Remington Caps

[Buckhorn Bud]

I’ve been shooting cap & ball for a few years now. I’ve always used Remington caps with Treso nipples and experienced no significant problems. I could shoot several matches in a row without experiencing one failure to fire or lost cap. All of a sudden, after a couple of months of no shooting, I started experiencing problems. At least one cap per stage would either fall off or simply not fire. I was using #11 caps and thought that maybe I had used #10 caps before. I bought a few tins of #10 caps and still had the same issues. I had recently purchased some new cylinders and a batch of Treso nipples so I thought that maybe the new nipples were the problem. I measured and checked them again and again but couldn’t find any irregularity. After a lot of frustration I decided to measure the caps. I found that about 50 of the 200 caps that I measured were too small to seat properly on the nipples. After sorting out the smaller caps I fired off 70 rounds without losing a single cap. We’ll see this weekend if I can shoot a whole match without any problems.

 

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Has Remington’s quality control suddenly gone down or did the store where I usually buy the caps just get a bad lot? I’m not anxious to change brands or check each and every cap before a match but I will if I have to.

[Seldom Seen #16162]

Boy I hope not. I just brought 1,000 #10 caps this morning.

[Cat Brules]

I’ve been shooting cap & ball for a few years now. .................. I started experiencing problems. ................ I found that about 50 of the 200 caps that I measured were too small to seat properly on the nipples.

 

Are you using a percussion cap seating tool after you start the caps on the nipples?

[Prairie Dawg, SASS #50329]

Yup, seat them with a stick/antler/bic pen.

--Dawg

[Fingers McGee]

Boy I hope not. I just brought 1,000 #10 caps this morning.

I hope not too. My order of 5000 #10 Remingtons arrived today.

 

Bud, it happens. Every now & then I'll run across a tin of caps that don't want to work. After two or three missfires; I'll dump the capper & load with a fresh tin. That is one of the reasons why shooting Frontiersman is so much fun.

 

Fingers (Show Me MO smoke)

[Buckhorn Bud]

Are you using a percussion cap seating tool after you start the caps on the nipples?

 

Yep, I've been seating them with the same antler for a few of years. (The antler is to go with the alias.) The smaller caps seem to split when getting pressed on and then fall off under recoil. I've probably gone through 10 or more tins of caps trying to figure out the issue before I decided to measure the caps themselves. When I saw the girl restocking the shelf she had a big box of caps, looked like a few hundred tins. I'm guessing all ones that I have came from the same shipment.

[Cat Brules]

Yep, I've been seating them with the same antler for a few of years. (The antler is to go with the alias.) The smaller caps seem to split when getting pressed on and then fall off under recoil. I've probably gone through 10 or more tins of caps trying to figure out the issue before I decided to measure the caps themselves. When I saw the girl restocking the shelf she had a big box of caps, looked like a few hundred tins. I'm guessing all ones that I have came from the same shipment.

 

It'd be nice if you could take them back for at least a store credit and then buy others somewhere else.

 

I take it you haven't bought the same brand of caps elsewhere (different batch) yet?

 

I trust you get it sorted out. It would be good to know what you find.

 

Cat Brules

[Harvey Mushman]

Hi Bud,

 

I'm pretty sure you and I get ours at the same store, and I use the #10s exclusively. I did notice that at our last shoot (two weeks ago) a few caps were splitting when I seated them with my dowel tool.

 

You may remember I shot Classic Cowboy that day with my Navy '61s and was getting about 2 hot fragmented caps per gun falling into my palm as I shot duelist. That was, however, not really more than I've had before, and none were jamming the gun or not staying seated like you experienced that day. My caps were clean in staying on and firing every time, even if I was not.

 

Let's compare notes Saturday, I'm going to shoot the '61s again, but in FC or senior.

 

Harvey

[Oliver Loving]

Buckhorn:

 

You're absolutely correct there has been a change in the QC of Remington Caps. Fingers and I shot Bayou Blast and were in the same posse. I shot well but the first day had cap failure after failure. As many as three on a couple of stages. You can not score like this and was disappointed. However, at the end of the day I threw away all remaining caps in the tin and opened a new one. only had one failure the second day. Fingers shot well and it was a pleasure to see someone shooting who was having success. Check you're tins as mentioned above and definately make sure they are seated all the way. Also, don't forget to enjoy your posse and laugh your butt off at the situation. Makes for a better day.

 

Good luck

[Wolfpack Jack]

Aaarghh, I just got 1K of #10s, haven't had a chance to try them yet (still snowing here in northern New York and more to come).

