Recently I’ve been becoming re-acquainted with Black powder, loading .44 Colt and .44-55 walker cartridges with it. It’s a bit more work to clean the gun after firing, but honestly? It’s not that bad. These cartridges just work better with black powder; hardly surprising as that’s what they were designed for. This has been helped along by the fact that the new air evac/cleaning system at my local indoor range deals with the smoke quite effectively.

This got me thinking about building a muzzle-loading pistol. I’ve never done it before and I do relish a challenge. Since it is not legally a firearm by either Federal or State law it could even be a smoothbore. I have reamers for .251, .357, .375, .451 and .475 so there were options available for the caliber. But what to make?

The obvious answer was ‘something small’ as none of the reamers are long enough to do much more than four inches. A derringer perhaps? I tossed around a number of ideas, but eventually settled on a Philadelphia Derringer.

Around the middle of the 19th C. a Philadelphia gunsmith named Henry Deringer made a name for himself by producing small, large-caliber single-shot percussion pistol. Small being a relative term, of course. These .45-caliber weapons were designed to carry in an overcoat pocket, and they became popular enough that soon others were copying them, with the general type of weapon being referred to at first as a Philadelphia Deringer, and later shortened to simply calling any small pistol with one or two barrels a ‘Derringer.’ I’m not sure where the extra ‘r’ came from, but it was well established by the end of the Civil war.

I’ve never made a side-hammer lock before, but they aren’t rocket science. I’ll need to employ a number of techniques I’ve never used before, but that’s where the fun comes into it (…as well as the swearing, hair pulling and throwing things across the shop.)

The idea of boring a smoothbore is appealing; relatively easy to do, and working with a somewhat oversized block of steel would leave a lot of options. Sure, accuracy would suffer, but these were never meant to be more than a point-blank weapon to begin with. But, poking around the shop I ran across several bits of barrel cut off of percussion revolvers in the course of various cartridge-conversion projects. The one from ‘Thumper,’ my Colt Walker conversion, was suitably beefy. Using the cut-off barrel section would also allow me to produce a rifled weapon, which is better in a number of respects- not the least of which is that it would not be limited to round-ball ammunition.

These barrels have a .451″ bore, and I discovered a .44-caliber hollow-base bullet fits snugly in the rifling, opening the option of using a hollow-base Minie Ball. Better and better…

Typically the barrel of a percussion pistol (or rifle for that matter) is retained in the wooden stock by a tang extending from the back of the barrel being screwed to the wood, and a wedge passed through a lug on the bottom nearer the front. Another method, which I have chosen to use, is to have a screw pass through the bottom of the fore-stock to secure the front end of the barrel.

So, forst the easy bit. I cut a tang from the barrel itself, then did a little shaping with the belt-grinder and files. Next I ran a 1/2″-13 tap into the breech end of the barrel to secure the barrel-plug. I used a high strength 1/2″-13 bolt to create the plug.

I cut off the bolt on the bandsaw and used the bandsaw to cut a slot of a screwdriver. I applied the Loctite and screwed the plug in as deep as it would go, using considerable pressure to insure that it was firmly in place. There is at least 3/8″ of thread engagement, so I sincerely doubt that one could pack enough black powder into the barrel to blow the plug. The Loctite has an absurdly high sheer-strength; there is literally no chance the plug could unscrew itself.

After the plug is cut and filed down I’ll weld a 1/4″-20 nut to the bottom of the barrel for the screw that passes through the bottom of the fore-stock. With the barrel then ready to mount it will be time to start on the stock.

I’m hoping to use a piece of century-old pre-blight American Chestnut for the stock; it’s a lovely wood with nice color. After that it’s time to make the side-plate and action.

So, that’s a start anyway. I’ll keep you posted as the build progresses.

Michael Tinker Pearce, 18 April 2019

Like what you see? Consider contributing to my Patreon!
https://www.patreon.com/TinkerTalksGuns

Let’s face it, this hobby isn’t cheap. As a self-employed knifemaker my income is averages out decently, but it can be irregular and let’s face it- excrement occurs. When it does the first thing put on hold is ‘non-essentials,’ which includes practically everything to do with firearms, from reloading to range trips to new and interesting projects- and I’ve got a lot of those in the pipeline, including:

*A home-made single-action revolver

*A .25 Wildcat cartridge (.25 TCR) designed as a reloadable replacement for .22 and .22 Magnum

*A home-made rolling-block rifle chambered in .44-55 Walker

*Bespoke cartridge conversions in a variety of calibers, from .25 TCR to .32-20 to .45 Colt

*A chronograph to test commercial and handloaded ammunition

*Reviews of budget-minded new firearms for sporting and self-defense purposes.

*Shooting and review videos

*A double-rifle conversion

…and a lot more.

A lot of these projects require components or tools that I cannot easily afford- and this slows things down a lot. Also certain types of videos- specifically ‘how-to’ videos, cannot be monetized on Youtube. I’ve decided to let you, my readers, decide what this content is worth to you. If you are happy with things the way they are rest assured, I’m not going to stop doing this. The worst thing that happens is that nothing changes- I’ll keep right on producing the sort of content you are already enjoying at the current irregular pace. But if you find this blog interesting and value more new and original content, please consider contributing to my Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/TinkerTalksGuns

Thanks,

Michael Tinker Pearce 16 April 2019

Been a good while since I have posted; my apologies, but this is a hobby, and essentials of life occasionally take priority.

