i will slug it but i wont be able too utill next week.john
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i will slug it but i wont be able too utill next week.john
Your cylinder would have accommodated the US Army round for the Schofield Smith and Wesson, or a perfectly workable loading of the .45LC case. Not that I think this was ever intended by Webley.
Churchill was commissioned in 1895, and would surely have bought a pistol which couldn't have been the Mauser C96, so it is a good chance that it was the Webley Richard Milner describes. He claimed to have bought the Mauser because he badly dislocated his shoulder in an accident, landing from a boat in Bombay harbour. Despite having been public schools fencing champion of England he no longer felt confident of using his sword. That may seem like a retrograde step, and his love of gadgetry a better explanation. But that was before the effectiveness of the Mauser's small bullet was severely reduced by the Hague Convention of 1899, and a clip-loading pistol might have been easier to use on a horse with a hard suspension. By WW2 he favoured the Colt 1911, and probably carried it in his bath.
There are numerous reasons why those proofmarks may have been there from new, without your revolver not preceding an 1895 purchase by Churchill. It might be that Churchill bought his rather later, when he realised that there could be wars in which he couldn't get caught with expanding bullets. Various businesses were more willing to hold stock long-term in those days, and a Webley-Wilkinson may have lingered a long time unfinished in the factory, or in retail stock, when people were buying the less elegant WG etc.
Last edited by Ballistics in Scotland; 11-19-2016 at 01:08 PM.
Originally Posted by ehsa
If your Wilkinson .455 was 'converted' to chamber .45 Colt, I expect you would be just fine with Black Powder of course, ( and Bullet Lube suited to Black Powder ) and, that you may as well just go ahead and use .45 Colt Cartridge Cases then, and you can just retain the Bullet Weight and Powder Charge which would have been used in the .455 Webley Black Powder Cartridges of that time period...and stay with pure Lead Bullets, of course.
No 'Bullet Jump' then, and, an all in all tidier condition than trying to use .455 Cases.
You can do this by using Malto Meal or Corn Meal ( aka "filler' ) to take up the extra space left by a 28 Grain Charge and seat your Bullet to a normal depth for .45 Colt, with some good compression of the charge and added inert 'filler'. Bullet should compress the Powder ( or Powder with Malto Meal or Corn Meal on top of it, ) at least somewhat firmly. One must not have any air space in a Black Powder Cartridge.
The small amount of additional ejecta weight, of the Malto Meal or Corn Meal, would not bother anything. And if you wish, you could just weigh how much that is, and find a .455 Bullet which weighs that much less ( than whatever the proper Bullet weight was or is, for the .455 as it had been, when your Revolver was made ).
Or...
The other thing you could do, is use .45 Colt Cases, and ream the Cases a little ways down on their inside, so you can seat your .455 Bullet on to the 28 Grain Powder charge, with no 'filler', without worry of bulging the Cartridge Case.
This of course would be the most elegant of all for this situation.
I have a circa 1915 Smith & Wesson, 2nd Model Hand Ejector, which was originally chambered in .455 Webley, but which had been "converted" some time along the way, so that it accepts not only .45 Colt, but .45 ACP in Moon Clips.
Eeeesh!
My solution to this mess, was to modify the annular 'ring' of the .45 Colt Cases, so they fit nicely on to full "Moon Clips".
This worked wonderfully, and I have an excellent Head Space, and no dreaded 'Bullet Jump'...and I have no worries about firing ordinary charges of .45 Colt, using .455 Bullets.
I personally prefer Black Powder, so, I can not imagine there is any strain to the S & W whatever with that.
Yours Wilkenson I trust, is not such a mess as that one is!
But, always, where there's a will, there's a way...and often enough, the way can be nicely done with a little ingenuity and patience and skill.
Last edited by Oyeboten; 09-10-2016 at 04:07 AM.
I often mention Thurlow Craig, but since he is my favourite author on shooting, fishing, animal behaviour and South American revolutions, there is plenty of opportunity. He bought his New Service Colts in .455 (as you could very cheaply at the time), and rechambered them for .45LC. He also had the recoil plate skimmed the rear of the cylinder to accommodate half-moon clips or the Auto-rim, and had a thin screw-on plate made. Headspace for the LC was more than the .455 needs, but at a pinch you could get reasonable performance with just about every .45 cartridge there was.
The many .45 ACP US conversions of the break-open Webleys are another story, though, and I think there could be danger at two points, almost infinitesimally divided in time. If the Webley has the undersized throat I mentioned, it seems too small for the GI hardball bullet. As I said, I don't know if this changed when Hague Convention jacketed bullets came in. The more knowledgeable converters may have reamed the throats (concentrically with the bore and chamber would be nice), but I don't know if they all did.
