Mle. 1866 Chassepot Cartridge Construction - DIY Insanity!

[Bigslug]

I've been using top of blade level with top of rear sight - the intent being that this is the most consistent sight picture for the purpose of shooting a group. We aren't terribly concerned with where the group actually IS at this point, just so we can get a group that's better than that of a buckshot pattern at the extreme limit of its usefulness. We'll play with burying the blade once we get to the point of reliably hitting a sheet of typing paper.

I had a bit of an epiphany this morning that may influence the next batch of cartridge construction. It occurred to me that headspace in this system is possibly more correctly measured from front-of-chamber interference to the full range of the amount that the needle protrudes from the bolt head, minus the depth from the rear of the cartridge to the priming surface of the percussion cap, RATHER THAN FROM THAT FRONT INTERFERENCE SURFACE TO THE REAR OF THE CARTRIDGE AS WE'VE BEEN DOING. Here's my thinking:

This weapon system starts building up a fair amount of crud from the first round, which will progressively decrease the amount of chamber space available.

The cartridge is constructed in such a way as to center up when pushed by hand until the cartridge runs into either the lands or the front of the chamber, and the compression of the powder is already accounted for in the construction of the round.

Therefore, the cartridge does not necessarily need to be in physical contact with the bolt head - the flat of the percussion cap just needs to be within reach of the needle. I've got to get down to Pop's place and start taking measurements, but this notion should allow the operator easy loading and firing up to the point that fouling sets the stern of the cartridge back to the point it butts against the bolt head when the action is closed. I THINK THE FLAW IN OUR PREVIOUS EFFORTS IS THAT WE ARE STARTING IN THAT CONDITION WITH A CLEAN CHAMBER. In effect, we're starting the battle already at the failure point of the system.

I am wondering if any of our followers have the length spec for a NEW striker spring for this system. I've got diameter, wire thickness, and number of coils at my fingertips, but I have no notion of how much force the thing is SUPPOSED to exert when it's less than 150 years old. I have a collection of various pistol recoil springs, one of which may prove suitable for sacrifice.

[Bigslug]

OK. . .Never let it be said that I followed in the footsteps of P. Ganiedel's Callebaud through failure to properly document our process. . .

Dad and I have a motto of sorts: "The difference between Science and Screwing Around is Writing Stuff Down".

He's been a busy little bee while I've been tied up at work, but he's been keeping me updated with his progress reports. Today we have process improvements and. . . wait for it. . .ACCURACY!



He acquired a beefier Swingline paper punch after we killed our third cheesy, three-dollar unit. He has constructed a jib - I believe out of plastic milk carton - that centers the wad disc up better than the MKI eyeball method we were using previously. Also in this photo is a wooden dowel with a cavity drilled in one end - helps to seat the caps in the discs.

What follows is a sequence of Dad's handwritten instructions of cartridge assembly. I'll see how these upload and I may come back and transcribe them in an edit. Mainly want to get the data uploaded at this point.







To be continued next post.

[Bigslug]

So. . .avoiding a state Ganiedel-ness, pictures to go with the words:


New powder tube blueprint.


Wads at front of powder tube glued in slightly recessed to help maintain bullet alignment when wrapping the paper patch. I wasn't there for this process, but apparently, it is making the task much easier. Midway through that process of texting back and forth, I suggested that attaching the two cork wads to each other prior to insertion might help keep them square with the tube - I believe that process was adopted.


An illustration of the sequence of sealing the stern with paper tape. As you can see, we dialed back the powder fill of the cap to about half.


A GROUP!!! Holding about 8" low and 4" right got all 15 of the rounds that went off on paper and accounted for. The three that did not fire were all instances of primer being a bit too deep. He reports:

"Thicker paper was more solid, but thinner chambered easier. Not an issue if brush chamber after each round. Possibly a 30# paper would do it.

Very dirty bird. Firing pin appears frozen after 15 rounds, and obturator about gone."


Which is a bit disturbing because this particular obturator was our second silicone one, and it was basically new prior to this range trip. Cut out of the same block as our first one, I believe. The added squishiness of silicone may well NOT be an asset, or the little extra heat from our Triple Seven charge may be telling. At any rate, it apparently was gumming up the works by the end of the session, and while it didn't let go, it's obviously no longer a gas seal you'd want next to your face.


Bore crumbs from the latest batch. Still leaving the rubber behind, mostly getting rid of the cap assemblies, but not totally expulsive of paper tube.

I'm pondering the beeswax dip of the originals - might help with the fouling. . .might not.

[yulzari]

All interesting stuff. Well done on the documenting. Would that the proposed successor paper cartridge was documented like this.

