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Thread: Mle. 1866 Chassepot Cartridge Construction - DIY Insanity!

  1. #61
    Boolit Bub
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    yeah, thats the lad i mentioned earlier in the thread! his ignition method seems to work rather well, i got 10 for 10 using his method last time i hit the range with my ladies

  2. #62
    Boolit Man yulzari's Avatar
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    The first Chassepot primer caps had two holes in the top. They were replaced by (cheaper?) ordinary ones without problems. Some people (wear gloves and eye protection if you do this) break off one or two wings of the normal primer musket cap to let the primer reach the main charge better. Here is an original next to a modern:
    Click image for larger version. 

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    Personally I believe that failures to ignite, when the bolt is performing as intended, result from a soft main charge. The toy cap is more sensitive than the musket cap and will cope better than the plain musket cap with a soft main charge. Compress the main charge in 3 stages as you fill. If too short then add your preferred grain filler (eg semolina). If you want to create a modern paper cartridge then you are free to use whatever you wish (safely) but if you want to recreate the original then a firm powder case is the route to follow. Mais, chacun a son gout.

    For me, I am not happy with the safety of putting a more sensitive primer cap at the base of the cartridge. The original was tested for safety in dropping cartridges bottom down onto hard surfaces and hard surfaces with jagged gravel but the toy cap version has not (to my knowledge) been so tested and I fear that one dropped onto the point of a piece of gravel may go off. Which is not good......
    Last edited by yulzari; 10-21-2015 at 09:35 AM.

  3. #63
    Boolit Grand Master
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    Good point about the drop test.
    Never really thought about it.

    When I load the powder, I do it in three steps.
    Add 1/3, tap it down, next 1/3, tap it down, last 1/3, tap it down.
    Same round paper as used for the base put on top of the powder. Tap down.
    Add cream of wheat until OAL is correct. Tie it off.

  4. #64
    Boolit Master

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    Not much of an update, but I DID get a reply to my Callebaud query from the arms expert at the Paris museum; he apologized for having been gone 4 weeks and said he's going to be out some more, but will get me a proper answer as soon as possible.

    So. . . movement, at least.
    WWJMBD?

    In the Land of Oz, we cast with wheel weight and 2% Tin, Man.

  5. #65
    Boolit Grand Master
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    Took it out this past weekend.
    Got 18 out of 20 to go off.
    One, the powder wasn't packed down enough. Not enough support for the needle to set off the cap.
    Other, just to long. Pushed the cap off center.
    Both my error.
    All of the rest shot good.

  6. #66
    Boolit Master

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    Well. . .no joy from the Paris museum on the Callebaud, but they did suggest I contact the old MAC arsenal in Chatterault, which has since become something of a national archive for such things. I forwarded this on to Yulzari in the hopes that he can deal with the problem without having to involve Google Translate in the transaction.
    WWJMBD?

    In the Land of Oz, we cast with wheel weight and 2% Tin, Man.

  7. #67
    Boolit Master
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    That sounds promising. Sometimes people are more grateful for the opportunity to help you, than they are for being helped.

  8. #68
    Boolit Man yulzari's Avatar
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    Just in case anyone is wondering if their Chassepot bullet casting is up to original factory standards........

    Click image for larger version. 

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  9. #69
    Boolit Master

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    Ha! Is that woodcut a page from the great historical work "Tinsel Fairy: Visits Throughout the Ages"
    WWJMBD?

    In the Land of Oz, we cast with wheel weight and 2% Tin, Man.

  10. #70
    Boolit Grand Master
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    I may sell one of my Chassepot rifles.
    Any interest????

  11. #71
    Boolit Master
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    This thread drove me to read Emil Zola's "La debacle", aka "The Fall", about the dreadful events of 1870. As expected, it reveals a mixed bag of citizen soldiers, but mostly, I think, just as willing and able to make war as Germany's. The faults are those of organization and supply, with the magazines of fortifications such as Belfort found to be woefully short of the supplies and equipment expected to be there.

