 1862 I got recently sure required a lot of work to get it working right. I think it's fairly reliable now, but I've not shot it much since I "fixed" it, which was a long process. As it's a small game wilderness survival pistol for me, I can tolerate some malfunctions. Or not. Would hate to have a misfire if I was starving, and Mr. Rabbit showed up. But man, when I first got it, that thing failed to fire, cap-jammed, over-rotated, you name it. !

 

[Zulch]

Well, you’ve never heard MY harsh language obviously... be that as it may, a properly loaded and maintained c&b revolver should be close to 100% as reliable as your favorite cartridge revolver. If you’re picking caps out of the works there are modifications that will virtually eliminate this problem. A .44 round ball over 25 grains of 3fg is an absolutely deadly weapon out to 50 yards and more. The limitation is really the capacity of 5 rounds and there’s no way to reload under duress and while possibly under fire or in a hand to hand combat situation.

Yes, I know about the spare cylinder reloads but it’s not viable for the average shooter engaged with an assailant. Unless you’ve experienced the loss of most of your fine motor control due to the massive adrenaline dump you don’t understand how much of a problem that is... I’ve watched guys trying and failing to reload an M16 while under fire. Multiple tries and just couldn’t get the box into the receiver.

All that said, if you are limited to a c&b, for whatever reason, you would be advised to carry two of them for the fastest, easiest reload. Possibly practice sprinting away from trouble as well. As others have said, it’s better than a knife, or fists, teeth, and fingernails... practice situational awareness every day. It’s easier to win the fight you saw coming from far left of bang. Easiest of all if you see it coming from so far away that you’re not even there when it would have happened.

woodnbow, HAHAHAHAHHA..Love it!! .If this is any indication? “When they get in trouble, they send for the sons-of-bitches” I'd like to hear a little more of this "harsh language"

 

[Ugly Sauce]

Well I can see one advantage to open carrying a BP revolver; a bad guy knows he won't have acquired a weapon useful to his purposes if he takes it away from you...at least after the first 5 shots. Sort of like a stick shift car in that regard.

That's funny. I have a "stick shift" motorcycle, foot clutch/hand-shift, and don't worry too much about someone hopping on and stealing it. Even if they knew what a kick-start was, and how to use it. And how many "priming" kicks. And just the right throttle position. !!! But, three strong guys could put it in the back of a pick-up pretty fast. Three guys tried that with another similar motorcycle I had back in the day, but were not strong enough, and lucky for me had to give it up. !!! Those were in the knife-packing days, so I'm glad I could not confront them before they escaped. If they were packing I'd be dead. If not, I'd probably still be doing time. ! Juries don't look kindly on bikers killing each other over a motorcycle.

 

[arcticap]

hrfunk is a police firearms instructor who performed some defensive drills against one, two and three bad guy targets with his Remington 1858 Sheriff's model.
He's loading 30 grains of 3F Goex with a wad and a ball, and only experienced one slight hiccup.
The important thing is that he hit what was he was aiming at with rapid fire.
The shooting exercise begins after the 10:15 mark.

 

[gtrgy888]

There's an extra point to be made here. If on the off chance something goes wrong with a cartridge pistol, you still have the next round. With a cap and ball, you may well not get the next shot, at least not easily. I was shooting my Navy just today, and had to manually extract 3 out of 18 caps, and needed the help of my second hand to move the cylinder on a good half of the shots.

And I've never had a misfire with that gun, but the '60 Army I recently bought has seen at least six misfires. Just not something I want to be a possibility if I needed to rely on my gun.

There’s a strange double standard between percussion and semiauto pistols. If one is having chronic failures with a 1911 (I’ve seen it happen enough times), most people will try to diagnose the problem and tweak different variables until it becomes acceptably reliable. When they have repeated failures with a percussion pistol, they tend to immediately give it up as a viable gun. I’d recommend investing the time learning how to prevent cap jams, etc. There are certainly enough resources to troubleshoot and improve percussion pistol reliability. I literally bet my life all 5 chambers of my guns discharge on command any time within a month of last loading. I verified and replicated that high standard once a month for 8 months now. My first 6 months were abject failures that required research and elbow grease to correct.

 

[bear166]

There’s a strange double standard between percussion and semiauto pistols. If one is having chronic failures with a 1911 (I’ve seen it happen enough times), most people will try to diagnose the problem and tweak different variables until it becomes acceptably reliable. When they have repeated failures with a percussion pistol, they tend to immediately give it up as a viable gun. I’d recommend investing the time learning how to prevent cap jams, etc. There are certainly enough resources to troubleshoot and improve percussion pistol reliability. I literally bet my life all 5 chambers of my guns discharge on command any time within a month of last loading. I verified and replicated that high standard once a month for 8 months now. My first 6 months were abject failures that required research and elbow grease to correct.

I know that there are ways of making them more reliable, and the guns I have fixed up a bit are certainly reliable enough that I wouldn't be concerned to have to defend myself with them. That Army for instance has not misfired or had issues with caps blowing off since replacing the nipples and a little bit of smoothing here and there.