Re the obturator. I would suggest the double tap washer method. Held up well for me and cheap to replace.

The bees wax dipping of the original bullet in patch will certainly help control fouling. You want it fairly hot to give a thin coat or you might get chambering issues if the wax is too thickly coated.

Try using latex inner tube rubber. It is much more elastic than the usual butyl synthetic rubber. One supplier is https://silca.cc/products/latex-inner-tube.

Or you could cheat like 'The Chap' see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edWSZG8ziQM

Bonne chance.

P.S. You might want to download free Albrecht von Buguslawski's 'Tactical Deductions From the War of 1870-71' https://archive.org/details/tacticaldeducti00bogugoog for Prussian insights into the Chassepot in action.

[Bigslug]

Good link with the Buguslawski book. I gave it a serious rapid scan, and it is interesting to see conclusions being formed regarding small arms that really didn't properly cement for another 70-90 years:

On a 2013 visit to Gettysburg, I picked up a copy of "The Rifle-Musket in Civil War Combat, Reality and Myth" by Earl J. Hess. Both this and the Buguslawski work express the observation that, regardless of the technical merits of a given rifle system, 400 yards is about all you can expect from the average trooper. The Minie ball arms had real problems with the natural arc of the projectile tending to cause close and far hits, but a lot of mid-range misses over the enemy's head unless the operator really knew what he was about. Throw in the problems of properly adjusting the sights when under the excitement of people trying to kill you, and the reality (as per Hess, anyway) was that the rifled Minie ball didn't provide much advantage in actual use in the hands of hastily-trained conscripts over point-blanking with a smoothbore. It seems that the French had issues with opening up at long range under careful direction of officers at extreme range, then forgot to dial their sights back down when things got close, noisy, and exciting. Buguslawski appears to be of the opinion that equipping rifles with such extreme range sighting is not only unnecessary, but detrimental.

Today we've got cartridges and rifles optimized for fighting inside of that 400 yard space. I think Buguslawski's "If the saying 'New arms, old tactics' has been confuted, one may yet say decidedly with reference to the use of musketry, 'New arms, the same men'", may have just been added to my list of favorites. It would seem that a key to military success lies in understanding the faculties of your lowest common denominator.

At any rate, it appears on the one hand that fouling of Chassepots was a known problem then, yet on the other he mentions that the French troops WERE frequently able to fire their way through all the ammunition they had on hand. It seems the rifle was worthy of some respect at the time - considerably more so than say, the M16 during its "teething pains" period of unchromed bores, incorrect powder, and no issued maintenance supplies or instruction in their use. Still. . .paper cartridge war in Europe in 1870, metal cartridge repeaters flowing out of America since 1866. . . Fascinating, and somewhat illuminating, that Buguslawski's text indicates that the advantage of self-contained brass cartridiges was still under debate even in an after-action report on the Franco-Prussian war.

But I'd say I hit the title of this thread correctly with "DIY Insanity". There is a certain quaint madness in this effort to make a confirmed bad idea work to the apex of its potential. Not only HAVE we studied history, we have a morbid fascination with repeating it anyway!

[yulzari]

There was a contrast between professional French troops using factory made ammunition freshly issued and late semi trained civilians in uniform using emergency production ammunition, often carried about in pouches for weeks. The professionals pre and early war were using properly made and sized immaculate cartridges and were trained to expect a certain degree of fouling and knew how to deal with it. The later amateurs with deformed, damp and ill made cartridges treated fouling stoppages as failures and had no real idea of what to do about them. Chalk and cheese and we are in the amateur category trying to become the professionals. Fouling happens and, whilst we endeavour to reduce it, we must deal with it.

Possibly we should introduce a regime of cleaning suited to our particular cartridges and make that a measure of their performance? As we do with misfires and accuracy. One might begin with cleaning after every shot and work ones way up as ones ammunition quality improves. I recommend a 0,45" Bore Snake or similar (old piece of nylon tights on a string) for the task. Not a complete wash through and dry job but a simple de-coking of the chamber and barrel. I can't find a note of the frequency of cleaning in continuous use by the French Army pre war but the number of rounds carried on the man were expected to be able to be used without the rifle being unusable. I would reckon that 1 dry wipe in 20 would not be unacceptable in range use and 1 in 50 in battle use; as a prophylactic rather than waiting until the problem becomes terminal. Not forgetting that needle replacement was a less common but field norm as was the replacement of the obturator so one should carry spares for both.

