Hi:

The post about snap caps jogged my mind as to why I do not use snap caps!

I had an experience where the snap cap could have led to very bad situation. I quit using them immediately.

I think that it went something like this. I looked at the chambers and saw what I thought were snap caps but were indeed loaded shells. Had I released the tension on the firing pin springs, bad things may have happened.

I thought of painting the end of the snap caps a very obvious colour to help me notice when snap caps were in the chambers but I scrapped the entire idea and just said no more snap caps. This one incident made me rethink the entire idea of using snap caps!

Has anybody else out there had A "problem" of this sort when using snap caps etc.?

Be well,

Franchi

franchi....a good reason to go with the a-zooms...the brileys also have a distinctive color.

muscle memory/habit is probably equally important as visual cues...I like to stand at the same spot behind the truck & take them out just as I shoulder a broken gun heading to the field...coming in from the field I empty the gun 50 yards from the truck & caps are the last thing I do after wipe down.

Franchi:

Loaded ammunition of all types has very visible head stamps that are quite clear.....when in doubt LOOK...

Sorry, but in my honest opinion, anybody that dense or blind is really a danger to themselves and others............

No offense meant.........

I have seen snap caps go off three times and have heard other that have gone off. I want no part of them. How many mistakes do you make in a day ?

awc

I think snap caps are a fine idea and nearly all of mine are A-Zooms. However, I only use my snap caps in my gun storage room - I NEVER take them out of the house. And I don't allow loose live rounds or boxes of 25 on my workbench when I'm working on a shotgun.
When my shotguns are outside the house, the gun is LIVE and ALL the ammo is LIVE. This method eliminates one form of accidental discharge after the hunt or at the club - as all the ammo with me is LIVE - there being NO snap caps with me to confuse the issue when I tired or less attentive.
SNAP CAPS STAY IN THE HOUSE - safer for me and those around me.

Nothing will teach a person gun safety like a negligent discharge.
CHAZ

True enough.

Years ago at a club I used to frequent...

A shooter shoved a snap cap into his gun and tripped the trigger.

He had the gun pointed under a chair where old Zeke was playing cribbage.

It turned out to be a spanking new Federal trap load and not a snap cap.

It blew the hell out of Zeke's shooting bag under the chair.

The guy sold off all his equipment and never showed his face at the club again.

There's a moral there someplace...

I made another post that stated that I had converted fired shells into snap caps by placing pencil erasers in the hole where the primers were removed. This why these shells had head stamps et.al. I should have made this clear in this post!

Like I stated in the other post, I should have painted the heads of the shells a bright colour to identify them as snap caps. The snap caps that I now have,but do not use, are a light blue in colour.

As far as being "dense and blind", I was neither. I did notice that there was something not correct when I looked at the gun thus alarming my senses to look for something wrong. Sign of good vision! There is no reason to have shells in my gun unless I am ready to shoot.


PA 24: I have no idea as to what dense means when speaking of a person. At 5-10 and 190 lbs, my wife thinks that I am "dense."

Enough for now,

Franchi

I have no need of snap caps, have also seen a gun discharged when it's owner believed he was relieving the mainsprings with snap caps...but used live rounds.

I do store my guns uncocked, but "snap" the guns w/ barrels off with a plastic screw driver handle or a wooden dowel. Reassemble the guns, and I'm done. Why someone would want to store a gun with anything in the chambers is beyond me, but each to his/her own.

I'm conducting a private social experiment, and could use an honest answer to a single question.

Ready?

Any chance you voted for Obama/Biden last election?

Please be honest....


Best,
Ted

This is good sense. I only use my snap caps when checking the gun over - then take them out. I store my guns cocked, and after many years (some over 100 years), no problems with tired springs.
The only tired spring I have had was one lock only (off a sidelock s/s) made in the 1980s. I suspect a case of poor material/heat treatment there.

Hi Ted:

Yes, I did indeed vote for President Obama in both elections!