But my opinion is that these things will always remain a possibility with any percussion gun simply by the presence of the cap. You can work the gun over to the point where these concerns are nearly entirely mitigated, sure, but most people won't do that, and anyway I'm just not a fan of adding in extra variables when the answer to the equation is whether I live or not.

Agree with your point on the double standard though. There's plenty of things that can go wrong with a semiauto as well, or even a cartridge revolver.

 

[45 Dragoon]

You can also "work them over" to the point of having Ruger "reliability". Coils vs. Flats (as well as their wire versions).

Mike

 

[derek45]

the 1911 carries very well if you invest in a quality holster and belt DESIGNED FOR CCW

I love blackpowder revolvers, but they are not suitable for CCW

they are simply not reliable enough and far too slow to reload

carrying a gun is not for show nor fun, it’s serious business

.

 

[Jim Watson]

I wish I still had the article where Ray Ordorica did a sidebar to a gunzine article about repros, comparing a real period Colt. There wasn't much "tuning" required when the they were what there was to use for real.

 

[45 Dragoon]

I wish I still had the article where Ray Ordorica did a sidebar to a gunzine article about repros, comparing a real period Colt. There wasn't much "tuning" required when the they were what there was to use for real.

Yep, there's a big difference between revolvers (specifically open tops) built correctly (not to mention for a war as well) and inexpensive reproductions that aren't built correctly. That's the main reason for "tuning" today . . . just for reliability sake. Of course, as always, a correctly built one would be more expensive than the current (pre-covid) offering . . . which would then become the topic . . .

Mike

 

[Officers'Wife]

I'm trying to imagine seeing someone not wearing hunting or shooting gear doing open carry with a black powder weapon. I would have to wonder if they were a felon trying to rub someone's nose in the "antique" exemption.

 

[Ugly Sauce]

Yep, there's a big difference between revolvers (specifically open tops) built correctly (not to mention for a war as well) and inexpensive reproductions that aren't built correctly. That's the main reason for "tuning" today . . . just for reliability sake. Of course, as always, a correctly built one would be more expensive than the current (pre-covid) offering . . . which would then become the topic . . .

Mike

I think many people would gladly pay the extra. But then again, the manufacturers know a little more about the market than I.

 

[Ugly Sauce]

the 1911 carries very well if you invest in a quality holster and belt DESIGNED FOR CCW

I love blackpowder revolvers, but they are not suitable for CCW

they are simply not reliable enough and far too slow to reload

carrying a gun is not for show nor fun, it’s serious business

.

The 1911 does carry fine, although I think the problem comes in when one is of a more rounded shape of generous proportions. It does require a tight belt, and I know a bunch of guys that don't wear belts. !!! I ask some of them, sometimes, just to give them a bad time, "how do you carry your gun???" "oh...I never carry a gun". !!!! Dang. I don't go outside the house without one. Revolvers are very concealable as long as they ride high above the belt-line, and have a bit of a forward cant. The cylinder portion of the gun kind of tucks in, into ones mid-section, but again not so well with rounded generous body proportions. No offense to well rounded individuals, but appendix carry certainly works better when one has some real estate so that the shirt drapes over one's front. Body shape has a lot to do with concealment.

I would say that a black powder revolver is "suitable" for carry, but probably not the best choice, or perhaps the last choice. But, hats off to anyone that does! I think I'd choose one over one of those NAA Mini revolver derringer things, a two shot .22 derringer, or perhaps any of the Remington type derringers. ? Many people carry them, I know of three people who carry the NAA .22 Revolver things. I don't say anything, but it does cause me some serious head scratching and concern for their safety.

 

[Jackrabbit1957]

Not that I want get shot with a .22 , I would be afraid of the beating the guy you shot with it would throw you.

 

[Ugly Sauce]

Truth. And after the incident where a couple who were hi-jacked, finally got to their 22 pistol, shot the bad guy like six-nine times in the chest, he takes their car, drives himself the hospital, checks himself in, and then dies. (think he died, don't remember the exact details) I wouldn't want to be shot whit a .22, but I wouldn't want to shoot anyone with one either.

 

[dickydalton]

Truth. And after the incident where a couple who were hi-jacked, finally got to their 22 pistol, shot the bad guy like six-nine times in the chest, he takes their car, drives himself the hospital, checks himself in, and then dies. (think he died, don't remember the exact details) I wouldn't want to be shot whit a .22, but I wouldn't want to shoot anyone with one either.

The 1862 Navy in this picture is reliable enough to carry now that Mike tuned it!

 

[Zulch]

The 1862 Navy in this picture is reliable enough to carry now that Mike tuned it!

Nice one!! Tim

 

[Jimster]

If I HAD to depend on my Goonerized 1860 Army I wouldn’t lose too much sleep. Having his professional magic work performed on it gives me a great confidence boost as far as reliability goes. Having said that, I carry either a 1911, Sig P320 in.45 acp or an LCP ll. It’s nice having a spare mag for emergency function issues.
Thanks again, Mike!

 

[sspierce8]

I would not hesitate to carry my ruger old army. It has never misfired, ever. It’s probably not as practical as my sub compact Springfield XD 9, but it would get the job done no problem.