I am now beginning to regret selling off my Chassepot but I cannot afford to build a collection of arms so I widen my experience by trading existing ones for new toys. The history, engineering and employment of assorted historical arms is probably more important to me than the culminating mastery of firing them, for which I have no discernable talent

[Ballistics in Scotland]

FWIW I suspect that the silicone is not stretchy enough to expand back over the bolt nose with the firing pressure and then reverse itself once the pressure leaked behind it becomes greater than the pressure in front once the bullet has left so it doesn't get blown out of the barrel. The period rubber disks were natural rubber which is stretchier than modern synthetic rubbers as in normal inner tubes. I believe that you can get natural rubber inner tubes at a price but of course there is another source of a thin, tough, stretchy rubber substitute................

Re the POI above the POA at 100 yards. Are you using a fine sight (i.e. just the tip of the foresight visible in the 'V') or the whole blade? At short ranges the bayonet is supposed to be fixed. Otherwise you may not have time to fix it before the unpleasant gentlemen arrive with their pointy sticks at the ready.

With a fine sight and a bayonet it should be right on at 100 metres which is 25 feet beyond your 100 yard target. In the old days the mantra to fall back on, when setting the sights was too much to grasp, was 'When you can count the buttons shoot at the feet. When you can see the buttons shoot at the middle. When you can't see the buttons shoot at the head'.

I think the "at the feet" part is exaggeration, but let's not dwell too much on detail. This British Baker rifle target (like the Intelligence Corps, which didn't have any privates) used to be known as "The Eunuchs" I can't think why, can you?



I can't contribute much that is practical on the Chassepot. One useful website, though, is www.naturabuy.com, on which you find many Chasspot or the often interchangeable 1874 Gras parts. It has served me well if you count increasing my backlog of future projects as such.

My second-favourite hunting sport has paid off to the tune of an inexpensive copy of the two-volume subscription-financed "The Franco-Prussian War: Its causes, incidents and consequences" by Captain HM Hosier, Winston Churchill's father-in-law. Actually in some ways it was a disappointment. I was mainly interested in the Reffye mitrailleuse and in the Commune de Paris revolt. But the Commune, although a most important consequence, scarcely figures at all, and although Hosier gives a first-class soldier's appreciation of the merits and tactical limitations of the mitrailleuse, he had clearly never seen one. What he illustrates and describes in great detail is the rather more primitive Lafette gun, which had chamber to chamber ignition and the disconcerting characteristic that you couldn't turn it off. His illustration of the Krupp 1000-pounder siege gun is pretty intimidating even nowadays. Just try jamming the guidance system.

It also gives some insight into where Winston got his style of historical writing, quite different from the university "couldn't happen to me" school.





Here is what Hozier has to say on the cartridge:

"It is composed of six elements, namely the priming, powder case, powder, cardboard wad, ball case and ball. The priming consists of a copper cap U,similar to those used in the army but rather smaller. It is perforated at the bottom with two holes opposite to each other, and which are intended for the passage of the flame. The fulminating powder, v, is placed at the bottom of the cap; a small wad, x, of cloth or wax, covers it in order to protect it from external shock. The cap, thus prepared is fitted with a small washer, y, of thin tin this washer is fitted to a paper disc, intended to form the bottom of the cartridge, when the priming will be complete. The powder case consists of a band of paper, z, rolled on a mandril and cemented at the edges. The charge of powder introduced therein, equal to five grammes five decigrammes, is slightly rammed to give rigidity to the cartridge. A wad of card, c¹, is placed, of about two millimetres in thickness and having a perforation therein of about six millimètres in size, through which the ends of the case, z are press ed; the excess of paper being removed with a pair of scissors. the ball case consists of a covering of paper, c¹, making two turns around a conical mandril, and cemented at the base only. The ball, the form of which is shown in Fig. 5, weights 24 grammes 5 decigrammes. After having placed the ball in the ball case, the cartridge is completed by uniting the ball-case to the powder-case by a ligature in a groove made a short distance in the rear of the cardboard wad. As a final operation the whole height of the cartridge corresponding to the ball less the ogive or tapered end of the bullet, , is to be greased, when the cartridge will be ready for use."

Returning to me now, I think the main purpose of that thick card wad is to make the gas pressure drag as much as possible of the case out of the muzzle. The hole in the centre might be to accommodate the ends of the paper case without having them indented, possibly asymmetrically, into the rear of the bullet. I have a couple of Martini-Hanry bullets, found on a long-forgotten battlefield of 1929 in central Arabia, in which you can see the impression of the "tail" in the concave base. I wonder if you could identify the loaders at Woolwich, who were pretty slapdash by .303 standards, like priceless pictures are authenticated or unauthenticated by the painter's brushwork.