    In particular they were found at the last moment to be short of thirty thousand indispensable spare parts for rifles. An officer had to be sent to Paris, where he was with some difficulty able to extract five thousand from the system. I am pretty sure they would have been either needles or obturators.

  12. #72
    Boolit Grand Master
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    Did these come with a brown finish, or were they in the white???
    I've seen them either way.

  13. #73
    Boolit Mold
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    are there any more of these photos ?

    Quote Originally Posted by yulzari View Post
    Just in case anyone is wondering if their Chassepot bullet casting is up to original factory standards........

    Click image for larger version. 

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    I am trying to id the machines in the photo look like veneer shavers?

  14. #74
    Boolit Master
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    I believe the most likely thing for the machine on the left is a multiple cutter for cutting cores for swaging, from lead rods.

  15. #75
    Boolit Master
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    I found the story by PC Wren, of "Beau Geste" fame, about a particular Chassepot. It is uncertain whether Wren actually served as a legionnaire at all, as he claimed, although he was a deeply secretive man who probably would have used a pseudonym, and if he didn't it makes him rarely skilled in deriving background at second-hand. He claimed to have known not merely a soldier informant, but the French officer to whom this happened.


    No. 187017

    Except when, with solemn countenance and serious voice, old Tant de Soif was deliberately pulling the leg of a bleu, or ragging Père Poussin, he was, for an old soldier, a remarkably truthful man.

    Undeniably, some of his stories were almost incredible, but then old Tant de Soif had undoubtedly had some almost incredible experiences in the course of his long and varied military service in Cochin China, Madagascar, the Sahara, Morocco and Dahomey.

    The most astounding story of all, concerned the last-named country, for Tant de Soif had served in the horrible Dahomeyan campaign.

    So strange and so interesting was the story, and such was Tant de Soif's warmth of asseveration as to its truth and his own personal friendship with Captain Battreau, that I was at pains to verify it.

    Tant de Soif's amazing story is not fiction, but unadorned recorded fact which can be verified by reference to French newspaper files of 1891.

    It is one of the most astounding examples of the aptness of the old saw, Truth is stranger than fiction.

    Any writer of fiction who had the courage to use this incident in a novel, would inevitably be laughed to scorn by the wise and learned men who reviewed his book.

    The story begins in the year 1870, when the Hun was ravaging France, Paris was besieged, and its inhabitants thankful to be able to buy the flesh of cats, rats and mice at fabulous prices.

    As in 1914, every Frenchman who could bear arms was fighting to save his beloved country and to drive the loathed invader from its sacred soil. Young boys and old men marched and fought beside those of military age. Among the first was a boy named Battreau, a burning patriot and a keen and ardent soldier, who quickly rose to the rank of Sergeant.

    Battreau was the Happy Warrior
    "that every man in arms should wish to be",

    for his profession was his hobby, he loved his work, and this campaign was to him a Crusade and a Holy War. Unlike the majority of soldiers, especially those of a conscript army, he positively enjoyed drill, and regarded his Chassepôt rifle rather as a pet or a beloved comrade than as a heavy encumbrance and a beastly thing that he had to sweat over, and keep speckless.

    If ever young Battreau got a punishment, which is improbable, it was certainly not for having a dirty gun. To him indeed was applicable the saying that "A soldier's best friend is his rifle."

    Curiously enough, the number of Battreau's gun was 1870, and 17 his own age--187017, a number easily remembered and one that he never forgot. And Private Battreau did more than love and polish and treasure his beautiful new gun; he used it to some purpose, for he proved, even from his recruit days, to be an exceptionally fine shot.

    According to those who knew him, Battreau, although a keen soldier, was anything but bloodthirsty, and it was not in a revengeful spirit of murderous triumph that he recorded on the butt of 187017 the number of Germans who, to his certain knowledge, he killed with it.

    No doubt he shot many more than his tally showed, but whenever, in single combat or when sniping, he killed his man, he drove a tiny tack or shoe "brad" a little way into the butt of his rifle, and then pulled it out again.

