Question about reusing caps and a powder substitute in a pinch

[roscoe]

I was reading 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy and in the book the lack of ammunition is one of the main problems faces by the protagonist (although there are many other problems - being a Cormac McCarthy book it is hardly cheerful).

I got to thinking about reloadable ammunition and the lack of gunpowder. According to the US Army's Improvised Munitions handbook you can reuse a cartridge primer by pounding it flat and filling it with the ground up tips of strike-anywhere matches, and use the matchhead itself (also ground) as powder for the cartridge. I believe you need just a couple of tips but 30 or so matches per cartridge.

My question is - would this work in a black powder revolver? Could you reuse the caps by pounding them flat and filling them with match tips, then using matchheads as powder? If you had a way to cast bullets, it would make the black powder revolver pretty useful in a situation where you can get no ammunition.

By the way, I do not own a black powder revolver, but am looking hard.

 

[____hoot____]

I wouldn't count on that stuff. I made a little cannon when I was ten and used matchheads as powder and got poor penetration.

 

[Tbu61]

It can be done and I have tried it for percussion caps, very poor consistency very little brisance.

I also did the match head thing in a little .177 "Cannon" as a kid...
I would spit a BB out rather quickly. The BB had enough velocity to embed in soft pine, but no real penetration. Certainly enough to injure an eyeball.

On the other hand.. Match heads packed into a sealed container can be VERY DANGEROUS.. Not something that I would ever do (again)...

 

[Phillip Allen]

you buy enough matches to do that and the DEA will become interested in ya

 

[Chawbaccer]

Strike any where matches ae pretty rare these days. However black powder is very easy to manufacture, risky tho.

 

[Phillip Allen]

I made plack powder as a boy and did it on a small scale...If I did it now, the dangerous part would be the polishing and grading

 

[pohill]

I have a Tap O Cap for making caps and they use three red rolled cap centers for ignition, but some shooters have tried matchheads in place of the red rolled caps with mixed results (I never tried it that way).

 

[Ditchtiger]

I've made my own primers in the past. Found a tool called Tap-A-Cap that makes prrimer cups from aluminum cans, and paper caps stripped off the roll with a paper punch. But I found the caps for toy guns that come in strips and circles, made of red plastic, work great. Flexible enough to fit over the nipple, tight enough to stay on and give a water-prof seal. You can buy a hundred for less than a dollar

 

[4v50 Gary]

I also have Tap O' Cap and use 2-3 red caps per beer can cap. They work. Per se you can recycle a percussion cap with strike-anywhere matches, but as mentioned, don't expect consistent ignition. The active ingredient in the original percussion cap, fulminate of mercury, doesn't burn inasmuch as it explodes. When it explodes, it shoots a burning jet of hot gases down the nipple and into the powder chamber. Matches may not do the same with reliable consistency. Go ahead and experiment and report back to us. It'll be fun.

BTW, in Commie China, the peasants don't have percussion caps. They fill their nipples with a fine grain of black powder such that it spills over, covers it with shopping bag plastic and secures it in place with a piece of rubber (generally a square-rectangular piece from an innertube with a slit down the center) to hold the plastic & powder in place. So I've been told by a fellow who went muzzle loading in China. There's a basis of belief that it'll work and 19th Century writer Lt. Hans Busk (Victoria Rifles) mentions it in one of his books.

 

[DaveP (UK)]

As a lad I had a toy pocket automatic that used a paper cap to propel a hollow plastic bullet across the table. It was about .22, and if I still had it I could be looking at 5 years for possession of a prohibited weapon
Anyway, eventually I got round to filling the barrel with crushed match heads. The result was a jet of fire across my bedroom, and when the choking smoke cleared, a scorch mark on the wall - Sorry mum...
Fun but it never looked as though it had the potential to be a propellant.
I've seen a case of matches go up in smoke after falling from a loading dock. It was hard to put out, in fact we let it burn out in the end, but the onset was actually quite slow.

IMHO you would be better off grinding some powder very fine, filling the nipple and using a slow match to set it off.
But perhaps not in a revolver!

 

[roscoe]

There must be some other material that would ignite when crushed. What about the piezoelectric characteristics of quartz? Or crushed flint?

 

[Tbu61]

Piezo electric quartz would ground to the Nipple = No spark.

Flint doesn't spark, it shaves metal off the frizzen, which produces the spark.

Crush/shock sensitive material is the key, Fulminates and Styphanates.... I suppose you could use something like Benzol Peroxide, but that stuff is really hairy to work with.

Match heads are a mix of reactive compounds that are initiated by friction/crush.

 

[RON in PA]

Just get a flintlock.