Powder Burns and Silencers

A silencer isn't going to appreciably suppress hot gases and burning powder from the muzzle. Think car muffler.

Powder burns are indeed caused by gases coming directly from the muzzle.

I suspect, given the design, that a Nagant is actually going to spew more gas than a typical revolver. With the gas seal between the cylinder and barrel, plus ammo that's different from normal revolver ammo, that pretty much guarantees extra gas at the muzzle.

But a suppressor is designed to slow down the gases coming from a fired cartridge, so what happens? It turns out that there's a video on YouTube of a guy shooting a suppressed Nagant. He's using a modern "can" or suppressor, so I don't know how the original suppressor would have handled the gas. I think from what he says at the end that the older cans used a different attaching system than modern stuff (which is a screw-on system. He talks about having to thread the barrel). Spoiler - there's practically no gas from this modern suppressor.

You should get a couple of other videos about the Nagant after you watch that one, plus you can probably reach out to this guy for more info.

Curious - are you writing a period piece, or is there a particular reason you're using the Nagant?

Edit: found this discussion board with a couple of diagrams of the original Bramit suppressor. It seems the suppressed version may have used a saboted .22 bullet. I suspect the Hickok45 video you should find on YT has plenty of info about the gun, although I skimmed his video and didn't see that he ever had a suppressor.

There is a difference between burns from expelled heated gases and burns from particles of still-burning gunpowder (stippling). Your pistol-armed shooter and victim would typically have to be closer than one meter/three feet. A muzzle-affixed suppressor will further mitigate/capture hot gases and bits of ignited gunpowder. You'll need to have your characters very close, and a near-contact wound.

(Links may be disturbing for some folks.)

http://pathologyexpert.com/boards/forensics/gsw.htm

http://www.evidencemagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1119

Silencers will also give a different looking burn, if held close, by virtue of the baffles in the silencer. The Nagant 1895 revolver doesn't seal tight at the cylinder, depending on the actual one used there is often some end shake in these guns and you can get powder burns from the gap between cylinder and barrel (don't ask how I know). Beyond that, surplus ammunition is often dirtier and corrosive, which can change burn patterns.

None of this likely changes your story or how you use the powder burns, the forensics in some of this is so technical that FBI labs are needed to differentiate specifics. The powder burns and stippling are generally used to indicate the distance a firearm was from the object shot, not much more detail.

Jeff

Check out all of these videos on this exact subject. I'm sure you have found some of these already but for the benefit of the other readers here, I thought it would be good to show them exactly what the differences are in the Nagant.

I'm not necessarily a gun guy but I like the interesting engineering to solve problems.

The first one is a guy showing some slow motion of a real revolver and the problem of the cylinder gap between it and the barrell. Noise and burning gas escaping means a silencer really won't work too well, however, the Nagant! That is different in the videos after.

video of a normal construction revolver and the frame video showing whats going on.
here


Here's a video of a Nagant in use without a supressor, the same people do screw one on and show the difference with it later on, which I skipped to and put in another link below this one.
**I watched a few videos by these folks and the presenter here DOES quite a bit of shooting videos/range work**
It has a double action trigger which when cocked, aparently works great but if you dont and just pull through the action, it's aparently a VERY heavy pull.
Nagant without supressor video.

This is the video of a Nagant WITH a silencer, and watching closely, we can see not only does the revolver have an amazing silencer screwed on the end, but also we would definitely hear more noise and see more flame if the cylinder and barrell were built the same, which it's not so we have some evidence here that noise and powder burns with this gun is minimal.
Nagant with supressor video