The bullet is a curious shape, a bit like the American muzzle-loading picket ball, which really needed to be loaded with a false muzzle to stop it tilting. I think it could be quite important that it appears to match the throat of the chamber and the resilience of the Chassepot cartridge enables it to be pressed tightly into it. A conventionally shaped bullet even making contact around its nose, could take up a tilted posture.

Now Hozier, sometimes surprisingly, on the rival weapons systems:

The Chassepot has a longer range, but less precision, than the Prussian needle-gun. The Chassepot has an incipient velocity of 1328 feet per second, the needle-gun only 990 but the semi-diameter of the scattering circle at 300 paces is as much as 13½ inches in the case of the former, and only 7¼ inches in that of the latter. This circumstance, coupled with the fact that the range of the needle-gun is as far as the eye can see with anything like accuracy, considerably reduces its inequality as compared with its rival. Under some circumstances, however, the longer range of the Chassepot gives tremendous advantages to the troops who use it but the experience of the war shows it to have been a superior weapon badly handled. The Chassepot allows of about ten or eleven, the needle-gun of seven or eight discharges per minute; but as to fire even seven rounds per minute is beyond the capacity of the ordinary soldier the advantage of the Chassepot in this respect is again imaginary rather than practical. It is, moreover counterbalanced by a serious drawback; in rapid fire the Chassepot has, after twelve to fourteen rounds, to be cleared of the remains of cartridges. A really strong point of the Chassepot, the smallness of its calibre, which enables the Frenchman to carry ninety-three cartridges against the seventy-two lodged in the German pouch, has also been secured for the needle-gun by the alterations which have been adopted. Besides the smaller number of cartridges is a disadvantage which tells considerably less against a German soldier than it would against a Frenchman. Far from being taught to blaze away as rapidly as possible, the German soldier is educated not to use his rifle unless he has a fair aim. and as the circumstances rarely occur when "quick fire" can be of any good, troops no longer fighting in massed columns, the German soldier, upon the whole, has been found to have enough and to spare in his seventy-two shots."

This sounds like several lessons which armies regularly relearn in the present day. The needle-gun suffered badly from powder fouling, resulting in poor sealing and soldiers firing from the hip rather than the shoulder, which isn't as fair an aim as all that. The Chassepot's need for clearing might have come faster, but it didn't require water, and the needle-gun's did. Perhaps you shouldn't feel bad about the accuracy you are getting.

"The effective range of the Chassepot is 1800 paces, and that of the needle-gun only 600. Such a superiority in range was severely felt on several occasions by the Prussians in charging when they had to traverse a distance of 1200 paces entirely exposed to a destructive fire to which they were entirely powerless to reply. It is inexplicable, however why the French did not make use of the boasted long range of their Chassepots to pick off the Prussian gunners on many occasions, especially at the battle of Gravelotte, where the Prussian artillery was extremely destructive."

By 1870 Britain had the rolled-brass Snider centrefire, and ironically the French had an equally modern cartridge, in the extremely long 13mm.centrefire of the Mitrailleuse, very much like a lengthened nearly-modern paper shotshell. This fired a 770gr. bullet to 3700 yards, with 185gr. of black powder in several compressed cylindrical pellets. It would have made a splendid bipod-mounted equivalent to the .50 BMG rifle, and in reduced form an excellent infantry weapon for its day. The Chassepot was a state of the art early 1860s rifle, but badly behind what 1870 could have achieved.

Hozier felt that too much of France's very high military budget went on paying generals and marshals, who were in plentiful supply and spent most of the time at the Imperial court. I don't think that happened as much when they had a civilian king. Anybody could start as a conscript and become an officer - the other Napoleon, the real one, had said so. But very few of those rose to high rank. In the 1840s the French army had seen active service in Algeria - and unconventional service, which is the most educational kind. Then in 1854 they did extremely well in the Crimea. But the young officers of those times hadn't risen far.

The French were the first to introduce a General Staff and academic military colleges, but the result was that the Staff often had very little contact with what went on in the regiments. The right of rich conscripts to hire a substitute diluted the quality, and so, oddly enough, did a policy of recruiting old soldiers from civilian life. Too often they weren't like the great Napoleon's vieux moustaches, who had never been adult civilians, but people who had failed to make it in ordinary jobs, and infected the young with cynicism and column-dodging tricks. France suffered the curse of most peacetime or nearly-peacetime conscript armies. The little active service which went on was handled by at least partly career-soldiering corps d'élite (such as the Zouaves, Frenchmen in North African costume, and notoriously undisciplined), while the young innocents just polished things and whitewashed rocks. Google translate doesn't recognise the word "zouaverie" for undisciplined showing-off but it used to be well known.

