Swiss Vetterli

[craig61a]

I bought a few of these several years back and initially slugged the bores cleaned them up and oiled them. I had been reading about converting them to centerfire, forming cases etc.

I got a few other old BPCR in between then and got those up and running, neglecting the Vetterlis.

Now that the winter has set in and it's a good time to spend in the reloading room, I got things set up to start working on loads for the Vetterlis.

I had a mold that I had ordered from Accurate a few years back, and a bunch of 348 cases I bought to form the brass with. A Lee die set was used to form some cases and I found that they stuck out of the chamber just under a tenth of an inch or so after forming. I had read about people filing down the back end of the case, but I wasn't really to enthused about filing down 40 or so cases. I had found a few spent 348 cases at the range I go to, so I drilled out the base, cut some grooves around the rear of case, and secured some threaded rod in it so I could chuck it up in a hand drill. I honed out the rear of the chamber by applying 320 grit Clover compound so that the formed cases would fit in there. This was a $150.00 Vetterli I got from somebody on Gunboards, so it's not like was too worried about it losing any value.

I will note here that I also had trouble seating the cartridge formed with the Lee die in the other rifles. Leaving them a bit long to compensate for shrinkage in fireforming allows them to get hung up in the taper at the front of the chamber. I did pickup a used set of RCBS .41 Swiss dies on the cheap (well, relatively cheap), and running the cases through the RCBS sizing die take them down a bit more so there was no problem getting them to chamber after that.

A hole was drilled in the bolt face, and a carrier made with a decapping pin sized and shaped appropriately.

I left the brass a little long when I first cut it so that I would have enough left to work with when I got around to fireforming them. As it turned out there was plenty of brass left as the OAL of the cases after fireforming was only .005" or so shorter. 12 gr. of Unique, some corn meal, and Elmer's glue to hold the contents in was what I used. I took the rifle out to my garage to fireform the brass. I filled an old plastic 5 gal. pail with old towels so as to keep the noise down. Ended up shredding up the towels in the bottom pretty good and cracking the bottom of the bucket...

With my cast boolits sized at .435" I started experimenting with a length. I settled on 1.650" to start. Once I had the length, I reamed out the inside of neck to about .433". I only had about .006" left in the case wall, and with a boolit seated it did have some resistance going in and extracting. I kept repeating this and checking fit until I got down to 1.630". I had opened up the reamer slightly so I was getting a dimension of .4335" on the case mouth, and the case walls were at .009", which is what my target was - I didn't really want go any less than that.

Seating the boolits until the OAL was 2.200" still allowed the edge of the mouth to fall within one of the grooves in boolit, so a slight but sufficient roll crimp would not dig in to the boolit.

I had some Blackhorn 209 available, so I loaded 33 gr, of that, with a lubed hard felt wad under the flat based ~330 gr. boolit. I drilled the flashholes out to .093" and primed with Federal 9 1/2 Mag primers to light it off. That load is slightly compressed. The boolit was cast with WW.

So I'll have to see how well it shoots with that combination. if we get a nice day weather wise soon I'll make a trip to the range to see how it does.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

It seems odd that the Lee dies should produce a bad fit, if it was in all of a few rifles. I would want to both take a chamber cast and try smoked cases to see just where the area of contact was. One possibility is that often repeated dry-firing with the rimfire firing-pin had peened the edge of the chamber slightly. With most rifles this would be visible, but with the blunt Vetterli firing-pins it might not.

If it was genuine tightness of the case body or excessive length to shoulder, grinding a little off the bottom of the sizing die might be a better way to go.

[Nobade]

Those Lee dies produce a case that doesn't look anything like the chamber of my Vetterli rifle. They are completely useless. Even the shell holder is wrong - they include one for the 45-70. I ended up using Privi 8x60R Lebel cases, they work far better than 348 Win and are considerably cheaper. As for case length, the chamber neck is a constant taper so once I decided what size bullet to use I just cut the case off until the bullet fit properly. Once fireformed there is no need to ever touch the case with a die, just decap, clean, and recap. Loaded with black powder and a card wad, the powder sets the seating depth and the bullet is finger seated in the case. IIRC I made a mould to produce a 385gr. slick sided roundnose bullet that casts .425" and paper patch it up to .432". The cartridges are a touch long to work through the magazine, but used as a single shot it works well and is amazingly accurate.

