Shooting Cap 'n Ball Revolvers

I ran across an article my Dad wrote in the late 1990's before Alzheimer's stole him from us.

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Shooting Cap 'n Ball Revolvers

by Allen Taylor

When I was 16 years old I had saved up enough money to make a big trip to the city of Spokane, Washington. Since the town was over 80 miles away it was a big deal, for folks did not travel that far in those days without some good reason. In fact, often if someone in town made a trip to Spokane it made the paper! (Most days were slow news days then I guess.) My Uncle had an old '28 Buick that could really fly and I rode up and back with him.

My purpose in going to Spokane was to visit some of the shops that handled guns. I wanted to buy a pistol or two. Well, I shopped around some and in the end purchased an original 1860 Colt Army .44 and an original 1858 Remington .44. Both were percussion-fired guns of course. As I remember it they were in pretty good shape with still most of the bluing, grips in good shape, not banged up or rusted in any way. And both were still pretty tight. I forget what I paid for them but it was around $10 apiece I believe. In those days there were not too many people who wanted cap and ball guns. Collectors were around, but not too many of them, and they pretty much had their pick of what was available, getting the best of the guns that were available fairly easily. Even after WW II the cap and ball guns were cheap. In 1948 I bought a load of Remington 1858's from the collector and author James Serven They were not collector pieces and I got them for around $10 apiece at that date.

Both the Colt 1860 and Remington 1858 were really .45's using a .456" - .457" round ball. They measured the bores across the tops of the lands in those days, not to the bottom of the grooves. Both of them had gain twist rifling, the Colt starting out straight and the Remington starting out at about 1 in 80 twist. The Colt had the strongest loading rammer of the two with it's ratchet system. You could "crunch" down on a ball pretty good with it. I broke the hinge pin several times on the Remington, trying to seat a ball with a little too much powder under it. I found that it was best just to trim the face of the ball away so the cylinder could turn if I happened to get too much powder in the chamber, rather than trying to force the ball down farther.

The Remington was the "target" gun of the two. With a top strap it was tighter and gave better accuracy and velocity than the Colt. However it would tie up much quicker from powder fouling than the Colt would. The Colt was a much better combat gun. For sustained use the Colt would keep working 4 or 5 times as long without cleaning. If it got hard to turn the cylinder you could just spit into the junction of the cylinder and the cylinder pin at the front, spin it, and go another 25 shots. When the Remington tied up it was best to take it apart and at least wash it out before you went on.

The Colt was much easier to point-shoot than the Remington. Tossing cans in the air, it was about like shooting a good shotgun. With no top strap the sighting plane was straight down the barrel. Easy to look over, flying shots were easy to make. The Remington with it's humped-up top strap (like any modern revolver) was harder to look across and get a quick sight picture. It took much more work to get on target with it than the Colt.

I put targets sights on the Remington and used it for my target and game-getting gun. The front sight was 1/8" wide and I filed the rear sights and opened them up till it all worked. With this gun I killed rabbits to 100 yards quite a few times. While I was sighting it in I set a gallon jar at 200 yards and broke it with the first cylinder-full. It was very accurate. The Colt would just about stay on an apple crate at 50 yards. I was shooting at something with both guns and my uncle walked out to watch. He walked downrange, off to the side and looked back when I fired the Colt. Then he yelled, "If I had a baseball bat I could knock those bullets back at you. I can see 'em coming!"

I used the Remington much more than the Colt and eventually sold the Colt. While it was wonderful combat gun I was not interested in combat. Accurate guns held my attention and the Remington was accurate. I used it for everything including quick-draw with full-power loads. I would hold an object on the back of my shooting hand about waist high, then draw and fire before the object hit the ground. The 8" barrel did not seem to slow me down much if any. It is all in what you practice with.

We had rats in the basement of the house and when no one was home I would go shoot at them. I used a chamber full of 4Fg with just a wad. The fireball out the end of the barrel was about 5 or 6 feet. A rat would run out and I would blast him. Sometimes it was too far away and all it did was singe all the hair off! I would shoot until the room filled up with smoke - not too many shots - and then try to air out the basement before anyone came home. There was always this funny smell.......

I used grease on the end of the cylinders to keep from chain-firing and also to lube the bore. Tallow worked fine, as did other greases that I used. I never did use a wad over the powder as is popular now. I wanted to get as much powder into the chamber as I could. With a full load of 4Fg I could easily shoot through a 7" cedar fence post. I once shot this big rabbit at about 60 yards using this load. He was going away from me and it was an end-to-end shot. At the shot the rabbit exploded like a bomb had gone off under him! The old full-power loads were nothing to sneeze at.

I have not used a cap 'n ball in years. About 12 or 15 years ago I picked up a replica 1860 Army. It shot pretty decent and what surprised me was the velocity was fairly good also. I supposed the old gun I had as a kid was pretty loose. I just hate to mess with cleaning them anymore. I like to reload and do a lot of it, but I guess I have gotten to the age where I just do not want to mess with black powder any more.