[yulzari]

If you want to examine Captain Henry Montague Hozier's works a search on archive.org under hozier will bring up a few free including the above which I have just downloaded.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Very dirty bird. Firing pin appears frozen after 15 rounds, and obturator about gone." [/I]


Which is a bit disturbing because this particular obturator was our second silicone one, and it was basically new prior to this range trip. Cut out of the same block as our first one, I believe. The added squishiness of silicone may well NOT be an asset, or the little extra heat from our Triple Seven charge may be telling. At any rate, it apparently was gumming up the works by the end of the session, and while it didn't let go, it's obviously no longer a gas seal you'd want next to your face.

That is a disappointment. There are surely high-temperature synthetic rubbers, but a sandwich of inner tube rubber might well do better.
It might be that the flange of the steel "mushroom" has eroded, and is allowing excessive access of gas to the rubber.

Another of life's little corrugated ironies is that the Chassepot system lives on in just about all artillery of everybody's which uses bagged charges. In 1872, just about the time the French were saying "Oh no, two million of those!" in the smallarms field, their Colonel de Bange transferred the principle to artillery. Plenty of people had thought of it, but he made it work by using a pad of grease-impregnated asbestos.

The sectional drawing in the Wikipedia article isn't very good. It probably incorrectly suggests a gap between mushroom and chamber, and it shows half of the mushroom under pressure and the other half not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ragon_de_Bange

Like I say, I can claim no practical experience whatever of the Chassepot. But I wonder what would be the result of mixing silicone rubber with chopped-up rock wool or carbon fibre? Or enclosing the rear of the obturator in a sort of steel eggcup? If rubber of only moderate squashiness can't expand there, it has to expand more at its front edge.

[Bigslug]

There was a contrast between professional French troops using factory made ammunition freshly issued and late semi trained civilians in uniform using emergency production ammunition, often carried about in pouches for weeks.

Many good suggestions in this entire post (#106), but I think this bit right here cuts to the heart of the issue:

#1. It takes essentially Benchrest-quality care to assemble this mass-issue service rifle cartridge correctly.

#2. If a muzzle-loading musket paper cartridge got knocked around, it was no big deal because the first step in the firing process was to tear it open and pour out the powder. These things need a modicum of coddling.

Having spent considerable time operating out of backpacks, I can say there are sometimes real challenges with keeping things dry and unsquashed - and this in the day of expandable compartments and nylon rain covers.

For me this Chassepot business has been another fascinating chapter in human psychology as viewed through the arms industry. I've studied a lot of the U.S. Ordnance decisions from the time of George Washington to the present and similarly come away scratching my head. In 240+ years, about the only things that avoided being a total goat-screw were the 1911 pistol and the M1 Garand - and the latter only barely. The resistance to change or the rush to embrace it coupled with politics, plus the engineering enthusiasm of talented minds that often have no clear concept of the needs of the end-user all make for an interesting, often unpalatable, stew.

I would like to find a manual of process for assembling Chassepot rounds on a scale fit to fuel an army with. It's all obviously a (ahem) hand job, but it would be interesting to see how the period experts on ergonomics structured the production line - number of people, how many steps each performed, etc...

[Bigslug]

Another range day set for tomorrow. The latest texts from "The Roller"

"32# cotton paper definitely makes the tightest powder tubes so far. Doubling the cork wad before gluing the front one greatly improves squareness, as does using an unattached bullet to set depth"



"Borax fireproofing for sure effective. Held the end in a flaming gas burner, and it just smouldered"

"Paper (medical) tape highly flammable. Surgical 'silk-like' versions exist"

This last bit is the early discussion stage of thinking that while the outer silk gauze casing of the original cartridge was quite likely essential in getting the bulk of the tube out of the bore, our efforts at attaching it resulting in an ugly, inconsistent, gooey mess. Plenty of fibrous, self-adhesive modern equivalents out there. Might try a roll of "kinesiology tape" on a later batch.

New obturators formed out of the silicone - it works for a time and it's what we presently have. Superior replacement to be sought.

Range report tomorrow night, most likely.

[Bigslug]

Alrighty then! Results!



Target from 100 yards with 63 grains of Triple Seven FFG with me on the trigger. Point of aim was the orange dot down at the 4:00 corner and hold was by burying the front post at the bottom of the notch with the rear sight leaf flipped forward. Without altering metal, this appears to be as low as she goes! Now that we've got an effective aiming point somewhat figured out, I expect we'll try again with the bayonet attached. Not what I would call confidence-boosting, but as a massed-volley, area-denial system, one could do worse. Then again. . .I've done significantly better with Foster slugs out of a smoothbore 12 gauge with a bead sight at this distance. . .

