Buckshot
04-09-2005, 05:50 AM
..............It's a neat thing to have and very interesting little carbine, but we gotta SHOOT it! The barrel is in surprisingly great condition. The first thing after that that strikes you in looking down the barrel is how deep the grooves are. It's of 4 lands and grooves, and with a 16" LEFT hand twist. I was a bit surprised at the quick twist.
At the muzzle the lands are .433" same as the 1871 Mauser, and the grooves are .455" which is a bit deeper then the Mauser's .451". So the first order of bidness was to do a chamber cast, below:
http://www.fototime.com/2FB707452F4DDED/standard.jpg
What a surprise! Where da neck be at!!! No neck! taking measurements and going back to Keith's website it can only be the 11.5x42R carbine round, but danged if the picture there doesn't show a case with a very short neck. But neck it has.
I will assume here, that due to the fragile coild brass foil cartridge cases, the idea of reloading was out of the picture. So if the neck blew out to the chamber it wasn't a big deal so far as case longevity was concerned. The only reason I can see why they didnt chamber it with a neck was for powder fouling reason? Ya got me but there it is.
No throat at all but a helluva leade! BTW, the grooves are progressive depth. From the chamber cast I found out that here at the chamber the grooves are .465" and gradually fall to the .455" at the muzzle.
http://www.fototime.com/34EA4235E0A4A6D/standard.jpg
So here's an early attempt to create cartridge brass and shoot it. As short as it is, it's big around the casehead with a large rim diameter. Searching high and low, the closest I could find was a 32 guage shotshell. Thank God for Mag-Tech who produces several sizes of brass shotgun shells. Ditto the 24 guage for use in the .577 Snider!
The rounds at 'A' were quasily mangled to shape enough to chamber and the 'B' one's are fired. See, the neck is gone, and we know why. The cases were formed using a wide array of misc other cartidge size dies, reamed out washers and a universal decapper die to kind of squish the body taper down.
As these cases take a Berdan primer, I had some on hand I'd bought to use in the Snider brass. These were made by Mag-Tech also and are a total waste of time. They pierce if you look at them hard, and that's not much of an exaggeration.
http://www.fototime.com/707B0D47B5B71BA/standard.jpg
The parent 32 gage on the left, 2 "Abused to semi-shape" cases, and the chamber cast.
http://www.fototime.com/D7DD6B64206AB1A/standard.jpg
An attempt to creat some tools to alther the Berdan pockets to take a LR or LP primer. It worked after a fashion as you can see a casehead in the forground with a Winchester large pistol primer in place. The real problem is the casehead in the primer pocket is real thin and the pocket is real shallow. A bit shallower then the thickness of the primer. I gave up that avenue as I completely punched out too many primer pockets.
......................Buckshot
Now on to part III
At the muzzle the lands are .433" same as the 1871 Mauser, and the grooves are .455" which is a bit deeper then the Mauser's .451". So the first order of bidness was to do a chamber cast, below:
http://www.fototime.com/2FB707452F4DDED/standard.jpg
What a surprise! Where da neck be at!!! No neck! taking measurements and going back to Keith's website it can only be the 11.5x42R carbine round, but danged if the picture there doesn't show a case with a very short neck. But neck it has.
I will assume here, that due to the fragile coild brass foil cartridge cases, the idea of reloading was out of the picture. So if the neck blew out to the chamber it wasn't a big deal so far as case longevity was concerned. The only reason I can see why they didnt chamber it with a neck was for powder fouling reason? Ya got me but there it is.
No throat at all but a helluva leade! BTW, the grooves are progressive depth. From the chamber cast I found out that here at the chamber the grooves are .465" and gradually fall to the .455" at the muzzle.
http://www.fototime.com/34EA4235E0A4A6D/standard.jpg
So here's an early attempt to create cartridge brass and shoot it. As short as it is, it's big around the casehead with a large rim diameter. Searching high and low, the closest I could find was a 32 guage shotshell. Thank God for Mag-Tech who produces several sizes of brass shotgun shells. Ditto the 24 guage for use in the .577 Snider!
The rounds at 'A' were quasily mangled to shape enough to chamber and the 'B' one's are fired. See, the neck is gone, and we know why. The cases were formed using a wide array of misc other cartidge size dies, reamed out washers and a universal decapper die to kind of squish the body taper down.
As these cases take a Berdan primer, I had some on hand I'd bought to use in the Snider brass. These were made by Mag-Tech also and are a total waste of time. They pierce if you look at them hard, and that's not much of an exaggeration.
http://www.fototime.com/707B0D47B5B71BA/standard.jpg
The parent 32 gage on the left, 2 "Abused to semi-shape" cases, and the chamber cast.
http://www.fototime.com/D7DD6B64206AB1A/standard.jpg
An attempt to creat some tools to alther the Berdan pockets to take a LR or LP primer. It worked after a fashion as you can see a casehead in the forground with a Winchester large pistol primer in place. The real problem is the casehead in the primer pocket is real thin and the pocket is real shallow. A bit shallower then the thickness of the primer. I gave up that avenue as I completely punched out too many primer pockets.
......................Buckshot
Now on to part III