    What with its number, composed of the date of the year and his own age, and the neat row of tiny holes in the stock, it was not likely that Private Battreau, Corporal Battreau, Sergeant Battreau, would have any difficulty in identifying his rifle among a number of others, or in recovering it from any comrade who "scrounged", "found" or "won" it when its owner's back was turned.

    And at St. Privat, during the terrible battle of Gravelotte, the gun received an honourable scar, a decoration that would have enabled its owner to identify it among a thousand others, even had he been blind.

    For when the famous and magnificent Prussian Guard charged the French position and was repulsed with tremendous slaughter, Battreau, suddenly feeling a jarring shock and a blow that nearly knocked him down, found that a German bullet had passed clean through the stock of his rifle.

    As neatly as though the work had been done by a cabinet-maker or a highly skilled carpenter, a smooth, clean hole had been drilled through the butt of 187017.

    His beloved gun, that had killed so many of the enemies of his adored country, had saved his life, for the bullet, in passing through the thick wood, had lost so much of its velocity that when it struck Battreau's heavy leather pouch and belt, it failed to penetrate to his body, and merely knocked him backward, with no greater injury than a severe bruise.

    Is it to be wondered at, that Battreau's affection for his rifle was increased immeasurably, and that he would scarcely have parted with it for its weight in gold?

    Throughout the remainder of the Franco-Prussian War, Sergeant Battreau served and suffered, starved, frozen, ragged, often sick and weary unto death, but with 187017 still upon his shoulder, as he marched the long, long roads of France.

    At the end of the campaign he was alive, unwounded, and determined to remain in the army as a professional soldier. One can imagine the pride he took in his curiously decorated rifle, and the number of times that he told the story of how it got the hole in its butt and saved its owner's life.

    One can also imagine the regret with which Sergeant Battreau parted with this "best friend" when the French Army discarded the Chassepôt gun and was re-armed with the Gras rifle.

    Poor Battreau made application to be permitted to keep 187017 as his personal property, but his request was refused. Red tape is red tape, and is nowhere ruddier that in the French Army.

    How could the French Republic be expected to lose the few francs, or even sous, that an old discarded gun might yet be worth, and give it to the man who had carried it so long, fought with it so bravely, and killed so many of the Republic's enemies?

    Could not Sergeant Battreau be permitted to buy it from Madame la République at its original cost, or more?

    Certainly not, replied the Red-Tape-Worms of the War Office. Whoever heard of such a thing as Madame la République trafficking in old iron? The rifle must be returned to store at once, and with no more idiotic applications from presumptuous and half-witted sergeants.

    But traffic in old iron Madame la République undoubtedly did, and sold the whole discarded consignment to a syndicate of those Christian patriots who supply the ignorant, barbarous and comparatively harmless savage with weapons of precision wherewith he may fight the fellow-countrymen of the said Christian patriots, or slay his brother with greater facility and despatch.


    The scene is changed--also the date.

    It is now the year 1891, and a small French force, headed as usual by a detachment of the French Foreign Legion, is making its way from Porto Novo, in the Bight of Benin on the West Coast of Africa, up the left bank of the river Oueme, with the high hope, firm intention, and moderate chance, of reaching Abomey, the capital of Behanzin, King of Dahomey.

    With this detachment of the French Foreign Legion was one Captain Battreau, formerly a Sergeant of the Line and now a distinguished officer of the Legion.

    Of all Captain Battreau's military experience, this campaign was the worst.

    As frequently happens in war, the enemy was almost the least of the enemies to be fought: and whenever the Dahomeyans attacked the little expeditionary force on the march, or in the perimeter camps of their halting-places, they were regarded rather as an added nuisance than as the dangerous and murderous enemy that they were.

    Far worse than these savages were the terrible heat; the vitiated, steam-laden air; the stifling gloom of the dense impenetrable jungle; virulent malignant fever; the agonizing labour of hacking their way through dense pathless jungle at the rate of three miles a day; and almost unbearable thirst.