Today was my first range-trip in weeks, and I had a number of things to test. Based on past experience I also took several guns that I know work and that I enjoy shooting. It’s annoying to make a range trip and discover that none of the guns are working as they should… Ask me how I know. Go one then, ask!

First up was the Webley RIC. This wasn’t so much a test of the gun as the ammo. Yep, working a treat! Shooting low, but I am reluctant to cut the sight down to bring the POI up; it is a collectible antique, after all. I think I can live with it.

Next up was Thumper- again, more a test of the ammo than the gun. This gun uses a bespoke cartridge- .44-55 Walker. Essentially a ‘stretched’ .44 Colt, my typical load for this has been a 200gr heel-base bullet over 10 Gr. of Trail Boss. I haven’t fired Thumper a lot because the brass was formed from .303 British- doing this was a major PITA, and only 15 of the original 20 shells survived the process. “Hey Tinker, you know that’s a lot easier if you anneal the brass, right?” Sure, now I know that! Anyway, I’ve also learned that it’s much easier to form the brass from .460 S&W, and wanted to try some of the new shells.

Hey, Champion Arms actually does allow Black Powder on their range- the air-evac/cleaning system whisks the smoke away quite adequately. I decided it was time to try my latest heel-base SWC bullets ( a 200gr. .451/.430 heel-base) over 55gr. of FFFg black Powder. In the picture below the taped-over shots were from an older bullet design, and the dispersion should make it clear why I abandoned that design! The new bullets worked much better.

I gotta’ tell ya… this thing is a hoot to shoot with black-powder loads! First off the are notably more powerful than the Trail Boss loads I developed for this cartridge. They actually produce enough recoil, even in this 3-1/2lb gun, to rap my middle-finger sharply with the trigger-guard if I am not careful with my grip. The BOOM was impressive enough to make the Range Officer look to see what the hell I was shooting! Very satisfying.

What was not satisfying was that with the BP loads the firing pin is piercing the primers. Have to look into that. I think that in the future I am going to be mostly loading this cartridge with BP.

Another satisfactory test was my third scratch-built cylinder. This is a five-shot .450 Adams cylinder for my second 1858 snubby, made to replace it’s .44 Colt cylinder.

I turned the cylinder from half-hard 4340 round bar, cut the cylinder-notches, line-bored the chambers and then cut the sprocket. It needs a bit of refinement and to be properly finished, but it works. I need to finish it to 320 grit, hone the chambers and tweak the breechplate a little, then rust-blue the lot before I can call it finished. Oh, and remove the .44 Colt marking on the side of the barrel.

Next was a new gun. This one is likely to get it’s own blog post- suffice to say for now It has both a .44 Colt converter and a percussion cylinder, both of which need to have the cylinder dismounted for loading/unloading.

The first test was with the .44 Colt cylinder, and it was both satisfactory and rather not. The gun functioned very well, but the ammunition was dramatically underpowered. For all of that it was accurate enough at seven yards-

I think I am done trying to use Unique in this caliber; I’m just not getting consistently good results. Time for another powder or even FFFg black powder. I thought about it and decided, ‘what the hell’ and loaded five rounds into the percussion cylinder. Much more satisfying to shoot- plenty of boom and velocity was much, much better. Accuracy, however, left something to be desired.

The gun appears to be shooting consistently low, but I’m not going to mess with the sight until I have a decent .44 Colt load working.

Last but not least I made my third cylinder from scratch for an 1858 Pug. This gun was originally fitted with a .44 Colt conversion cylinder, but I wanted to convert it to .450 Adams- what the heck, I already load that for some of my other guns, so why not? I turned down a piece of half-hard 4340 rod, cut the lock-notches then line-bored the cylinder. After that I reamed the chambers and cut the ratchet. I made a base-plate with a firing-pin mounted and tried it our in the gun.

I’ll need to remove the .44 Colt marking from the barrel, naturally.

The business of testing finished it was on to the fun stuff. A facebook group I’m part of is running a Postal Match, and I was about out of time to get my entries in. It’s a very simple course of fire- five rounds at five yards and five rounds at ten. For my centerfire target I chose my S&W 6-1/2″ Half-Target Hand Ejector in .38 Special, loaded with some stout 158gr. RNFP loads. The results weren’t embarrassing- 97/100-3x-

For my rimfire entry I went a rather different direction- my S&W 6. This little gun is hilariously accurate for a pocket-pistol, and the results reflected that- 96/100-1x

I finished out the session by putting practice rounds down-range from my custom Taurus M85 sub-compact. Satisfying but not noteworthy. It’s amazing how well this little gun handles heavy loads.

Overall a great morning at the range- hopefully I’ll be going back soon, but life has been interesting the last couple of months…

Michael Tinker Pearce, 31 March 2019