A good friend of mine and a fellow BP shooter retired from Federal cartridge and took up farming .
During the last cap shortage he told us that percussion caps were made on the same machinery and production
line as modern primers . As such he told us not to expect new percussion caps until the backlog was filled for the modern stuff.
My recollection was it was about a year and a half before caps ( CCI) became widely available.
This shortage is the worst one yet and these seem to occur regularly .Some caps from Europe will come in but don't expect them to be plentiful. Blackpowder shooters just are that high on anyones priority list
It usually take me some time to build a rifle maybe you too ? By the time the rifle is complete if you move at my pace there will be plenty of caps so I would build what you want .But do hunt out caps in the mean time .
Flints aren't cheap like they were
(nothing is ) but I have plenty enough so I figured it was time to bear down on my flint shooting and set the cap locks aside .
Truthfully it's a blessing in disguise.I did well at one of the local shoots yesterday and got a lot of personal satisfaction competing against the cap lock shooters .