doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Candle Practice

I was wondering "What would the troops have been doing on a cold dreary day like this in the latter part of the 19th century?"

To answer my own question, "Maybe candle practice!" as described in the Manual For Rrifle Practice by Geoge W. Wingate, 1872.

"The explosion of an army cap will extinguish a candle at a distance of three feet from the muzzle, if correct aim is taken at the upper part of the wick"

Gary Bush

I was testing the firing pin on a rifle a while back using live primers. I turned off the lights in the shop and was amazed how far flame shot out of the end of the barrel.

Shooting primers makes the bore dirtier than a days shooting.

At one time in the past I had 45 caliber wax bullets which were to be used with the 45-70 cartridge. The load was wax bullet and a primer only. When shot they were quite accurate out to 4 or 5 yards and certainly I would not have wanted to be hit with one. (at 10 feet they would dent sheetrock) It was my understanding they were originally used by the military in the trapdoors for indoor rifle training.

Wish I had some today as it is a bit on the cool side here in Minnesota and I don't care to go outside.

A pistol primer in a 38spl will put a wax bullet into a cardboard box at 25'. Shove a primed case into a 3/8 sheet of wax ande u are ready to go. Speer used to make plastic primer driven bullets.
Tom

Back in the 70's my college roommate and I used to use some plastic cases and bullets made by Speer. They took a standard primer as the propulsion. The were decently accurate across the living room, but I would not do that today. I think a variety of things in primers are not particularly healthy to breath. In a normal round that stuff is probably consumed by the charge and you are usually either outdoors or at an indoor range with air flow away from you.

Popular dormitory war implements at Trinidad Gunsmith school in the 70's. I lived off campus...

It was still that way around 2003/4 and I too lived off campus. Some of those guys had some nasty bruises from stuff.

Some brands of primers and percussion caps are a lot "hotter" than others. When I used to compete seriously with round ball m/l rifles I would test percussion caps by capping the nipple of an unloaded rifle, standing it vertically at the loading bench, placing a dime on the muzzle and pulling the trigger and noticing how high the dime went. It was amazing how much difference there was in brands. They had to equal or beat RWS brand to impress me.

When I was a child I had a "Davy Crockett" Kentucky that used rollcaps. It came with cork balls that you loaded down the barrel against the breech. Those minute roll caps would send that cork ball really flying out the barrel!

Interesting comparison: I had an 8 3/8" M29 S&W and a 7 1/5" Ruger Super Blackhawk when I was in college, and also some of the Speer plastic ammo.

The bullets from the S&W would dent and actually slightly break the fibers of the plywood panels of an interior door but the same bullets frequently wouldn't even make it out of the Ruger's barrel. Apparently there was THAT MUCH difference in the smoothness or diameter of the two different bores, enough to make the bullets stick in the Ruger's barrel.
Regards, Joe

Dorm room doors? or did you live off campus Joe?<G>