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Old February 25, 2008, 05:58 PM   #1
mykeal
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Cap sizes

I posted this on The High Road forum just a little while ago in response to a question about cap sizes; it's reposted here for information:

Big surprise here - not the results I expected.

I measured inside diameter at the lip and overall length (height?) of each of 20 CCI No. 10, CCI No. 11 and Remington No. 11 percussion caps. I couldn't find my Remington No. 10 caps.

The CCI No. 10's averaged 0.158 in diameter and 0.162 in height; the spread was between 0.157 and 0.158 in diameter, and the heights were all 0.162.

The CCI No. 11's averaged 0.162 in diameter and 0.162 in height; the spread was between 0.162 and 0.163 in diameter and again, the heights were all 0.162.

The Remington No. 11's averaged 0.162 in diameter and 0.147 in height; the spread was between 0.162 and 0.164 in diameter and between 0.145 and 0.149 in height.

So, the CCI and Remington No. 11 caps are the same diameter on average, although the variance in size is greater for the Remingtons. That is a surprise, as I had the impression from range reports that the Remingtons were a bit smaller in diameter; they seem to fit where CCI No. 11's were too large and CCI No. 10's were too small.

The difference in height may explain why the Remingtons seem to fit better on the in-between size nipples. They may seat on the nipple sooner than the taller CCI's and thus appear to fit better.
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Old February 25, 2008, 06:41 PM   #2
Hawg
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Quote:
So, the CCI and Remington No. 11 caps are the same diameter on average, although the variance in size is greater for the Remingtons. That is a surprise, as I had the impression from range reports that the Remingtons were a bit smaller in diameter; they seem to fit where CCI No. 11's were too large and CCI No. 10's were too small.
I thought Remingtons were smaller also. My 58 has #11 nipples and CCI fits best. Remingtons are a tight fit and need more pressure to fully seat. RWS are tightest of all and need a lot of pressure to fully seat. My 60 Colt takes #10 and all I can find are Remington and they fit fine, just like the CCI's do on my 58.
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Old February 25, 2008, 09:32 PM   #3
grymster2007
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That's interesting. How did you make your ID measurements? Problem I see is that they could be considerably out of round and the method might give some funny results.
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Last edited by grymster2007; February 25, 2008 at 10:34 PM.
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Old February 25, 2008, 11:40 PM   #4
mykeal
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I used a set of inside calipers with a digital readout.

In fact there were a couple that were not round; I took each measurement twice at two different locations in each cap and discarded those (just a couple) that weren't within .002 of round.

This is not an easy measurement, and if it wasn't for the consistency of the results I would not be highly confident of the accuracy. I'm kind of hoping someone else will try it and either confirm or dispute my results, especially as to the comparison between the Remington and CCI No. 11's. It's hard to let go of an old standard: Remington caps are slightly smaller than CCI's.
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Old February 26, 2008, 12:08 AM   #5
grymster2007
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That’s a tough measurement to make. The flats on the caliper bearing on the small radii, as well as the jaw offset (registering only on the outside edges of the flats), tend to give false low readings and calipers will not give the whole story on circularity or cylindricity. Pushing them over pin gages might be better, but a coordinate measuring machine would be best.

But at least careful measurement the way you did it has some value as to the sizes relative to each other. I only have Remingtons, so maybe I should try some CCI, see how those work.

Yeah… I know, not very helpful!
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Old March 2, 2008, 08:14 PM   #6
Ifishsum
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Good observations Mykeal. An interesting note - my new Pietta '58 Remington will not quite accept CCI #10 caps - they stop well before fully seating onto the nipple, and CCI #11s are a bit loose for my liking but would work. Although I have no Remington #11,s I did find a couple of tins of Remington #10s and found that they fit perfectly. They are definitely slightly larger in diameter than the CCI #10s (I don't have a caliper good enough to measure the diameter, sorry) and they are also noticeably taller than both the CCI #10 and #11. I was able to measure the height between .177 and .180.
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