Best Of

Black powder weapon- Any weapon that shoots and uses black powder as a propellant. Can be a breech loading cartridge piece, a direct cylinder loading, or a muzzle loading type arm. Most original arms made before the invention of smokeless powders and their newly produced replicas.

Cap n Ball- A percussion revolver that is cartridge-less, and is loaded directly into each cylinder and detonated by a percussion cap.

Flintlock- A type of ignition system that utilizes a sharp piece of flint rock that strikes a hardened steel plate called a frizzen. Sparks generated from strike ignite primer powder in a pan which ignites the main powder charge in the barrel through a small hole located just above the pan. The invention of the flintlock system goes back several hundred years and has been debated with no proven answers as to any individual or country of origin to its inception.

Percussion- When referring to black powder weapons, the percussion system came about from the discovery of fulminates which was made by Edward Charles Howard (1774–1816) in 1800. The invention that made the percussion cap possible using the recently discovered fulminates was patented by the Rev. Alexander John Forsyth of Belhelvie, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1807. The new development took several decades of the 19th century to eventually replace the flintlock ignition system, which our military in the US adapted around 1842. The percussion cap is a thin metal (usually copper) sized holder of fulminates that fits a specific sized part known as a nipple. The nipple is threaded and secured into a gun barrel in the breech area where black powder and projectile are loaded. The hammer strike upon the cap detonates the small charge within and travels through a small hole in the nipple to ignite the main charge.

Muzzle Loader- Any firearm that requires it to be loaded through the muzzle end of a barrel.