Loading the 11mm French (Naval!) Ordnance revolver round

[Drydock]

Last spring I picked up a MAS 1873 revolver. This is a grand old gun, seriously overbuilt, with a heavy but easy to stage action. That such a gun should be chambered for the all time wimpiest 45 caliber cartridge ever conceived is a disappointment. I received a loading kit from a French source, and labored to load the 11mmx17.8 round, full load of 4f, to be greeted by a lowly "pop . . . (wait for it) . . . ting" on the range. Bleh! Not even enough there to capitalize the "pop". And this is damn expensive brass to boot!

But then in my reading I discovered the Hairy Chested French Navy 1870 Revolver Round! Mon Dieu! 4mm longer, capable of pushing a 200 grain bullet past 700 FPS. Il est grande puissance!

How to load this? Pretty easy really. The one thing you need to get is the Accurate Mold 45-200x http://accuratemolds.com/bullet_deta...=45-200X-D.png this is essential, it is a pointed tapered bullet. It will allow you to use the longer Naval case in the tapered 1873 chamber. I cast with melted chilled shot, lubricate either by tumble lubing with Lee Liquid alox, or I'll dip the nose of the bullet of my loaded rounds into my Tuna can of melted BP lube.

Now you need Starline 44 Russian cases. The rims may be tight, but the cylinder spins free in my gun. Shorten these to .45 acp length (I use a 45acp Lee Quick Trim) Neck size them in a 44 special die. Run them into a 44 Russian/spl expander to slightly flare the case. Fill the case to the base of the bullet with black, or I also load 4.5 grains of Unique. (another reason to like the longer case, I don't like smokeless in the Tiny army case). Gently seat with a .45 acp seating die, and run into the 45 acp crimp die to straighten any flair. Done! (BTW the Lee Modern Reloading 1st edition has .455 Webley MK2 data that comes in handy)

No real crimp, but the Accurate design has a double rebated heel that really grips the case. Also, when you load these in the revolver, there's no place for the bullet to move forward in the tapered chamber, and I've seen no evidence of movement under recoil with these loads. Both black and smokeless Chrono around 700 fps, and feel like real revolver rounds. Great fun!

[The Goose]

Great write up. Thanks. Below are 2 write ups I did on another forum. Sounds like we ended up in about the same place LOL! Good work. By the way now that I have ironed out the wrinkles the old gun shoots like a champ.

Chamelot-Delvigne 11mm Modele 1873, was produced by Manufacture d'armes de Saint-Étienne and was the first double action revolver adopted by the French Army. It was chambered in the 11x17.8mmR which sent a 181 gr. bullet screaming at 430 FPS making it about as powerful as a .25 acp or so. However, the revolver itself is built like a tank. This one is all matching, locks up tight and has a very good bore. If you ever watched The Mummy with Brendan Frazer, he carried a pair of these in shoulder holsters.

I posted the above in the New Acquisitions for April thread a few days ago. So next is how do I get the old gal shooting again. I did manage to get 50 pieces of newly made brass formed from .44 special brass with a thinned rim. A start. Custom bullet molds are available, but I could not find any already cast bullets. The loading dies are fairly hard to come by and quite expensive. I already have such an accumulation of reloading and casting stuff I figured I could make something up. Since the parent brass is .44 special I tried a .44 shell holder. The thinned rim slid around a bit, but I could make it work. I then played around with .44 special and .45 acp dies. After a lot of experimenting I came up with a combo that worked which I will describe.
The bullet gave me fits. This round takes a heeled bullet. The bullet diameter is .452 and the heel diameter is .429. The original bullet weighed 181 grs. I have a Lee mold that throws a .452 (+/-) 200 gr. RNFP. I already had some cast up with a fairly soft alloy. I first sized the bullet to .452 just to be consistent. I then ran it into a .429 sizing die up to the lube groove. This created a bulge of lead so I ran it through the .452 die to eliminate that. Then back to the .429 right up to the crimp groove and then back into the .452 to get rid of that bulge. The picture below shows the original bullet on the right, then the partial size and then the final product.

Now to load the case. Ran the new case into the .44 sizer die and seated a large magnum pistol primer. I then used a .45 acp Lee powder through expander die and just barely kissed the top of the brass with a slight flare and poured 11 grains of 3F black powder into the case.. The .44 expander did not work at all. Conversely the .45 acp seating die caused the bullet to bulge the case to one side, but the .44 seating die worked perfectly. Also the .44 seating die had a crimping effect on the neck of the case holding the bullet quite firmly. I loaded up just 6 rounds to see if it would work. Let me also note that I initially slugged the bore and cylinder throats to verify the size data on the bullet. Before hitting the range I loaded all 6 into the cylinder and they slipped right in and out. Now off to the range.

