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Home made percussion caps - any chemists on here?

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 11:50 am
by Dark Skies
£18 to £22 per hundred CCI caps is just profiteering and I won't tolerate it!

I've bought some punches for making percussion caps out of beer cans.
They work well with the small amount of compound supplied in the kit.
However, looking to the future, I've experimented with using the little black dots of bang stuff found on rolls of kids cap guns of a happier yore.
They work (typically packing out a cap with three dots) but it's super tedious punching them out of the reel. It'd be so much easier if the reels could be soaked in some kind of solvent to float the caps off and then be dried out without weakening their ability to go bang. Any science guys on here that could suggest a solution?
Heh. see what I did there?

Re: Home made percussion caps - any chemists on here?

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 12:04 pm
by dromia
Why not get some Nothing B powder, mix some into a slurry with some acetone and apply to the cap using a nail art dotter. Different size dotter heads will deliver differing amounts of the priming compound with surprising regularity.

I works for me.

Re: Home made percussion caps - any chemists on here?

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 12:13 pm
by Mauserbill
Hello
Wow, now the dark arts of alchemy, is there no end to the information available on this forum.

Re: Home made percussion caps - any chemists on here?

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 12:22 pm
by Dark Skies
dromia wrote: Sat Jul 01, 2023 12:04 pm Why not get some Nothing B powder, mix some into a slurry with some acetone and apply to the cap using a nail art dotter. Different size dotter heads will deliver differing amounts of the priming compound with surprising regularity.

I works for me.
Hmm. I had not considered that possibility. I will try it. Cheers.

Re: Home made percussion caps - any chemists on here?

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 12:58 pm
by markie
A couple of years ago there was a shortage of .22 rimfire ammo in the States and some resorted to reloading their own. They basically primed the cases by using "Toy caps". The process involved opening the caps with a scalpel, scraping the priming compound out and mixing with acetone.

The rimfire cases were primed by putting a blob of the mixture on a matchstick and scraping it around the inside of the case rim. Seem to remember they used some sort of punch to knowck out the old primer dent.

Re: Home made percussion caps - any chemists on here?

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 1:11 pm
by dromia
I reload rimfires, never bother knock out the rim dents, just orient the case when loading.

I may have written about the process on here.

There is, or used to be, a commercial primer compound available that came in three parts needing mixing so that in could be posted as non hazardous.

Unfortunately it was chronically hygroscopic so a corrosion threat so I saw no benefit over Nothing B powder.

Should have said in the previous post if for any reason the powder doesn't stay in place after the acetone evaporates then a smidgen of shellac will hold it in place with no detriment to ignition.

Re: Home made percussion caps - any chemists on here?

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 5:03 pm
by bradaz11
what is nothing B powder?

Re: Home made percussion caps - any chemists on here?

Posted: Sat Jul 01, 2023 7:40 pm
by Graham M

Re: Home made percussion caps - any chemists on here?

Posted: Sun Jul 02, 2023 3:08 pm
by bradaz11
ahh ok, so extremely fine BP?