    The torture of thirst was not rendered easier to bear by the knowledge that the force was advancing parallel to the bank of a great river. Although this was only a few miles away, it was as inaccessible, owing to impenetrable jungle, as if it had been in another continent.

    On many a day the force would struggle for hours to cross a mangrove swamp so water-logged and swollen that it was almost impassable, and yet as devoid of visible water as any desert. Here water was an enemy, and, turning the ground beneath their feet into slimy mud, but added to their sufferings.

    Nor was the force allowed, as Captain Battreau humorously remarked, to fight in peace--to fight its way through the terrible swamps and jungle where the overhead foliage was so dense that the rays of the sun never penetrated it.

    Without the faintest warning, and at any place or moment, thousands of silent shadows would suddenly materialize from the surrounding jungle, and swoop like hawks upon their prey, each shadow a tall savage armed with slashing coupe-coupe (or machête), sword and spear. Or the heavy boding silence of the jungle would be shattered by sudden volleys, and from both flanks a heavy fire would be poured in, at short range, upon the struggling men hacking their way in the thick bush or stifling elephant grass in which they worked blindfold, swallowed up like dogs in a cornfield.

    At night, too, when the weary force sank to the ground, too exhausted to eat, there was little rest, for, in addition to constant heavy sniping, most determined attacks were made by innumerable hordes of spearmen, outnumbering the French by thousands.

    As usual, whatever the sufferings of the other units, those of the Legion were greater; for they were in the van; they blazed the trail, they bore the brunt of the frontal attacks, and to them fell the lion's share of camp and water fatigues, and picket and outpost duty.

    Always to the fore, leading, encouraging and heartening his splendid légionnaires, was Captain Battreau, admired, beloved and trusted by his Company, every man of whom knew him to be a better soldier than himself, a man whose word was "Come on" rather than "Go on", first in the fight and last to lie down in camp, as careless of his own life as he was careful of those of his men.

    And one day happened the incredible thing, the impossible event, the fact far stranger than any fancy.

    The Legion advance-guard, debouching suddenly from the terrible, gloomy jungle, entered an open glade or savannah, and simultaneously came under a tremendously heavy fire from a force completely concealed in the thick bush opposite.

    "Come on, boys!" yelled Captain Battreau. "Into them with the bayonet!" and, drawing his revolver, he led the charge of his weary, thirsty, half-starved men, across the open.

    The Dahomeyans stood fast, and in a few moments spear clashed on bayonet, and a fierce hand-to-hand struggle took place.

    As Captain Battreau, leading, rushed at a tall Dahomeyan, who had just re-loaded his rifle, the savage threw it forward and fired at Battreau point-blank. As he did so, Battreau pulled the trigger of his revolver, and both men fell to the ground, the Dahomeyan with the revolver bullet through his heart, Battreau untouched.

    As he himself afterwards said, he had not the faintest idea as to whether he flung himself down when he saw the muzzle of a rifle pointing straight at his face, or whether he tripped over a tussock of grass, or some such obstacle.

    What he did know was that, as he arose, slightly stunned by the explosion, so close to his face, of the heavy rifle, he saw with no small surprise, that the rifle lying at his feet was a French Chassepôt, complete with bayonet.

    Snatching it up as an excellent weapon for use in the hand-to-hand rough-and-tumble into which he was about to dash, his eye fell upon something the sight of which gave him pause, even in that moment of strenuous excitement.

    There was a hole through the butt of the rifle!

    Swiftly turning it over, Captain Battreau read the number. It was 187017. In the stock was a neat row of tiny holes.

    In Captain Battreau's hand was his own rifle
    --the rifle with which he had fought throughout the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

    For a moment the noise of battle all about him was that of Gravelotte, and the fall from which he had just risen was that caused by the blow of a Prussian bullet that had passed through the stock of his rifle before striking him.

    "I am fey . . . I am mad . . . I am dreaming," said Captain Battreau, and rushed into the fight, wielding once more, with deadly effect, the weapon that he had used more than twenty years before.