-Nobade

[craig61a]

It seems odd that the Lee dies should produce a bad fit, if it was in all of a few rifles. I would want to both take a chamber cast and try smoked cases to see just where the area of contact was. One possibility is that often repeated dry-firing with the rimfire firing-pin had peened the edge of the chamber slightly. With most rifles this would be visible, but with the blunt Vetterli firing-pins it might not.

Yeah I don't know... I've read of a lot of people having to trim down the area near the base with a small file though.

[fg-machine]

i have an earlier made 69/71 and the lee dies are almost perfect for my chamber using the lebel brass .
my rifle also will not chamber a .348 converted case unless i turn about .003 off the case back at the web area .

[craig61a]

The one was describing above happens to be a M78, but in two of my 69/71's 348 brass sized with the RCBS will fit, whereas 348 sized with the Lee dies does not... I got about 300 348 cases back several years ago from a local reloading supply place. I might order some Lebel brass just to try it out though.

[Battis]

When the rounds made from 348 Winchester brass (.429 bullet) would not chamber in my Vetterli, someone suggested taking the decapping pin out of the Lee FL die, and gently push the loaded round into the die just a short amount. It works perfectly (for me, anyways).

I use black powder

[craig61a]

When the rounds made from 348 Winchester brass (.429 bullet) would not chamber in my Vetterli, someone suggested taking the decapping pin out of the Lee FL die, and gently push the loaded round into the die just a short amount. It works perfectly (for me, anyways).

I use black powder

Well I guess that might work...

[craig61a]

So here are some rounds all loaded up and ready to go...



Here are some cases ready to be fire formed...

[johnson1942]

their are a couple of these rifles in our local small museum and they are in good condition. a local settler used to buy them in bulk and pass them out to his neighbors to stand off the local outlaws and landgrabbers in the old west days. they must of done the trick as he died a normal death but his brother died of being back shot by one of those dudes. they are a awesome rifle and very accurate and well made. when the landgrabbing range war type ranchers would shoot up his place he would go at night to their place about 700 yards out. as the sun broke over the horizon he would put several rounds through the bunk house door to let them know he could drop them at any time he wanted to. he was the quigley of neb. one time a smooth hand cowboy came to kill him but he was sitting on his porch with a 12 gauge double barrel and winchester 73 at his side and the man changed his mind. he backed his horse out of the place and never was seen again. if you guys ever want to see these rifles come to rushville nebraska and our little museum and their they are with a real history behind them. they calmed down a real range war and did it well.

[Outpost75]

My buddy in Italy has the Italian Vetterli made at the Turin Arsenal. They often find caches of the old blackpowder, paper-patched ammo, and the rifles being pre-1891, are like curio and relic for them and don't require a licence. They shoot the BP Berdan cases, then drill them out to reload with black powder and reprime with 209 shotshell primers. A great many of these rifles were converted about the time of WW1 to 6.5 Carcano, and the one pictured here is one of those.

Attachment 158152Attachment 158153Attachment 158154

[craig61a]

As it was relatively warm and calm, I headed out to the range today to shoot the old Swiss Vetterli. I still have some issues to resolve as far as the case prep, namely neck reaming ( An adjustable reamer in the tailstock of my lathe doesn't always give the desired results ).

Overall I was very happy with the groups I was able to achieve though.

Ready to go...



Shot two groups at 50 yds... Right side was second round of shots. Barrel got warm and there was a little stringing.



Most likely the first time this thing has been shot in 70 years or more. Seemed to start settling in after the first 10 rounds or so. I shot the first ten rounds at 25 yds so I could get an idea of were the rounds were printing. Very happy...