1st Tennessee Vol. Inf.

It was a nice morning!

"Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees."

It is with great sadness that I share that Mike Beliveau passed away this morning. Mike has battled several injuries and illnesses in the last few years. Most recently a struggle with cancer.

Mike was an early proponent of my bullet molds and said some very nice and encouraging words about me and my molds in his videos. He contributed greatly my success. For that I will be forever grateful.

Rest in peace, Pard.

I’ve always suspected that they don’t make caps like they used to.

People often declare that “original percussion caps were a lot hotter than the modern ones” and so I decided to investigate with some experimental archaeology…. and this legend is CONFIRMED!

The U.S. 1861 Ordnance Manual calls for percussion caps to be charged with one-half a grain of “percussion powder,” which was a mixture of fulminate of mercury and saltpeter.

Contrary to popular belief, mercury fulminate is not corrosive to iron guns. It works GREAT in percussion guns, but the fulminate was found to turn brass brittle, making it incompatible with modern brass cartridges.

So for experimental purposes I made some caps using the U.S. 1861 mercury fulminate mixture, and tested them alongside modern caps (CCI and RWS). The difference is astonishing. The 1861 caps are ear-ringing loud when snapped off by themselves, and can blow out a candle several feet in front of the muzzle.

I really really want to make a video about this experimental archaeology but it would be difficult or impossible to do, while also following the various social media policies and guidelines on this sort of stuff.

Meeting of the minds.