Next the bullet hits the rifling. The M1873 French ordnance revolver, designed by Henri-Gustave Delvigne who was born in 1798, is in most respects an excellent and robust single-ejecting revolver. But it has often been rechambered to .45ACP, both casually and by the French Resistance, who received reamers in parachute drops. The bore diameter is right, and yet it has a history of breaking topstraps. I have seen some very convincing calculations by a French engineer which suggest that the pressure ought to leave an adequate margin of safety if lead is used. The villain of the piece seems to be the abrupt impact of the hardball jacket.
The Webleys aren't particularly weak. My No3 Smith and Wesson .44 Russian is closed purely by the strength of the latch and its pin. while in the Webleys from yours onwards have mating inclined surfaces on the frame and inside the topstrap mortice. But regardless of the throat diameter, I wouldn't use heavily jacketed bullets.
For bullets I use an old Ideal 45 Colt mould that drops a soft lead pill at .456 and I lube and leave it as cast for the bore of the Webely Green. I use trimmed 45 S and W cases and load 20 grains of FFg and the 255 grain bullet in modified 45 Smith and Wesson dies. I want the bullet as large as possible as my bore runs 456+. I use a greased (bees wax) felt wad to get the compression I want with the light load. This will arc the bullet out to the target at modest velocity and is about on with the sights.
In looking through my notes I see that I did test 18 grs. of black powder under the Webley hollow based bullet with the bullet seated down on the powder in a .45 Colt case. I compressed the powder .10" and added a .04" card wad on top. Average velocity in the Ruger was 768 f.p.s. Powder was Olde Enysford 3F.
In addition to b.p., I also tested some equivalent .45 Webley smokeless rounds in the .45 Colt case.
The .455 smokeless cartridge on the right contained 4.5 grs of smokeless. I had two other cartridges of the same, dissected them and loaded the powder into .45 Colt brass and seated the bullets. They clocked 772 & 751 from the Ruger's 7 1/2 " barrel.
I then tested Titegroup with the hollow base Webley slugs. 4.0 = 708 avg. & 4.5 = 772 avg.
Note....I only partially sized the cases which had been fired previously leaving the expanded portion untouched forward of the rim.
Ed,
Thank you for the kind words. As we know, that is not a new idea. Way back when, some of the early target cartridges had bullets seated below the case mouths.....maybe not quite that deep though.
Ballistics In Scotland,
In answer to your question, "Does your other ID refer to Black Jack Christian the outlaw?", my nickname is Jack and since I am a Christian I chose Jack Christian as my handle when I joined SASS 20 or so years ago.
w30wcf
aka w44wcf
aka Jack Christian SASS 11993 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Philippians 4:13
aka John Kort
NRA Life Member
.22 W.C.F., .30 W.C.F., .44 W.C.F. Cartridge Historian
Ah, I wasted a lot of space for nothing, then.
Your ideas on reloading seem fine, except that I wouldn't use a card wad with a hollow based bullet. Part of it is liable to get wedged in the base cavity, making the bullet unbalanced, or it could be dragged out from under one edge of the base and not the other, permitting one-sided gas escape as it leaves the muzzle.
The use of the pointed MkII or similar bullets does impose some danger of hard debris getting into the space between bullet nose and brass. You can bulge a shotgun (or could in the days when double gun barrels were thinner and softer) with a card wad ahead of round ball. I don't believe the streamlined shape of the MkII does the slightest bit of good, so I am surprised we don't hear more of the almost totally cylindrical MkIV and MkV bullets which replaced the eggcup-shaped Manstopper. It had the reputation of being very accurate but it disappeared when some idiot started a war, and production was simplified.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.455_Webley
The Manstopper is the only cartridge with which I have ever achieved what the British army terms a negligent discharge, and with inches of my knee too. Fortunately I was negligent, not brain-dead, which is what it would take to point that thing at my leg. A revolver encourages the bad habit of keeping a finger on the trigger, because the next shot would require a double-action pull... But not with the Webley-Fosbery it doesn't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.455_Webley
For casual readers of this thread it is worth mentioning that "Mark" with Webleys, can mean three different things. There were separate series for the large-frame break-open military revolvers, and a separate series for the smaller frame pocket and WW2 military revolvers of .38 downwards. Then there were the different marks of ammunition... So "MkII" could refer to two sizes of revolver and two sizes of cartridge... Are you still paying attention, you at the back there?
"Mattsbullets" has some appealing offerings which in some instances may be had in .454 if one asks.
Merely Boil a few seconds to remove the Smokeless Lube, if intending to use with Black Powder.
http://www.mattsbullets.com/index.ph...2m0tuad75r0ri2
No 'Manstoppers' as such, but, their 250 Grain Wadcutter looks like it would be very nice.
http://www.mattsbullets.com/index.ph...2m0tuad75r0ri2
Nice little illustration, here, showing examples of the various and successive 'Mk' variations...
