Make your own Persussion caps

For those like me who shoot muzzleloaders and have been having problems finding ANY percussion caps.  This little tool allows you to cut up a soda can to make the actual cap.  You still have to find a priming compound to put in the caps though.  Many people will use toy caps from cap pistols either the paper rolls or the plastic caps that are all joined together to put in these for a priming compound.

Here is a video of someone using the cap making tool.




I emailed the Kevin the guy who makes these in his spare time.  He charges $50.00 plus $5.00 shipping.  I asked just what thickness of aluminum could be used and he stated he set it up specifically for soda cans however some had used aluminum pie pans but it wasn't made for that thickness.

So if you are having problems finding a place to get a Tap-o-Cap for a reasonable price drop Kevin an e-mail at  kvn440@yahoo.com (I've found Tap-o-Caps for sale at some places, the price ranges from $50.00 all the way up to almost $115.00, however the Tap-o-Cap had problems with the anvil coming loose Kevin's jig doesn't look like it would have that problem)

Now Kevin just makes these in his spare time.  He isn't a major manufacturer, so please if you do order one from him be aware it might take a week or two for him to ship it off to you.  He does have a day job to pay the bills.

Round Ball vs Cut Lead

Oleg posted this on FB and I found it so interesting I had to post it here along with a comment from another user on FB

WR:  Very interesting! I had never heard of the extruded bar bullets. A Confederate infantryman in Missouri described in his journal the practice of casting bullets in a thimble. He said they would pour in the lead, then very quickly jam a pointed stick into the thimble to make the base cavity. He didn't comment on the accuracy, but said they'd shoot clear through a box car at 200 yards!

When we exhumed the remains of 31 Confederate soldiers who died at the battle of Glorieta Pass, in New Mexico, several of the skeletons yielded the bullets that had killed them - everything from buckshot to a 12 pound howitzer canister ball, and several minie bullets. In the pelvic area of one skeleton, we found a .58 minie bullet with the skirts grossly expanded. The expansion was pretty uniform, and the nose of the bullet wasn't deformed, at all, and showed no rifling marks. A few days later in the dig, we found a group of about 15 bullets, identically deformed, in the pelvic area of another skeleton.

The bones didn't show any damage, so we concluded that the bullets had been in the soldier's pockets. The Confederates were pretty poorly armed, even by early war standards, and many of them had shotguns they'd brought from home. They had captured many thousands of rounds of .69 ammunition in paper cartridges at Ft. Bliss, and several mentioned in their letters and journals that a .69 buck and ball round made a 12 gauge shotgun a pretty effective close range assault weapon. (See how I brought in that terminology?)

The flaring of the skirts on those minie bullets baffled us until I took my 12 ga. muzzleloader out of the car and tried one of those bullets in it. It wasn't a tight fit, but was a lot better than a plain .58 bullet. Somehow or another, they were swaging the skirts out to use those bullets in shotguns. (They were too big to fit in an 1842 musket.) I have never tried to fire an altered bullet from my shotgun, but I have tried to swage the skirts of some, and they must have had some kind of home made die, because every method I've tried mangled the nose of the bullet, too.