Chrono data to go along with it:



Ten shots, the progression of the summary being, top to bottom: Highest speed, lowest speed, extreme spread, average, and standard deviation.

Ignition much improved with the latest construction methods. Sent 26 downrange. Six rounds before any negative issues. Had one that did not go off at all and only a couple that took multiple strikes. We had one BIZZARE instance of the bolt head freezing on the needle and being a real bear to disassemble. It seems the light strikes were probably a result of crud slowing the striker speed. . .ultimately resulting in the frozen striker. Still pondering a stiffer striker spring. Sadly, the 1911 recoil springs I have in abundance are a bit too wide to be pressed into service.

The cap assemblies are still MOSTLY getting out of the barrel - I think we had three or four stay behind - and the rubber discs are still mostly staying. We're still getting significant crumbs that probably amount to about a small Post-It Note's worth of paper tubing not being expelled, and on occasion, this remains in the chamber preventing insertion of the next round. To that end, we are going to procure some latex inner tubing per Yulzari's suggestion to see if that changes the dynamic. Pop also had this possible replacement for the exterior silk sock arrive in the mail after we got back from the range:



To which he says "Seems like the right stuff. Rolls up tight, hardly burns, and the adhesive is forever." Hopefully, this reinforcement results in ONLY the rubber disk remaining behind.

And on it goes!

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I've got a hand-held paper cuter, which is just a knife with a very sharp circular and rotating blade. It comes with a spare which is notched, to produce a dotted line along which a coupon etc. will tear. I wonder if one of those could be used near the end of the wrapping to make sure it separates from the base?

Also could you breech-seat a bullet in the throat of the chamber, with a "blank" charge to follow? It isn't the way you want to keep on using an evocative military rifle. But it might help you determine how much of the inaccuracy is cartridge, and how much is rifle and sights.

[Bigslug]

I've got a hand-held paper cuter, which is just a knife with a very sharp circular and rotating blade. It comes with a spare which is notched, to produce a dotted line along which a coupon etc. will tear. I wonder if one of those could be used near the end of the wrapping to make sure it separates from the base?

I think that the new tape will sufficiently reinforce the tube to the point that the back blows off first. . .which we're pretty much getting already anyway. The bits of powder tube left in the bore looks a bit like a chunk of shed snake skin. I THINK what's happening is that some of the tube is seizing on fouling in the chamber and it gets wadded up when the rest of the tube tugs on it going downrange.

Also could you breech-seat a bullet in the throat of the chamber, with a "blank" charge to follow? It isn't the way you want to keep on using an evocative military rifle. But it might help you determine how much of the inaccuracy is cartridge, and how much is rifle and sights.

Interesting. . .

It would involve some re-thinking, as the bullet's binding to the powder bag is part of what aligns the percussion cap with the needle. There is no handy case rim, obviously, to accomplish this for us, so it would involve a tighter fit of the tube. We might be there with the new tape casing. Also, this thing is not NEARLY as easy to paper patch precisely as what we would stick into the case of a Martini or Sharps.

A few things crystallize in my brain as a result of all this. It kinda makes me wonder what the lost-to-history abortive steps were during the Stone and Bronze Ages. Those periods took multiple millenia - guns went from hand cannons to belt-fed Maxims in only one, and flint strikers to Maxims in only one long lifetime. I guess this Dreyse needle notion could be compared to the Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80, or maybe the Commodore 64 in that it WAS the "good idea at the time" - there were just a lot of other good ideas being floated in quick succession. One has to marvel at the scale of some of the economic commitments that were made on these VERY short-lived arms programs of the mid-19th Century, and also the potentially dangerous consequences of the entrenched commitments - such as the U.S. adherence to the Trapdoor into the era of Mausers.

It really IS a fascinating journey into the best way to do something wrong.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Iron used to be considered something uncanny. If you should happen to be lured away by the little people who live under the hill, you should stick your dirk in a position where it stops the door from closing, for the cold iron they cannot touch, and you can escape when you have had enough of their hospitality, instead of in a hundred years. I believe there are or were countries in Africa where the iron-melting furnace is shaped like the female body, and the bellows like something in a sense appropriate. For there was something mythic about bringing about the birth of the iron.

With a few millennia to play with, the most absurd superstitions will sometimes work out, and become enshrined forever, replacing what those thinking of next year's share dividend have to achieve by investigation and logic. If you believe God told you not to circumcise children whose maternal cousin had haemophilia, but those with a haemophiliac paternal cousin qualified for the snip, it worked just as well as analysis of health records today. So it lasted into an age when God appears to have given up caring if you plough with an ox and an *** together.

