Just read an article by Mike Beliveau on First Ball and Cap Revolver

[Doug.38PR]

I was in the grocery store in a small West Texas town I'm working in and picked up a copy of Guns of the Wild West magazine off the shelf.   Flipping through it this afternoon I came across an article by above said author (whom I instantly recognized from YouTube and, I think, this forum) about his experience and advice on buying your first Ball and Cap revolver.  Great article introducing people to the world of ball and cap weapons.   

Honestly, I almost felt like I was reading an article about myself.  Like Mr. Beliveau, my first handgun was a Pietta 1851 .36 Navy replica when I was 24 years old.  15 years ago on Christmas day as a gift from my dad.  (my first "real" handgun that loads cartridges came 4 years later when I bought a 1944 Colt Official Police and a few months later a 1961 Colt Official Police, a gun I still commonly carry to this day).   And an excellent gun it is.   Later I gave my dad a Uberti Colt Walker .44.  That thing is a beast to handle compared to the Navy.  A few years ago I gave my dad's brother a Uberti 1860 Army .44.   But the Navy is just...simpler somehow than either of them.

What intrigued me about that the .36 Navy was reading about it in a book called Jeff Davis' Own by James R. Arnold.  It was about the U.S. Second Cavalry organized under Secretary of War Jefferson Davis and included some men that would later go on to become famous in the War Between the States, such as Col. Robert E. Lee.    The 2nd was sent to Texas to assist in defending the frontier Southern state from Comanche Indians and Mexican bandits.  A photo and description of the weapon issued to the 2nd Cavalry, and gun that was popular among the Texas Rangers, and it was, of course the light 1851 Colt Navy in .36 caliber.      I recall an incident related by Arnold in explaining the reliability of the gun in which a Trooper dropped his and lost it for a time somewhere in the scrub deserts of South Texas.   He found it upon his troop returning to the area some time later after it had been sitting in the elements for months.   He simply put fresh caps back on the gun and it fired away no problem.  

For 4 years this gun was all I had and I loved it.  It took a long time to reload and some times I would get impatient and just see how fast I could load one chamber and fire it over and over.   Friends would be fascinated by it.  Even if they had modern handguns like a 9mm high capacity they would find it interesting me shooting next to them with a six shot back powder gun that shot a lot of smoke and was much...MUCH...slower yet fascinating to reload.  

I recall being at a small town range in Louisiana with a friend in which we were shooting at silhouette targets on cardboard and plywood stands.   I walked straight up to the target towards the end with my final shot, stuck it in the target's face (like Scarlett to the Yankee in Gone With the Wind) and we were both stunned when the target exploded and fell back over with the paper in shreds and smoldering with smoke.     My friend glanced down the firing line to the officer's office to see if the old sheriffs deputy saw it (he didn't...or if he did, he didn't care) and my friend ran over spitting on the target and stepping on it to stop it from burning.  

I even took the gun on my first trip to West Texas in Sanderson, TX (Terrell County) about 13 years ago.   I had loaded it and kept it in my bedside table because our cars at home were broken into in the driveway.  If things were going on in the neighborhood I wanted to have something to defend myself at home...and that Navy .36 is what I had.  So I loaded five chambers and set the hammer on empty.   But...after months sitting in my drawer I wanted to unload it...but he only way I could do that was to shoot it...and I didn't want to pay a range feet to go out and shoot 5 shots...so I took it to Sanderson, TX on the road with me and kept it on my hotel bedside table.  On the way back home to Houston, I pulled over on the desert roadside (not a soul for probably 50 miles) and fired all five shots openly into the desert from the highway.   Gun unloaded.   Took it home and cleaned it.   Not long after that, I decided to go down to Collectors Firearms and get a real cartridge loading gun (the above mentioned Colt Official Police)

The gun is still fun to shoot and experiment with.   Since then I have gotten a conversion cylinder for it that I reload .38 Long Colt for using either Trailboss powder or American Pioneer black powder substitute.   The 158 gr LSWC bullets are, of course, a little small for the bore but it's still pretty accurate.  

I even tried making paper cartridges recently using Kleenex paper and elmers glue.  Worked at first but then you'd get one or two that wouldn't ignite and you'd be in trouble trying to get it unloaded.  

I long ago learned how to break it down and adjust the tightness of the mainspring depending on if I was shooting cartridges or ball and cap.  (Loosing the mainspring screw and/or putting washers in between)

The gun is indeed economical to shoot as Mr. Beliveau indicates.  I never had to worry about money with it as I do with modern cartridge ammo.  Powder and balls and caps last, seemingly, forever.   It is indeed accurate and provides good grouping for a gun of it's type.  The Pietta does seem to shoot just a little high.   I've been wanting for some time to either build or get a conversion gun with an ejector rod and gate...but that's a bit distant for me right now.

That gun has a place of esteem in my office and sits on a bookshelf fully loaded without caps.  All I need to is cap it, take it out and fire it.   It has had it's wear and tear over the years but it looks great and shoots great.  

[Thumb Buster]

Gotta' Love 'em. 

[Jake C]

I wish I had read Mr. Beliveau's article when I got my 1st cap 'n ball revolver. Instead, I got an Uberti Walker, which was a great gun to shoot, and impressive as all get out, but a real pain to disassemble. Eventually, I had to sell it, but life just didn't feel right without a percussion revolver, so I picked up an Uberti 1851 London model maybe a few months later. Apart from having to fix the short arbor common with Ubertis, it's been a genuine delight, and one of my favorite firearms I own.

Bill Hickok sure had a fine taste in firearms!

[Doug.38PR]

I wish I had read Mr. Beliveau's article when I got my 1st cap 'n ball revolver. Instead, I got an Uberti Walker, which was a great gun to shoot, and impressive as all get out, but a real pain to disassemble. Eventually, I had to sell it, but life just didn't feel right without a percussion revolver, so I picked up an Uberti 1851 London model maybe a few months later. Apart from having to fix the short arbor common with Ubertis, it's been a genuine delight, and one of my favorite firearms I own.

Bill Hickok sure had a fine taste in firearms!

I can get dad's Walker apart okay.  Shooting it is like shooting a cannon.   That loading lever falling down all the time too.  You bend the loading lever a little and that helps for about 6 shots and then it's falling again.   It's been advised to get some leather twine to tie around the barrel and lever. 

I'll never forget one day I was shooting off blanks in my grandmother's backyard when I was younger with both the walker and the navy.  It wasn't loud at all.  Just like some fire crackers.   Then I decided to load 1 .44 ball into the walker, fire it into an oak tree and see how deep it would go.  Big mistake.   It sounded like a howitzer went off.  I swiftly went back into the house and put the guns down.  Went back outside and the neighbors were all outside coming down the back alley and looking across the yards wondering what that explosion was.   A neighbors wife ask me: "excuse me, what was that explosion."   I just said: it was just an old ball and cap revolver of mine shooting off blank wads.  I loaded it a little too heavy.     I kept it kind of vague but acceptable.


The only thing I don't like about ball and cap is that American Pioneer/Cleanshot black powder substitute.   You've REALLY got to be thorough when cleaning your guns of that.  That stuff will rust very quickly.  (that's mostly why my Navy is so beat up now from constant rust attacks that I've had to sand off with steel wool.     Even my Ruger New Vaquero .45 got a little surface rust in the ejector rod housing area that I missed and had to scrub it out    American Pioneer also will cause a cylinder to start binding after about 20 rounds.