A point for preps

A thought that went through this wee brainium late yesterday. 

THIS IS NOT A FIREARM

The Federal  Gang that regulates what shouldn’t be regulated does not consider this a firearm.   You can order this through mail order from several places and get it without need of filing any paperwork and usually with nothing more than showing ‘I’m over 21’ ID. 

Even Felons can order these without tossing up redflags,,,,

NOW, these DO require a bit more work than just tossing some rounds in a mag and Mag-dumps are not a thing, but they do ‘pull trigger, go bang’, and a .44 round ball leaves a good sized hole in things.   But, more work, more discipline required. 

For one thing, shooting Cap and Ball (which is what these are) requires a steadier hand than modern cartridge rounds with ‘HOT’ primers and double base powders.   There is a slight ‘lag’ when you pull that trigger to when the round is headed down range, and a twitch will send it somewhere other than where you intended.  Its not much of a lag, but it IS there.   Hotter caps make this less, a clean chamber will to, but there are more variables than in a load, point, shoot ‘firearm’.    Even the humidity of the air when you loaded it can make a difference.

And you can’t really leave the bloody thing loaded laying about waiting for need, like you can with a cartridged weapon.    You can, but it takes some off the wall procedures to do and the  clock is ticking to the day when it goes ‘pffrfft!’ instead of ‘bang’. (or worse, ‘click!’)

For the long(er) term load, you have to keep the powder isolated from atmo and anything that may hold moisture.  Powder is hydroscopic: it drinks humidity/moisture out of anything it can.   (and in the process losses its bangy quality.)  So, the powder gets loaded into the cylinder and a DRY ball is loaded in right next to it.  Don’t lube the ball, don’t add a patch between ball and powder.  The LUBED patch will go over the ball after its loaded.   Then you place the cap on the nipple and with some lacquer based nail polish, seal the cap to the nipple; Cover the seams really good.   At that point you have a couple of months before you must ‘clear the weapon’ and that ‘couple of months’ is highly dependent on how high the humidity is in your area and what it was the day you loaded it.   The longest I held a load like that was 4 months and I had 2 misfires out of 6, and they weren’t misfires so much as squib loads: fired enough to clear the chamber but you could have caught the bullet with bare hands at 10′.

DO NOT USE DOUBLE BASED POWDER IN THESE GUNS.   I can’t stress that enough, they aren’t designed for it, they aren’t structurally able to withstand the pressures and if you do, you are holding a frag-grenade that isn’t predictable in any way (other than that trigger,,,)  It might shoot just fine for two or three rounds and that fourth one blows hell out of the gun and your face and hands.   or that first round starts a chainfire and blows the whole cylinder apart along with your face.   You have been warned!!!   (note, chain fire is possible even with the black powder,  usually due to improperly loaded cylinders, sloppy loading of powder etc.   Chainfires WILL destroy a cylinder!!!)

The advantage of BP for a prep situation is in resources.   You can make Blackpowder at home.   I won’t go into the details of it here, but there are many links on Utoob to how to do it, do it safely and do it from literal scratch; starting with wood ashes and toilet paper to the final product of bangy goodness in whatever grade you desire.  

And a truly resourceful type can make the caps as well.    I have the press for making the cup that is a cap, I have not tried making the cap go bang yet.   BUT, It can be done and can even be ‘fudged’ with alternatives like matchheads and other things. (I do not suggest such, just saying there are alternatives,)  And of course, you can buy the stuff to cast your own boolits,,, lots of choices from round ball, Minieball, and hollowpoint/others.   I find that mine works best with simple roundball and a hot load. (and thats the other side of this; you get to play with loads to see what works best for you and your tools)  I also shoot semi-wadcutters and those do VERY well for hunting. (yes, primitive weapons season allows you to use a BPwheelie gun for deer (.40 or larger)

And if you wanna take it back even further in time you could go the whole flintlock route and not worry about cap primers.   (I like my wheelie guns and cap-n-ball.  Single shot sorta sucks IMO)

But heres the thing that I wanna point out.   Shoot Cap-n-ball for a bit and watch your skills improve with modern stuff.  That lag in CB forces you to hold on target longer and that starts good habits that improve in the modern stuff.   You’ll find you squeeze the trigger smoother, hold on target longer and your groups will get tighter.   You will find you hold your breath better too. (you don’t wanna breath that cloud that BP makes,,,)

I would NOT suggest taking one of these to a gunfight,,,,  Not in this day and age,,,   Just sayin’   The two shown above are able to hot swap pre-loaded cylinders without needing to be torn down to do so, but there is no way in hell you can ‘speedload’ one.   And those cylinders are clonky and dangerous pre-loaded. (exposed caps!)  The other problem is that cloud that black powder makes.   You fire one shot from cover and you are suddenly exposed because everyone and their brother knows exactly where you are.   You just sent up a smoke signal saying ‘here I am, fire away!’

but for a prepper in the sticks, long term, these make a certain amount of sense as listed above.