In 1885, for U.S. Army trials, the turnbolt Lee with automatic pistol-style interchangeable magazines, successfully endured rigorous and well-conceived testing, during which Lee himself fired fifty unaimed shots in a minute. 750 each of the three leading contenders were issued to 149 companies, and the Lee was found decisively superior to rifles with a tube magazine in the butt. But the companies still reported it as far less popular than the trapdoor Springfield. Anybody who believes that, of fighting soldiers nine years after the Little Bighorn, will very likely believe anything. Perhaps the company commanders were asked, like Yossarian in "Catch-22", whether they were for the Springfield or against the Army.

The US adherence to the trapdoor Springfield wasn't right, but it wasn't that wrong. The only significant neighbours were Canada, Mexico and Cuba, none of which were likely to invade, especially while President Diaz's bread was rather well buttered. Only a rather indifferent Marlin in 1881 and the Winchester 1886 (mine still amazing me with its excellence) would handle the heavy-bullet, round-nosed .45-70 cartridge, which was worth having when the only remaining Indian wars were likely to be in open country or even gone forever. The Krag wasn't a bad rifle, but I think the Lee could have seen the US through to the time everybody expected for two or three decades, when the rifle-cartridge semiautomatic became reliable and compact. The British modification lasted well beyond that.

A forgotten but very significant battle was fought at Long Song, just over the Vietnamese border, when the Chinese defeated a French force of Foreign Legion and Marines. As James Paris Lee had predicted, the tube-magazine Kropatscheks of the Marines turned into single-shots in sustained rapid fire, while the Lee could remain ready to fire instantly while a part-depleted magazine was replaced.

By comparison Europe was a permanent confrontation of mutually mistrustful empires. Even small nations which weren't worth looting held something worth having: the chance to either hit a real enemy from an unexpected direction, or divert a lot of his resources into fortifications between him and his friends. Nobody could afford not to go for any smallarms innovation which was going. Switzerland, the classic case for invasion as a routeway, got it about right. Others, like Austria-Hungary (characterised by engineering brilliance and organisational bewilderment) went for one expensive and obsolescent rearmament after another.

[Bigslug]

In 1885, for U.S. Army trials, the turnbolt Lee with automatic pistol-style interchangeable magazines, successfully endured rigorous and well-conceived testing, during which Lee himself fired fifty unaimed shots in a minute. 750 each of the three leading contenders were issued to 149 companies, and the Lee was found decisively superior to rifles with a tube magazine in the butt. But the companies still reported it as far less popular than the trapdoor Springfield. Anybody who believes that, of fighting soldiers nine years after the Little Bighorn, will very likely believe anything. Perhaps the company commanders were asked, like Yossarian in "Catch-22", whether they were for the Springfield or against the Army.

Much the same occurred with the Springfield trap door vs. the Remington rolling block - history records a nearly unanimous preference among troops for the trap door, which makes one want to travel back and ask "Did you guys even actually FIRE these two rifles??" It's obvious that Springfield had the financial advantage what with being government-owned and royalty-free, but the unrecorded story of how that held sway over the "opinions" provided by privates all the way down the chain conducting trials would be interesting to hear. Somewhat less than democratic, one suspects.

I sort of understand the resistance to magazines and other innovations that would boost the rate of fire in the, in spite of recent evidence that it was going to be the wave of the future. A case of .50-70 or .577 Snider probably weighed almost as much as a soldier of that time, and the "second generation" cartridges like .45-70, 11mm Gras, .43 Mauser, or .577/.450 were not a lot lighter. The railroad only went so far into the frontier, and from there it was wagons and mules . . .which also needed to transport food, lamp oil, mail. . . The "how you get to the fight" or "how you stay in the fight" was legitimately on a lot of people's minds.

