#percussion cap

Colt Dragoon

So a big disclaimer… I’m a novice when it comes to blackpower rifles and pistols. I have a few of them that had belonged to my father and my grandfather. I also have one that’s a modern inline muzzleloader. One of the big projects I wanted to work on this year was to get into blackpower shooting a little bit. Before my father passed away, he had given me an old tacklebox full of his old blackpowder accessories as well as an old Dikar percussion cap pistol and an old CVA Kentucky rifle kit gun. The kit gun required finishing which I was able to accomplish, but the percussion cap pistol I had shot way back when I was a kids, but it had sure been a long while since shooting it.

One of the things that I knew I was going to need a lot more of was powder. I did have some Hodgdon Triple 7 50 grain pellets for my inline muzzle loader, but I needed some granulated powder. True blackpower is super hard to come by these day, but there are a number of different substitute black powder like the Hodgdon Triple 7. Brownells happens to have a decent selection of blackpowder substitutes available, so I looked to them to supply some additional powder so I could get to shooting. I wasn’t sure exactly which powder I needed so after some quick research, I needed a finer grain size powder more suitable for pistols and smaller caliber rifles. Both the percussion cap pistol and Kentucky rifle are .45 caliber. So I went ahead and placed an order for a pound of Hodgdon Triple 7 FFFG powder for use in these 2 .45 cal rigs. My understanding is that FFFG is finer grain that FFG powder.

Afgter going through some of the stuff my father had given to me, it looked like he had a number of containers of CCI percussion caps so I wouldn’t need any of those. Once out at the range, I set up to shoot the percussion cap pistol first. All I had were 45 cal round lead ball. The thing that first struck me was how hard it was to start the patch and ball after putting in the powder charge. What I learned was you’re supposed to wet the patch before starting it and this will help it to push easier. I shot the percussion cap pistol a number of times. A couple of times the percussion cap went off, but not the pistol. You’ve really got to have a sense of humor to shoot traditional black powder… can you imagine dualing with these types of pistols a couple hundred years ago? You hoped your opponents pistol didn’t go off. The pistol was wildly inaccurate with the minimal sights. The Kentucky rifle on the other hand was quite accurate for what it is. This was the very first time getting the opportunity to fire this rifle after completing it.

All in all it was a great day spending some time with some old black powder firearms that had belonged to my father. I could see why he loved them so much… they sure are a hoot! Of course at the end of the day there’s a pretty hefty amount of cleaning that needs to be performed right away to minimize corrosion from setting in. Using some of my Otis Technology cleaning kit components definitely did the job. If you’ve never taken the opportunity to shoot some old blackpowder firearms it’s definitely an eye opener!

Ready for the barricades! Are you?