The alternative party is a scary thing!

From your question, I bet that you voted for Romney-Ryan. "Please be honest."

Stay well,

Franchi

I find it incomprehensible that any responsible individual would pull a trigger on any firearm without having visual firsthand knowledge of what is in the chamber and full awareness of where the muzzles are pointed.

Maybe it is time for the government to step in and enact a round of snap cap laws to protect the masses from themselves - or just take away our firearms, that would solve the problem.

Real shells in lieu of snap caps is a nightmare, no different than other accidental discharge stories. The key reality that should save anyone is the base rules about muzzle control and always assuming the gun is loaded.

Returning to the original focus of the thread. I use snap caps in the house, in my gun room, I do not use them in the field.

I believe that nickel plating or chroming them adds to distinguishing them from other shells.

A liberal with home made snap caps, and no idea of when and where they belong is far, far scarier!


Best,
Ted

I hear a lot of folks talking about making snap caps from spent shells; this is exactly why I think that idea is, well, not smart.

The A-zoom color is fairly easy to differentiate from the color of an actual round. Brass or nickel; much more difficult. While it's true that there's no substitute for caution and always "knowing" you're doing it right, I'm not willing to stake my life or anyone else's my ability to always be right.

I once read an essay by sporting artist Bob White about a loaded gun that he was SURE he unloaded. No matter how careful we are, or how sure we are of our routines, accidents happen.

I take some comfort that this liberal appreciates fine guns and has the capacity to fabricate useful things. Like it or not, this last election was a watershed event. The world we once knew is gone, and unless something dramatically changes, conservatives will never hold the White House again. Demography is destiny, and unless we can find common cause with some good liberal folks, our days as hunters and shooters will be over fairly quickly.

Yep! That would explain a lot. Excellent question Ted. The honest reply completes the explanation. I will continue to safely use snap caps, and I will continue to wonder why we ever got away from poll testing. Screwing up the whole damn country is worse than a single accidental discharge.

Pretty simple. Inside the safe,snap caps, When the shotgun comes out of the safe, the snap caps come out. Gun is not loaded until I am in the field and away from the truck or camp. Muzzle NEVER sweeps anything I would not want to shoot.

Puting erasers in a head stamped shotgun sheel sounds like a recipe for disaster sooner or later.

Incredible.

A discussion about a serious safety issue becomes political, complete with cartoons.

The assertion apparently being that "If you make a 'stupid' mistake, you must not be very smart and certainly not of the same idological ilk as superior people such as I."

Here's a fact... as people age, they run into congitive changes that affect their memory. There isn't much you can do about it, but it will happen to you. Guaranteed.

Someday, you will wonder what the hell happened to your favorite box of cereal, only to find it in the refrigerator. You may load you car for a shooting trip, later to discover you packed the wrong barrel for the gun.

People do these things because they are people.

The snap cap issue is really quite simple. There are steps you can take, before the accident occurs, to reduce or eliminate the risk.

Don't think stuff like this can't happen to anybody, including your brilliant self.

In aviation we like to see young aviators realize their own fallibility at an early stage. It's always pretty easy to set up the cocky ones for a lesson that either leads to some personal soul searching and a change of behavior or to elimination from the program.

Everybody will make mistakes in life, some more serious than others.

A snap cap is nothing more than a time bomb.

Only a time bomb if you make it so. Any loaded firearm is a time bomb.There are those that think hunting with a round in the chamber is a time bomb. Getting in your vehicle and driving down the road is inherently more dangerous than using snap caps.

I work on a few shotguns evey once and awhile and it is heck of a lot safer to put a snap cap in the chamber and tst for function than a live round and I don't have to leave the shop to do it.

Condemning snap caps because of the potential to mistake a live round for a snap cap makes about as much sense as a previous post on this forum that condemned hand detachable locks because of the potential to remove the locks & misplace them.