It's something of a given that the intelligence, opinions, and general faculties of the average trooper have historically been held in contempt by folks not on the line, though not altogether unjustly. One of my favorite jokes is that if you lock a naked Marine in a ten foot square padded cell with two large steel ball bearings, within ten minutes he will lose one and break the other. Given that level of general contempt up the chain, coupled with the reality under which the gear is used, one is left to consider the thought process that led to both sides issuing out pristine parcels of needle-fire ammunition that shouldn't be crushed, torn, bent, moistened, etc. . ., to the hairy apes conscripted to keep the homeland safe. Imagine a Super Bowl in which, before kickoff, a group of Japanese schoolgirls gets to adorn all the player's armor, head to toe, with with little paper Origami cranes and flowers. At the end of an hour of rough and tumble tackle football, the winner is determined by adding to the actual touchdowns and field goals, the number of undamaged Origami in the possession of each team. If you stop to ponder how the behavior changes necessary to protect the Origami would alter a championship game of football, you begin to grasp what an advance the waterproof metallic cartridge really is.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Another thread has opened on this topic. One interesting feature is a drawing (whether pre-production or post-obsolescence I don't know) in which the obturator was made of leather treated with suet. I doubt if this was done while the Chassepot was France's main infantry weapon.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...35#post4377235

As to springs, you can put quite a bit more oomph in a given space with the square-wire springs used for such purpose as separating the dies used for die-casting metals or plastic. They can be slightly reduced in diameter without losing much power by inserting a tight-fitting wooden dowel, and allowing them to spin in the hands against a belt sander.

[Bigslug]

Well, ok then. . .this is something of a re-boot. I've had a dialog with an online contact with much better fluency in French and a much larger pile of the original source documents. From this, a much better understanding of the original cartridge has come to pass, so here we go. . .



For the moment, at least, we are switching to basic brown package wrapping paper, and are giving it a go without borax treatment. This is cut to the dimensions on the original blueprint. This is rolled around a forming mandrel with about a quarter inch of overlap at the seam. It ends up being considerably longer than is needed. The why of that wasn't clear when we started this Odyssey, it is now - read on!



Still sticking with the Fiskars daisy cutter, as that is a whole lot easier to deal with than trying to cut the little stars out per the original pattern. Where we missed our mark was in trying to fold the petals down on the OUTSIDE, when the trick is to fold them down around the end of a forming mandrel, slide the daisy from one end of the tube to the other, and. . .



Once you get it to the point that the ends of the petals will extend to, smear the inside of the tube with glue, then push the daisy the rest of the way in so it's flush with the end of the tube. There WILL be excess glue to wipe off.

Powder tube construction to be continued. . .

[Bigslug]

Cap assembly has not changed dramatically, but note the wood block underneath the wooden rod. This comes in EXTREMELY handy to support the paper tube or hold one of the mandrels upright at different points in the construction. Here, it's acting as a third hand to hold the cap and cardboard disc steady while I attach the rubber disc.



We're still filling the cap with a small amount of FFFG using the scoop made from a .22 gas check. A little of the wood glue to secure the rubber disc. On recommendation, we are trying the red latex inner tube. It does seem a little more elastic than the black stuff. The same mandrel and block can be used to seat the cap assembly down into the powder tube against the daisy.



Above photo is of the powder "bag" placed underneath our drop tube waiting for its charge, which, for the moment, is 67 grains of Triple 7 FFG. Lying in front of them are a couple examples of the top wad which goes on top of the powder. These are made by taking two of the cards used at the back of the round to hold the percussion caps glued on top of each other for needed additional thickness. A thin sheet of paper gets glued on the rear to keep the powder from sneaking through.



The tube with daisy and cap gets inserted into the wooden block, placed under the drop tube, and charged. The top wad gets placed and shoved down TIGHT against the powder charge. WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE HERE: the top of the powder charge is down roughly at the top of the block, NOT at the top of the tube. As I said earlier, the tube is longer than it needs to be for a reason.



At this point, the empty end of the powder tube is squeezed in, twisted tight, clipped off short, and the twisted end stuffed into the cavity of the top wad. Inserting this assembly twist-end down into the wooden block for support and pressing it firmly against the tabletop helps square this end up a bit.



Appropo of. . .I don't know what. . .the finished powder bags look exactly like the ones used to shove 16" shells out of an Iowa-class battleship. . .only those weigh about 50 pounds each, one shot uses three of them, and it takes a .30-06 blank as a primer. . .

Next up: SILK COVERING!

[Bigslug]

The silk gauze my Dad ordered for this project is really, REALLY thin, and, well, gauzey. It's pretty hard to cut properly. Today's innovation was to cut out TWO of the templates from the original blueprint. The gauze is sandwiched between them and the overhang cut off. I'll probably be using a sewer's cutting wheel for this in the future, but for the four test rounds we made today, scissors sufficed.



According to my source, the bead of glue you run for attaching the silk should be exactly opposite the seam of the paper tube. Not much to this; Q-tip on about a quarter inch wide stripe of glue, stick on one end of the gauze, roll it around tight as you can, and stick the other end down, adding glue if need be. Once dry, the overhanging ends of silk can be trimmed off.

NEXT UP: Paper Patches & Final Assembly!