JT
TO JIM TAYLOR ABOUT PERCUSSIO CAPS
Friday, January 27, 2023, 09:09

Would you happen to have any old percussion caps perhaps in some of your dad's stuff? A common problem today is cap jams or cap sucking especially with Colt-style sixguns. When the Ruger Old Army came out more than 50 years ago it was designed so it could be dry fired. They did this by having the hammer not quite strike the nipple but when a cap was placed on then everything connected. I never had any trouble with caps in those days however a while back I started getting misfires On the Old Army so I replaced the nipples with Slix-shots which solved the problem. I'm thinking the caps I started using were a little thicker. I just saw a video and a fellow measured current caps with some older caps and he found the newer ones are .008" thick while the older ones came out at .014", almost double. The latter weighed about twice as much also. It is hard to find anything in writing about cap jams or cap sucking from the 1860s so I presume it was not a problem. Today's modern caps just seems to be to thin.