Ballistics In Scotland,
I always enjoy reading your posts, so you certainly didn't "waste any space". The reason that I experimented with the Webley bullets was that I was curious to see how they might have performed. Also there was a fellow on another site that was doing the same but using 45 Cowboy cases.
Regarding the wad on the based of the hollow based bullet......I had seen some sectioned drawings that had a wad positioned at the base of the bullet, but I can see what you mean. At least for the 10 rounds that I shot, everything was well.
I also tried some Man Stopper bullets with smokeless. I didn't use a disc with those. They shot well at 25 yards.
w30wcf
aka w44wcf
aka Jack Christian SASS 11993 "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Philippians 4:13
aka John Kort
NRA Life Member
.22 W.C.F., .30 W.C.F., .44 W.C.F. Cartridge Historian
Then I think those cards ought to be very frangible material, such as used to be used for shotgun over-shot wads with a rolled turnover. I have a bevel cutter to make surrounding mattes for picture framing, from a particularly hard and solid card which has a coloured surface but shows white at the bevel. I have kept the middles I cut out, as nothing could be better for some card wads, but not with a hollow base.
well this 1892 webley is the only webley i have ever owned and i can see from all the posts i certainally do not know much about these weapons or their various loads both black powder and smokeless. i will slug the barrel but it will be awhile before i load ammo for it. just really want to proceed carefully and not damage or destroy a very fine historical weapon. by the way the markings on the barrel and cylinder bv bp and np i reckon to be for the last 2 bp is black powder and np nitro powder which is smokless and what is bv? and do i have the others correct.john
How long is the Cylinder on your Webley?
And, can you maybe find a friend or neighbor who has a Digital Camera, to get some nice images of it posted?
I know I for one would like to see it..! And I am sure, others here would also!
Last edited by Oyeboten; 09-11-2016 at 11:46 PM.
If the BV mark is surmounted by a crown in the same style as the other proofmarks, as shown in this web page, it is the Birmingham view mark. This made sense with shotgun barrels, when expert examination before proof testing could save a gunmaker a lot of wasted labour. It wasn't compulsory as the proof mark was and is, on any gun offered for sale. So its usefulness for revolvers is harder to understand. Wild guess, but maybe gunmakers had insurance for losses in proof, and getting the view mark was a condition.
the 1892 webley cylinder length is 1.568. i just slugged the bore and i use a round ball that i shoot in my .44 cap and ball revolvers. it is a 0.4590 ball and was greased with frog lube. it measured on my mitutoyo at 0.4535. i havent gotten anyone for the picture taking yet but i will endeavor to get that done but it may take awhile.i live in the sticks with few neighbors many like me not too savy with computers.but we will work on it.oh and i also checked with same size ball by removing the cylinder and dropping the ball in the chamber.it fell to the end of the cylinder and stuck with half of it projecting out. a light tap with a dowell rod and it dropped right out.john
Last edited by ehsa; 09-12-2016 at 11:42 AM.
I have been dipping into Geoffrey Boothroyd's "The Handgun" (a very detailed history I can recommend very strongly, immortalised by the author's advice to Ian Fleming being the reason Q in the movies is Major Boothroyd.) He tells us there were three Webley-Wilkinson models, which he termed the Wilkinson-Webley. (That might be important if you search for information.) The 1892 had that distinctive straight rib from topstrap to front sight (see my Spirlet, above), but the 1905 and 1911 had Webley's usual concave but slightly lower rib, as well as a thumb cylinder release and a small filler behind the trigger guard.
The 1911 went over to six-groove rifling instead of seven, and this is important for measuring a bore slug. Was that measurement land-to-land or land-to-groove? The cylinder sounds about the best compromise for centering up a .455 bullet but sizing down a .476 one.
the straight rib looks like your spirlet it runs to the front sight then about 1/4 inch where it slopes down to the muzzel. i tried to measure from land to land a little bit hard to line up but the grooves are shallow. the inside of the barrel looks like it has been shot very little and there is no filler behind the trigger guard.john
something else. in the trigger guard behind the trigger at the very back there is something there comming down from the back of the trigger guard that looks like a small trigger. john
When checking the Cylinder Bores, did you use the Ball you had 'Slugged'? Or a fresh .459 Ball?
You have chambered ( if not fired, ) a usual .45 Colt Cartridge? And, it's over all length did not prevent your Cylinder from rotating?
( .45 Colt OAL usually being about 1.6 inches, so...given the head space or Rim thickness, it sounds like it's Bullet would not protrude out of the front of the Cylinder ).
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