You know, I own both cartridge revolvers and semi auto pistols and I enjoy shooting (and hunting with) all my firearms, but shooting black powder is, by far, the most fun kind of shooting I do or I have ever done.  When a charge is fired, there is a very satisfying amount of recoil (that you can vary from light to heavy) and there's a big jolly blast of smoke & flame. Add to all that, there's the fun and satisfaction of hitting exactly what you're aiming at.  When loaded right and carefully held on target, my .44 black powder pistol is an incredibly accurate weapon that is in no way inferior to my cartridge pistols.   Black powder naturally makes you want to strive to be a marksman and not just a shooter.

     Things weren't always this good.  In the early 1960s I used to shoot a nicely made replica of a Colt New Army .44 Model 1860.  I remember how graceful and flowing the lines of the barrel looked to me and how I admired the battle scene engraved on the the cylinder.  The butt of the pistol fit my hand so nicely and working the action just felt good.  Back then people (including yours truly) were very ignorant of black powder shooting and there was a lot of misinformation circulating around (there still is).  Multiple discharges (chain firing) were the norm and considered inevitable.  Of course, nobody expected the pistols to be very accurate and just hitting the paper -- anywhere -- was a major accomplishment.  

     I can hardly believe how stupid my friends and I were back then.  Our favorite loading technique was to pour black powder over the cylinder and into the chambers without measuring it.  When a chamber would fill up, we'd rotate it to the next chamber without stopping the flow.  Of course, powder would get all over the top of the cylinder, a cylinder made sticky because of the Crisco from the previous loading.  After pouring the powder in this way, we'd ram in the bullets.  To prevent chain firing (or so we believed), we'd plaster (glomm) on a thick layer of Crisco to the outside of the cylinder, little realizing that the Crisco actually made matters worse.  

     Then there was the rapid build up of fowling and poor accuracy.  It was just accepted that after the first three to six shots, the bullets would be all over the target.  Finally, after about 18 shots, the pistol would be jammed with fowling, the cylinder wouldn't rotate anymore and so we'd take it home to wash it out with soap and water and thus stink up the whole house with the odor of rotten eggs.

     I developed a mistaken impression that black powder revolvers were slow loading, inaccurate, highly prone to chain firing, and were a nasty mess to clean, so after my initial fascination, I finally gave up on them and got rid of mine.  For years afterward I shot nothing but cartridge pistols and used nothing but smokeless propellants in my reloads.  About 15 years ago I got into cavalry reenacting and bought good quality Civil War period reproduction firearms as part of my equipment.  This gave me an opportunity to do some interesting experiments and the more I experimented, the more I learned to enjoy black powder shooting.

     Well, I have learned a lot since those days and now I never get a chain fire, my pistol does not fowl up, my bullets hit the target where I intend them to and cleaning my pistol is fast, easy and odorless.  For me today, black powder shooting is much more enjoyable and satisfying than it was "back in the good old days" and, as I said earlier, it is my most fun kind of shooting.  I want to share with you some of my experiences so that you too will find black powder shooting your most fun kind of shooting too.

     Despite the Colt's many and glaring design defects, back in the old days, the Colt’s outsold all other brands and during the Civil War they were issued to troops on a 2 to 1 ratio to the Remington.  There were many reasons for this.  Sam Colt’s revolvers hit the market as early as the mid 1830's and the early ones, including the powerful dragoon models, made a wonderful reputation for Colt that captured the public's imagination.  For decades, people used the word 'colt' to mean 'revolver' regardless of the actual brand.  For example: "the colt I carried was a 1858 Remington I bought myself."  Colonel Sam was also a master salesman and he made friends with every important general, admiral and government official in America.  He shamelessly presented all important persons with exquisitely hand crafted, engraved & inlayed pistols as gifts.  Finally, even Colt's commercial grade pistols were beautifully made by skilled craftsmen using the finest materials of the day (so-called "Silver Spring Steel").  Colt pistols have always fit the hand superbly and they have perhaps the finest hammer location and cocking action of any single action revolver ever made.  Many people also insist that Colt single action revolvers have always had superior "point-ability" (important in combat shooting).   

     Of course, there are many other types of revolvers on the market ranging from the Starr double action to the huge Dragoons to the 9 shot + shotgun LeMat to the brass framed and historically accurate reproductions of Confederate manufactured pistols in .36 caliber to the awful non-historic brass framed models in .44 caliber.  They all work the same, load the same and are equally fun to shoot, but as they were in the past, "also ran" models are only a small fraction of what people were shooting then and just a fraction of what people are shooting today, so I am not going to go into any detail about them.  Let it suffice that the general information presented here applies to them just as it does to the Colts and Remingtons.

     The fact is, no matter what type of revolver you have or you decide to get, it will be a lot of fun to shoot and the owners of each type comes to really like what they have.  It is really hard to make a mistake here, so if you like the looks of a particular model or you like some historical aspect associated with it, buy it, you won't be sorry.

     There is one kind of black powder revolver that I would seriously advise staying away from and that is the brass frame Colt types.  These are cheap weapons, they are not good shooting pieces and they are not historically accurate.  There is scant evidence that anybody in the South ever manufactured more than just a handful of brass framed Colt 1851 copies during the Civil War (certainly Colt never did).  If you shoot normal charges out of one of those brass pieces of junk, the cylinder shaft will pull out of the frame after a while, it will get all loose and the thing will be useless.  This is especially true of the .44 "Confederate" models (of which there is absolutely no evidence that any were ever manufactured anywhere by anybody in that caliber).  Some sellers even have the nerve to call .44 caliber brass framed junkers "Confederate Navy" models when the word 'Navy' always meant .36 caliber.  Yes, a few brass framed Navy caliber pistols were manufactured in the South, but never in .44 caliber.  Look, for a few bucks more you can have a steel frame Colt or a Remington, so please don't bother with these brass framed pieces of junk.  These brass framed fakes (I will not call these things "reproductions") are flashy when they are polished up and they sure look "old time" to those who don't know much about period pistols, but they are vastly inferior to the same pistol with a steel frame.  

     Here are my suggestions:  if you already have a brass pistol, polish it up really shiny and then hang it on a wall somewhere, but if you insist on shooting it, use no more than half charges of powder.  Most of us eventually buy more than one pistol, so you might consider using your brass pistol to see if you like this kind of shooting and if you do (and I think you will), buy yourself a second pistol with a steel frame and make that one your primary "shooting iron."