[Harvey Mushman]

Aaarghh, I just got 1K of #10s, haven't had a chance to try them yet (still snowing here in northern New York and more to come).

Jack,

You will likely be fine, but you want to do a quality check when you open each tin of 100. There are a few things I check:

 

Check the energetic primer material in each cap - on the Remmies, it is a bright light green. If it is not, it may be contaminated, or you may have had the "wafer" of primer material fall out - if so it is usually somewhere in the tin. Do NOT use these caps, the remaining good ones in a tin have been fine for me, and until recently, I had only one or so per tin, but had about 15 today out of one tin - another two tins in same purchase were fine.

 

When you go to seat a cap from your snail or in line capper tool, take a quick look at the cap to ensure it has the bright light green material intact.

 

If you have any already split, don't load them in your capper for a match.

 

If they split when you seat them but stay on securely, you are fine, but if they split and seem loose on the nipple, you will have a problem - that seems to be what Bud experienced.

 

I am sure other pard have additional thoughts, but these work for me.

 

Harvey

[Cemetery]

Just so you know, the only time caps fail, is after the buzzer goes off......no buzzer around, all my caps go off 110% of the time.

[Oliver Loving]

Cemetery: You're pretty much correct. During practice I seem to be pretty proficient compared to stage reality. But it's like I always say after a stage with several misses. I was actually clean on the stage because I hit everything I aimed at. Just that my POA was not the proposed target. Thank you very much.

[Noz]

I am settling in with the Slix nipples. Match Saturday and on most stages all caps opened to perfect little 4 leaf clovers and stayed on the nipples until gently picked off.

 

I'm in love.

 

Cap failure? Knock on wood but rarely happens to me.

[Wolfpack Jack]

Harvey, thanks for the info! I'll keep a watch for that. Got my set of Slix so now have one cylinder with Slix and one with Treso. Left one original black nipple in each so I know to leave that one empty.

[Harvey Mushman]

Jack,

 

 

All your nipples will become black after a couple firings. I and some others leave one nipple off entirely, to ensure we are capping only the pre-loaded 5 chambers.

 

We carry a spare nipple to screw in and load six for those few times (nowdays) when a pistol reload on the clock is called for. With C&B, all you do is load all six chambers, cap 5 consecutive at the loading table and then, when the reload is proscribed, cap that one unused chamber (if the stage description allows it, cap the extra before you fire the first shot), and then fire the final shot.

 

There are others who can mark or keep track of the unloaded/uncapped chamber/nipple, but I am not one of them - it just did not work for me in the heat of a stage.

 

Harvey

[Wyandot Jim]

Jack,

 

 

All your nipples will become black after a couple firings. I and some others leave one nipple off entirely, to ensure we are capping only the pre-loaded 5 chambers.

 

We carry a spare nipple to screw in and load six for those few times (nowdays) when a pistol reload on the clock is called for. With C&B, all you do is load all six chambers, cap 5 consecutive at the loading table and then, when the reload is proscribed, cap that one unused chamber (if the stage description allows it, cap the extra before you fire the first shot), and then fire the final shot.

Yep That is the way I do it. Got enough to TRY and remember without trying to remember which chamber not to load. Have only had to put in one nipple for a reload in 8 years.

There are others who can mark or keep track of the unloaded/uncapped chamber/nipple, but I am not one of them - it just did not work for me in the heat of a stage.

 

Harvey

Yep That is the way I do it. Got enough to TRY and remember without trying to remember which chamber not to load. Have only had to put in one nipple for a reload in 8 years.

[Fingers McGee]

Easiest way for me is to just charge 5 and make sure the hammer is down on the empty chamber. No nail polish, removed nipple, different color, etc. When it comes time to cap at the loading table, cap one, skip one, cap 4, hammer back & lower on empty uncapped chamber.

 

Fingers (show Me MO smoke) McGee

[Wolfpack Jack]

I thought about leaving one nipple out - hard to fool that system - but didn't know if it would be considered the right thing to do. Also, the load one, skip one, load four makes sense but I know I would mess that up. Too much elementary arithmetic.

[Buckhorn Bud]

I thought about leaving one nipple out - hard to fool that system - but didn't know if it would be considered the right thing to do. Also, the load one, skip one, load four makes sense but I know I would mess that up. Too much elementary arithmetic.

 

I am often second guessing myself so I do as Harvey mentioned and leave a nipple out. It makes it easy to check when I have to reassure myself. I've had to install the extra nipple probably 3 times in two years.