That's too bad because as far as I know since the days of the Old West.... No one has criminally misused a percussion revolver. I don't think you have to have a license to make it here. What you do need is 75% saltpeter and 15% charcoal and 10% sulfur and a ball mill. It's kind of a pain in the butt to buy it if you can't find it in a brick and mortar store. Buying it online requires a hazmat shipping fee. It also requires that you click the little box saying that you're going to use this powder for sporting purposes only. If you are using it to assemble pyrotechnic devices I do believe you need some sort of explosives permit. But I did recently find a source that only charges $23 a pound with no minimum order and only a $20 hazmat fee. Usually that hazmat fee is 30 to $40 for a package up to 50 lb. I'm going to go ahead and order 2 lb of Swiss black powder which is considered the best black powder currently available in the world today. That will pretty much be enough to last me for the rest of my life. I get roughly 500 shots per pound of powder. And as long as I store it in a cool and dry place it will never go bad. It is said that general Robert e Lee's revolver fired 100 years later. It was kept in the family all of that time I shoot 25 grain loads. There are 15 grain per gram.... If you like crunching numbers you can tell me how many shots I will get from a pound I do know you're only allowed to store up to 50 lb in one household. That is a shitload of powder.
I ran across this video some time ago when I was reading about the Hussite Wars (1419-1434). One of the things that made this war interesting was that the Hussites were among the first to employ small firearms and light mobile artillery on the battlefield, and they used these weapons to such devastating effect that they were able to defeat the more powerful and professional forces of the Holy Roman Empire that were sent to destroy them. As you see in the video, the firearms used by the Hussites were essentially hand cannons: This article is about early developments in firearm and gunpowder technology, such as corning, which @FatBack mentioned in Post #54 above: Hussite Hand Cannons: A Revolution in Gunpowder Warfare The use of newly devised “hand cannons” by the Hussites, a 15th-century religious sect, changed the face of European warfare forever. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/hussite-hand-cannons-a-revolution-in-gunpowder-warfare/
I want to say those were called matchlock if it's the right word.... Basically a very slow burning piece of rope was dipped into the touch hole. Pretty much the first gun.
Yup, same slow, primitive concept, the only difference being the serpentine lever mounted on a matchlock that enabled a soldier to fire his arquebus all by himself Obviously, not the safest weapon on the battlefield, and because it took forever to load and fire military tacticians had to rethink their formations in order to employ and protect their arquebusiers... Pike and shot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_and_shot
Just when you thought the flintlock reenactors were primitive! And moving on.. The Advent of the percussion cap represented one of the greatest leaps in firearms technology since the rifling of a barrel. And of course the Advent of smokeless powder basically made semi-automatic arms as we know them possible. If you tried reloading say a bunch of 9 mm cartridges with black powder it would not be very long at all until your Glock got so gummed up it would not work anymore. I fired 24 rounds once with the cap and ball and I actually had to help the cylinder rotate on the last shot with my fingers because it was all but locked up from fouling.
