Reuse of spent pistil primers for cap guns

[elhombreconnonombre]

A buddy of mine who loads his own smokeless cartridges was cleaning his loading bench and gave me several thousand spent large pistol primers. I had the crazy idea to recycle these for use in cb revolvers. I removed the anvil with some Harbor Freight dental picks; hammered the firing pin indentation out to get a flat surface; used a 1/8" paper punch to punch out toy roll caps; put a couple caps in the primer cup; placed the primer on the nipple;cock and fire...BANG! As always your mileage may vary.
There is a youtube vid where a fellow does this to reload his primers to reuse in his smokeless powder guns. He replaces the anvil from that same spent primer..

 

[J-Bar]

Edit: original deleted.

I did not intend for my post to sound negative, but upon reflection, it did.

I admire the patience, attention to detail, and dedication it took to accomplish this.

I just hope the supply of caps continues and does not make this necessary!!

 

[elhombreconnonombre]

Well down my way the cap supply is iffy. My LGS has not had any in in a year. I can SOMETIMES snag a few tins at Cabelas. Thus I am not that crazy. Also, the primer cups are heavy duty being nickel plated brass and dont disentegrate like some copper caps.

 

[damienph]

I save all of my spent primers and fill bags with them to use for shooting rests, like sandbags.

 

[elhombreconnonombre]

Plus its a lot easier than making my own cap hulls outa beverage cans with either a punch or the new replacement for the tap-o-cap device, discussed elsewhere on THR. I am going to see if putting an drop of a slurry made out of carefully pulverized strike-anywhere match tips and alchohol into the primer cup will do better or worse than rol caps.

 

[ofitg]

NoName, I should point out that just because the cap goes "bang", doesn't necessarily mean that it has enough power to make the gun go "boom".

I had to use three of the German-made paper caps to get reliable ignition when I was playing with the idea. Most people prefer to use a single paper cap, seated over a tiny pinch of BP dust.

Please let us know how the match tip idea works out.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Wonder how they would pattern when used as shot.

 

[Jim K]

I have tried all that stuff, using fired primers for caps, reloading rimfires, reloading primers, making black powder, etc. Believe me, it isn't worth it, let alone being dangerous as hell in some cases.

Jim