Q&A for How to Load a Black Powder Revolver

Hold the revolver with a secure, two-handed grip. Begin by grasping the firearm with your dominant hand and wrapping your thumb around it. Then, with your non-dominant hand, encircle your dominant hand, creating a firm and stable grip. Ensure that your fingers are tightly aligned, leaving no gaps between them. Avoid extending your thumbs forward, as this may lead to inadvertent contact with the rotating cylinder, potentially causing malfunctions. Instead, adopt a technique known as "butterflying" your fingers together. This involves keeping your fingers close and parallel, minimizing the risk of interference with the revolver's moving parts. In summary, grasp the revolver with both hands, ensuring a tight and secure grip while keeping your fingers closely aligned. Avoid extending your thumbs forward to prevent potential malfunctions. This technique enhances control and minimizes the risk of unintentional contact with critical components. For a more comprehensive understanding, consider seeking hands-on instruction from a qualified instructor or referring to instructional videos.

The wads can be used between powder and ball to help prevent chain-firing. You can use these instead of grease over the ball. The lubed wads also help keep fouling softer for easier cleaning.

They need to "splatter" so you are able to remove them from the nipple easily. So they are designed to be pretty brittle, but if they get stuck in the action, I'm guessing it could be the brand and substance of the cap; the metal used may be too brittle. If changing the brand doesn't help, I suggest taking a careful look over your pistol and seeing if anything is off, like something up with the action itself. Some cap and ball pistols have enough room for the cap to fall off between shots by having the weapon being tilted up before the next round, the used cap falling out before being caught in the action.

I've never owned a black powder revolver that used pads; those are for rifles. When using a rifle, you would place the patch between the powder and the ball. On a revolver, you don't use a patch. You place your powder (30-40 grains of parade loose black powder if you're rocking a .44, 40-45 for a .45) and then add a tightly fitting round ball. You then add some grease to keep more than one chamber from going off at a time due to a rouge spark of powder poured out. After that, you place caps on the cylinder nipples, and you're ready to go.

Black powder is an explosive. Smokeless powder is not. Rather, smokeless powder is a propellant which cannot be made to explode. Of course, the obvious difference when used in firearms is black powder produces large quantities of white smoke, while smokeless powder doesn't.

If you have a powder measure, use it to measure a certain amount of powder, then pour it into a container of your choice. You then know how much powder it would take for a certain grain count. Write down what percentage of the container the powder took up and how much powder it was. This would work only with specific grain counts, though.

The ramrod should fit the designated cylinder for each firearm. If it doesn't fit correctly, check with the manufacturer of the pistol, or take a look at another black powder revolver of the same caliber to make sure of the correct fit.

Most BP revolvers don't use patches; they use a bit of grease atop the ball to keep an ignition of another chamber from creating a chain reaction due to the powder from chamber A being ignited by a spark from chamber B.

Take it to a gunsmith and ask which caliber. You should also have the gunsmith check the pistol to make sure it is safe to shoot and possibly receive a recommendation about how much powder to use.

Wad between powder and ball for a rifle. No wad for a pistol. Do not use an undersized ball, as it will not seal the chamber. If you use a patched ball in a rifle, then it would be undersized to allow for the patch.