In the case of the snap caps, when dropping the hammer on a snap cap or on an empty chamber in all circumstances the gun must be pointed in a safe direction. I do think it is desirable for snap caps to look distinctively different from live rounds & most that I have seen do.

I don't want to be harsh but both cases, if a person is that clueless & unobservant perhaps the time has come to stop handling firearms & other potentially dangerous things.

Hello Shotgunjones:

The issue that I had with the snap caps happened many years ago. After I made the initial post I remembered more clearly what had transpired.

There were NO loaded shells in my gun! What was in the gun were the two "snap caps" that I had made from fired shells. I realized that this may lead to a potential problem in the future. At no time, did I have loaded shells in the gun. I was attempting to determine how to time the ejectors on my O/U.

The only time that I have a shell in a SxS or an O/U is at a range or when my dog gets birdy or goes on point! Now an automatic shotgun is a different story! They take more attention to safety than the the break action gun!

When I looked at the home made snap caps realized that this was not a good idea as they looked similar to loaded shells. That was the end of using home made snap caps!

In any case, nothing happened and the entire event was very anticlimactic, but I did learn a lesson.

Enough for now.

Be well my friend,

Leomat

My point being... and I want to be clear on this...

People get into habit patterns and routines. They do stuff almost autonomically, not giving proper thought to simple basic things at times because life gets repetitive and routine.

We all do this. And...

This is when Murphy strikes.

Shotgunjones...the very foundation of my belief in miracles is the fact that I have survived 70 years of my own stupidity.

Ted...the only dem I would ever vote for would have to be running for the border!

Exactly! And this is why we as gun owners have to be more disciplined than anybody. This is why we should treat every gun as if it was loaded, and why we should teach and reinforce that same lesson to every young shooter we bring to the sport. This is why, if I hand my elderly Dad my newest toy to examine, the first thing he'll do is open it and make sure it's unloaded. If I assure him that it's unloaded, he'll say, "In God we trust...I'll double check." His mind is still very sharp, but if I do the same ten years from now, he'll do the same out of the lifelong habit, pattern, and routine you spoke of. He drilled the same into my head before the first time I touched a gun, and he made me understand that if I screwed up even once, I would not be trusted to go shooting or hunting with him or my Uncles and cousins. I believed him, and more than anything, I did not want to jeopardize that. The NRA Certified Instructors who supervised the indoor range in my high school taught us also to treat every gun as if it was loaded, and to never point it at anyone even after we verified it was unloaded. They too let us know this was a zero tolerance rule. There were thousands of round fired in my school every week, but never a problem. Now guns are demonized to the point that a 5 year old girl gets a 10 day suspension for having a Hello Kitty Bubble Gun, and a 6 year old boy gets suspended for pointing his finger and saying "bang bang". That's why it bothered me to see the opinion that a snap cap is nothing more than a time bomb. We hear much the same from the anti's who say that a gun in the home is an accident waiting to happen. Yes, there are gun accidents, but virtually every one could be prevented through safe gun handling habits. And safe gun habits will naturally become routine and unconsciously automatic. We have to be extra careful because of the times we live in. Every time someone is killed or injured by an accidental discharge, the anti's seize upon that incident. But when someone backs over a kid on a tricycle in the driveway, no one will call for outlawing cars. Snap caps don't kill people. People kill people.

Very nice, keith.

You 'get it'.

Those who took their basic gun safety lessons to heart, and swore to be a lifelong safe shooter by obeying the simple rules first presented cringed a little when they learned about the 'snap cap' concept. I know I did.

We're going to put something that resembles a shell into the chamber and drop the hammer on it to preserve the mainspring. This is going to be routine when casing the gun. What could go wrong?

The question here seems to be...

Is the routine use of snap caps a 'safe gun handling habit'?

Personally, I don't use them routinely. It just seems to be a snake in the grass, and it's not that I don't trust myself. It's just one risk I can totally eliminate.

