How to Load a Cap & Ball Black Powder Pistol

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm William Watty for Expert Village. In cowboy action shooting, most people shoot cartridges in their rifles and pistols. But we are also allowed in pistols to use these older style caps and ball pistols. These came out during the Civil War and were really one of the first inventions of a more rapid-fire kind of a gun. They are a little bit more work but it's rewarding too. This particular gun is a Ruger old Army model, which isn't an authentic old west gun but it's based on those designs. A lot of people prefer other brands like the old Colts or Remington?s. I'm going to show you a little bit about and explain to you a little bit about what these cap and ball revolvers are all about and how to load them. Okay, here?s the basic of how I load a cap and ball revolver. Well, let me first say that these things are made to be independent of any kind of machines. You will notice up here it's got its own ramming device to ram the ball in. But, let me show you how I do it. First of all, I remove the cylinder and then I load the cylinder off the gun, I find it to be a little bit faster. You will notice the cylinder on a cap and ball gun, there is no place to put in cartridges, like you would with a cartridge gun. Instead these are called nipples and I'll put caps on them in the end. The cap will generate a fire or a spark that will go through a small hole, into the cylinders which will have black powder in them and a lead ball or projectile on top. So I'm going to put this on my little reloading machine. The first thing to go in will be the black powder. I have a little funnel here, and actually as Wolf explained, with the cartridge guns we only load five. So even though there are six cylinders, I have one marked and that one I am not going to load, so I will start with the next one. Some shooters use some of the substitute black powders, they are maybe a little less dangerous to handle, but I still kind of prefer the good old-fashioned genuine black powder, makes a little bit nicer noise, has a nice smell and I prefer it. Okay, so I've got five cylinders loaded up with powder, so I will close up my little powder box. Most cap and ball shooters use just a round ball. I started casting what's more what you might call a sabot, it's not perfectly round but more like a little bullet, and this particular one carries a lot of black powder lube on it, which helps prevent any fire from jumping between the cylinders and accidently igniting a cylinders. It also keeps the gun working well. So I just start out by tapping those in a little bit and then I will want to ram them down. Black powder needs to be compressed a little bit so I'm going to push that right down on top of the black powder, now I have the projectiles in the end, the powder underneath. I can reassemble my gun. Now technically, this is still considered an unloaded gun because it doesn't have the primers or the caps on them yet. When I am ready to go to the loading table, then I will put the caps on."