    There was nothing dream-like, from the Dahomeyan point of view, about this terrible white man, and, before long, the savages broke and fled, leaving their dead upon the ground; and the survivors of the Company triumphed with the feeling of satisfaction that follows a hand-to-hand and man-to-man fight on equal terms, with no advantage from superior weapons.

    For though disciplined troops armed with a rifle should, and almost always do, defeat a savage enemy, it is quite a different matter when bayonet meets spear, and the better man wins.

    Captain Battreau sat himself down and stared at 187017, still unable to believe the evidence of his senses. But there was no room for doubt.
    There could not possibly be in the whole world two Chassepôt rifles, each bearing that number, each marked with that record of slain Germans, and each with a bullet-hole drilled through the butt in exactly that spot.

    Captain Battreau again made application for permission to keep the rifle, and this time, as it was no longer the property of Madame la République, this was graciously accorded, and 187017 returned to France in his possession.

    This story, as Tant de Soif told it to me, is absolutely true.
    Last edited by Ballistics in Scotland; 07-28-2016 at 10:11 AM.

  16. #76
    Boolit Buddy
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    Post deleted... wrong thread
    Last edited by Dimner; 07-28-2016 at 10:13 AM. Reason: Ooos

  17. #77
    Boolit Mold
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    Good Afternoon. Had some free time today and found this thread. Please see my variation on making the Chassepot cartridges at Milsurps.com by using the search term "Chassepot Cartridge Modification." Not for purists but my fabrication time is short and I am having almost 100% first-pull ignition.

    Randy

  18. #78
    Boolit Master

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    Randy,

    Might have to give that some thought. Since my Pop is not using true black powder, but rather Triple 7 (which is a bit more energetic), the slight reduction in powder volume your system provides might land us close to the regulation amount of "steam".
    WWJMBD?

    In the Land of Oz, we cast with wheel weight and 2% Tin, Man.

  19. #79
    Boolit Mold
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    Good Evening Bigslug,

    If you need more "steam" you can switch to 3F. I usually load with 2F and have recently switched to 3F for more steam and for easier cleanup. From my research I was ready to nitrate my paper but with the 3F I find that I have very little residue. Yes, I too have a musket cap left behind about every 5 shot. Randy

  20. #80
    Boolit Man yulzari's Avatar
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    If you are nitrating the paper you are making a new cartridge for the Chassepot not a Chassepot cartridge. Inherent in the concept was that the powder bag remained intact upon firing and attached to the bullet which will carry it out of the barrel. The rear card/rubber/primer disk separates and is left behind when the powder bag leaves the chamber. It is blown back over the bolt/needle cone by the chamber pressure. When the chamber pressure drops as the bullet/bag exits the chamber pressure behind the card/rubber/primer disk then becomes greater than the now reduced chamber pressure and is blown out of the barrel by that residual pressure. This is why the Chassepot powder case was covered in an open weave silk gauze to protect it's integrity and a thin rubber disk incorporated in the base disk.

    It is perfectly proper to make a new Chassepot cartridge just for shooting but making the paper burn in the chamber will leave ash fouling but you should get a few rounds off before it becomes too great. If you want the historically accurate experience then stick to the original construction. Everything in the design was there for a reason. Factory made ones were fine. Emergency artisan made ones departed from the design in materials and quality and proves troublesome and the source of the fouling tales. The French military went through extensive trials to establish that a well made Chassepot cartridge would fire repeatedly without loading problems and improved versions were offered post war in competition with drawn brass conversions which won out in the Gras, Kynoch and German Mauser cartridge conversions and new builds.

    As trivia. Some of the Chassepots Modele 1866 went through conversion to Gras as the 1866/74 and then as the 74/80 and finally rebarreled as the M14 in 8mm Lebel and used in WW1 as a second line weapon. Allegedly a few were still used in training and in backwaters in early WW2. Technically that would make them Modele 1866/74/80/14. I have yet to trace any definite WW2 use though.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check