I'm aware of several AD's caused by careless use of snaps, including the loss of half a foot. True, the people had nobody to blame other than themselves.

I guess if this thread makes someone more careful, it's served it's purpose.

Normally intelligent people sometimes do stupid stuff.

"Those who took their basic gun safety lesson to heart, and swore to be a lifelong safe shooter by obeying the simple rules first presented cringed a little when they learned about the "snap cap" concept.
Shotgunjones - you PRESUME to speak for a goodly number of folks, there.
Be advised, Sir, you DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME.
If you choose to cringe at the thought of an inanimate snap cap, that is your problem. I do not so choose.
However, I do recognize the potential problem when a snap cap is present with live ammo. A shooter who has a snap cap on or about his/her person, and is tired, harried, or otherwise distracted, is a combination that is potentially tragic.

I'll stick with 'cringe' Ian.

"Recoil in distaste"

I felt much the same when being taught how to prop start an airplane engine after being told never to put any of my body parts in the propeller arc.

It's potentially hazardous if not done absolutely correctly, but sometimes it has to be done. Best learn how. And don't screw up.

This is a great discussion and I appreciate you pointing out how I presume to speak for others. Of course, that's not my intent.

It still goes back to carelessness. To me, there is a huge difference between a snap cap and a loaded round. Before I ever used a snap cap, I used once fired empties to drop the hammers on my doubles. I never had any trouble telling the difference between an empty and an unfired shell. Of course, I had also beaten the entire rims of .22 brass to death by using empties for dry firing revolver practice. I never managed to mix a loaded round in with the empties, but if I had, habit would have dictated that the muzzle was pointed in a safe direction when I pulled the trigger. I understand that accidents happen. But it's up to us to reduce them to as near zero as possible. That requires us to always maintain the same level of awareness as if we were near a spinning prop or saw blade. Owning and using guns is an awesome responsibility. I've always started with any new shooter by using water filled milk jugs, over-ripe melons, or the like, to show them the destructive force of even a puny .22 lr. I want them to understand that if they ever screw up and shoot a hunting companion or even themselves, someone could easily die. Even if we weren't brought up that way, we ought to retrain ourselves and make safe gun handling job #1 with any new shooter before they make a mistake with huge consequences.

I used to always think it was pretty cool to go into dozens of gun shows, each containing hundreds or thousands of firearms, and yet I felt as safe as safe could be. I'd think, if guns are so dangerous, this ought to be the worst place I could be on the planet. Yet there was never a problem. Never that is until about ten years ago when a vendor screwed up and bounced a 9m/m round off the floor of the Monroeville Expo Mart PGCA Gun Show and hit a patron in the leg. He thought the gun was unloaded. He obviously didn't take 2 seconds to check. And he pointed the gun inside a crowded building, put his finger on the trigger, and he pulled it. That wasn't a single mistake. That was four or five screw ups that led to an AD. I wasn't there that day, but that one incident caused enough unease that the whole venue changed and the show is now a shadow of what it once was.

Lewis Drake used to sell,and many old cased English guns came with, a piece of buffalo horn that you could hold against the breech face and snap the firing pins against.I've used them for years and there's no mistaking what it's for. Regards, Marcus

I put snap caps with the mop on the end for my perazzi.They slipped under/past the ejectors,and,were a b@#$ to get out.

A time honored story of the pitfalls of not using snap caps (or something)...

Old BGC days... guy has a Ljutic for sale.

Must be the old days... this is when the Ljutic was the hot ticket for trap... gun is in the club rack with the usual 'for sale $xx' sign made out of a shell box sticking out the muzzle.

Prospective buyer picks it up, checks the chamber (good on him), mounts the magnificent clay buster to his shoulder... and tries out the trigger.

"Snap"... and the firing pin hits the wall at the other end of the room.

I swear. This is a true no $hitter.

Was the POI 60/40 or 80/20?