"Ever have your pistol chain fire?" Topic

This is scary. All six cylinders going off at the same time. This was at an event in Cincinnati a while back. My Walker chain fired while we were crossing a gravel road. Someone said drop it. I said no, not on gravel. I covered my face and held it out as far as I could. My hand and gun were covered with soot but no permanent damage, except maybe my ego. All around me scattered as soon as it started.

I've heard this is a rather common event. I have only fired a black powder handgun a couple of times but a long time ago.

How are you loading? Did you seal the chambers with a grease?

I was next to a LeMat when it chained fired….

Powder, then a small tissue wad so I could pack the powder, then grease. I thought that the few flakes of powder that were stuck in the grease were no big deal. Boy was I wrong. And having such a long cylinder, I had loaded 40 grains of powder each. Sparks and smoke went about three feet out.

I had a cap and ball revover 30+ years ago. IIRC you loaded the powder, then a wad, then the ball, and finally put grease on top. Not sure this is better than having the grease between the ball and the wad but I never saw a chain fire at the range we fired at.

I think it happens more often at ACW events where there is no ball in the weapon.

Yes, I have. It was quite an experience.

I imagine if it chain fired with balls in it, when the balls slammed in to the frame it would tear the gun apart and take a couple of your fingers with it.

If you look closely at the movie Gettysburg, it appears that Jeff Daniel's never-run-out-of-ammunition pistol chain fires in one of the scenes on Little Round Top.

But it's never happened to me. Of course I stopped carrying a pistol at reenactments about 25 years ago. The darn things are heavy :)

Unless the #4 chamber cooks off, the balls are not going to hit the frame. A cook off on the #2 chamber may cause the round to graze the barrel wedge, but that is it.

I've seen it in reenactment videos. Some knucklehead(s) actually invented a cap and ball revolver rifle. Wonder how many left hands got blown off before it was decided that it was a seriously bad idea.

Many years ago the only handgun I owned was a replica Colt 1860 Army .44. I kept it loaded no less. We went shooting up the canyon. My friend had never shot a black powder firearm.

We got stuck going down a dirt side road and found his car blocked by a fallen tree about eight inches thick. Way too heavy to move. So, we used our handguns as "saws". His was a Ruger .44 Blackhawk. We emptied twelve rounds into the same spot and kicked the tree apart and continued on to our chosen shooting site.

I reloaded with the new round balls that I had purchased at the gun shop just an hour before. What I did not take into account was that the old ammunition my gun had been loaded with was oversized, which made ramming the balls home a pain but obviated the need to grease the ends of the chambers to prevent chain firing. I didn't grease the new loads, being out of the habit by then.

My friend wanted to shoot my gun, so I handed it to him. He took a good shooter's one-handed stance and cocked and fired, and his upper body disappeared in a cloud of smoke as the whole thing went off blammityblammityblamblam!!!!!! He staggered back out of the cloud and yelled "OW!" and shook his arm after getting rid of the revolver in his other hand (I thought it was cool that he didn't drop it). Well, MOST of it anyway: the ramrod was lying about fifteen feet in front of him with a round ball solidly wedged in the concave end.

"Are you trying to kill me?" he shouted and laughed. I was flabbergasted and most apologetic, and explained what had happened.

After digging out the ball that was stuck in the ramrod, and reattaching it the best I could (it was very loose after that, go figure), I proceeded to load a single round and took aim at the nearby hill about midway up, and, oh, maybe a hundred yards away and maybe two hundred feet high. I never saw where the round hit. I reloaded a single round and aimed at the base of the hill with the same negatory results. I have no idea where the bullets were going but they were nowhere close to the aiming point. I put the gun away and have never used it since….

Using period ball ammunition which has a conical shaped ball) it's virtually impossible to chain-fire a revolver.

The whole "grease" business is a modern thing that started with the centennial-period reenactments and blank ammunition.

The best way to live shoot is to make-up period self-consuming cartridges with period-size charges (18-20 grains) and conical ball ammunition. It's a bit labor-intensive, but not hard to do.

Blank-wise, there is no sure-fire (pardon the pun) way to ensure that you have no chain-fire, or have a safely-loaded firearm. You can have one, but not the other. Grease will help, but if the weather is hot, it tends to melt and run. Using a wax round or was will prevent a chainfire, but is an unacceptable safety issue.

My own recourse was to simply not carry a revolver at reenactments, and to only have it (unloaded) at living history programs.

tigrifsgt said

All six cylinders going off at the same time. This was at an event in Cincinnati a while back. My Walker chain fired while we were crossing a gravel road.

FWIW, you meant to say "chambers". There is only one cylinder, bored with 6 (sometimes only 5) chambers.

And….. what you want to hump around is your business, but the Walker (and other Dragoon models) were designed as horse pistols, carried in pommel holsters, never meant as a belt gun. Far to large and heavy for that. Same with a LeMat.

I was next to a LeMat when it chained fired…

Bet that was a bit exciting when the 20-gauge lit off!

I have never had a chain fire with my .44 Remington, either when firing live or blanks. When I was a reenactor, I always packed Cream of Wheat over the powder. It seems that the only guys that had issues with chain fires were the ones using grease.

A legitimate use for Cream of Wheat?

And I have to second what TKindred said. The Walker was especially designed for frontier defense in Texas, to give mounted forces a better rate of fire when dealing with Comanches and Mexican forces.

Haven't shot the Colt Navy much, but have never had a chain fire with the Remmy.

Usually the balls I shoot leave a significant shaving when I seat them and I rarely lube them these days.

Only problem I had with the Navy was when I loaded to 'factory' specs and didn't set the balls deeply enough. Had several misfires when the caps shot over the charges. Upped the loads to historic levels and that went away.

Thank you all for confirming my decision not to live fire my Colt. Like TKindred, I carry the pistol at living histories (where it is a big hit) but almost never in the field (where the weight is a big pain in the glutes).

No,thankfully. At most reenactments the suggested maximum load for revolvers is around 20-30 grains of 3f or 2f blackpowder. And their use is usually limited to officers and/or cavalry.

<Toshach -- "I've seen it in reenactment videos. Some knucklehead(s) actually invented a cap and ball revolver rifle. Wonder how many left hands got blown off before it was decided that it was a seriously bad idea.">
Sounds like either the Remington pistol-carbine, which had a spur on the trigger guard for the other hand to latch onto, or the Colt 1855 5-shot Revolving Rifle, which was used with loading lever down to keep the off hand out of the way.

I've heard of using cream of wheat as wadding/sealant, but one of the units we played with used peanut butter as grease--less likely to melt and/or ignite and/or chainfire.

goragrad: I use the small amount of tissue on top of the powder and then pack it down to the rear of the chamber with a short starter. Then the grease on top. I really like a product called bore butter.

I'm late but really don't care. Most people think grease on top of the ball will prevent chain fires. Grease will certainly keep your barrel lubed and make clean up easier. However, chain fires could be caused by ill-fitting percussion caps. If you have to pinch your caps to fit the nipples then you are bending them slightly out of shape, which could allow a spark to enter the chamber and set off the charge.

That's one of the reasons in the days when I did the Civil War artillery officer impression I never loaded the Colt Navy. Why did I need a pistol when I'm next to a Napoleon? If the weather down South had been cooler I'd have pulled a Bluntschli from 'Arms and the Man' and carried chocolate instead.