I tried a jar of them, maybe 15 years ago. They worked fine in my Ruger Old Army. They sped up the loading process slightly, and there’s no loose powder to deal with.
-but-
There are a some of potential drawbacks:
1) Less “fooling around.” Normally that’s a good thing, but I realized that “fooling around” was pretty much the whole reason that I shoot black powder revolvers!
2) Imprecise charges- invariably, some of the pellets will be chipped, cracked, etc. This introduces inconsistency in your charges. Not a big problem for shooting tin cans, but I doubt that you’ll see anyone using them in a serious competition (maybe not allowed in competition, anyway?).
3) Possibility of cracking/crushing the pellet with the loading lever. Doesn’t make it dangerous our anything, just one more variable to mess with your consistency. In fairness, if you’re an experienced BP revolver shooter, you probably already have a “feel” for proper pressure on your loading lever.
4) You can’t readily “fine tune” your load by going up or down five grains at a time, for instance. You could probably add Pryrodex “P” to your pellet charge, but then you would be negating any potential benefit from using the pellet!
5) Finally, I recall taking my shoes and socks off to do some math. I determined that the pellets were slightly more expensive than loose powder.
For
my shooting, there was no real advantage, and several (minor) disadvantages. I still have half a can…
By all means, buy a jar of them and try them, if you like. They might be “just the thing,” for
your needs.