You have probably noticed that there is no lube grooves now and I am shooting black powder so I need lube. I had an old tube of TC Bore Butter and I sloppily dipped the nose of each round into it before chambering. Allowing a little extra to get into each chamber. I set up an 8" target at about 25 feet. I fired the first shot double action and I jerked the trigger in anticipation and the bullet went who knows where. The next 5 I fired single action. It took 2 shots to figure out the point of impact and then the final 3 made it into the black.

Not particularly impressive, but I think with a little practice I can tighten that up substantially. Certainly adequate for a 130 + year old military revolver. Also I was not really going for accuracy, but more to determine if I had come up with a loading technique that worked and was reproducible. I believe I did. I easily saved $300 - $400 by using existing reloading tools instead of buying new.
A little perspective. A .45 Colt takes about 32 - 34 grains of 3F, the .455/.476 Webley takes about 18 grains, even the puny .450 Adams takes 13 - 14 grains. This 11mm took 11 grains and that was with some compression. Someone quipped that if a person was shot in the head with the 11mm French Ordnance round they were likely knocked out instead of killed. Regardless, this old revolver and it's somewhat underwhelming cartridge had a place in history that lasted from 1873 up into the First World War. It is really a hoot bringing the old gal back to life!

And Then:

I just received a 2 cavity mold for the 11mm from Accurate Molds. It is a heel design bullet. The heel diameter is .430 and the body is .452.


Of course the problem with the heel bullet is lubing. The lube groove is above the case rim.

So as opposed to smearing some lube on by hand. I melted some SPG in a double boiler and dipped the loaded bullet in it.


Here is the end result.

[Drydock]

Yep. I'm ringing an 8" gong at 50 feet, double and single action. From a rest put 5 into 3.5" on a paper plate at that range with the smokeless load. Great fun! That Accurate mold makes things so much easier! Might up the powder charge a tenth or two for a better burn, see if that tightens it up any. Max performance is with 3f Olde Eynseford. I seat the bullet with the case just touching the rebate.

Mine is a twin of yours, made in 1881. All matching numbers (and boy are there a lot of numbers on these!) and a bright shiny bore. Found in a local pawn shop "Old european revolver, no finish" and priced accordingly! Damn near ripped the pocket off my jeans getting the debit card out.

[loiner1965]

although over here we cannot shoot these revolvers we can only collect them for display etc.
was bored today so decided to make some cases for it.....i know you adapt the .44 mag etc but decided to try the .45 acp case.
i annealed the cases and having the h and c sizing die set up i lubed the case and use a big vice to compress the case into the die , you could use a hydraulic bearing press set up too....the case came out perfect with .430 at the neck to seat the heeled bullet etc.
no rim thinning and more or less perfect length too

[Ballistics in Scotland]

.44 Special or Magnum cases are not the right way to load for this revolver. This arises from the mistakes in Frank Barnes's "Cartridges of the World", which are copied by John J. Donnelly in his "Handloader's Manual of Cartridge Conversions", with the addition of detailed instructions for a case conversion I doubt if he ever carried out. The .45ACP isn't a good answer either, as you need a rim to heaspace on.

This contemporary (although cleaned up) drawing bears out the chamber cast dimensions from my two Army 1873s. I found the chambers to be straight tapered indeed, but .471in. base and about .464in. neck diameters. The bore diameter was .451in. The use of the .44 Special or Magnum shouldn't be dangerous at these pressures, or much reduce case life if the right reloading dies were used, but would produce a noticeable swelling of the case body above the solid web, and eat into that very limited powder space.



In France they normally use the .44-40 case, but you could also use the .45LC if you put a little taper in the case with a rifle die before the 11mm. reloading sizer, and afterwards removed a little surplus metal from the solid web. For this the non-lathe owner can use a small carpenter' block plane and a mandrel to mount the case on an electric screwdriver.

Navies and air forces are faster than armies to adapt novelties in smallarms, because their smallarms cost them less, and are less than vital to their function. So the reason for the naval cartridge was the prior introduction of the 1870 Lefaucheux centrefire. Actually this outlived even the 1873, as some were still in service until they were "destroyed by immersion" (like a great many deceased convicts) on the closure of the Cayenne penal colony in 1953. I don't know if any were produced or issued that year, in which some idiot started a war. But by 1873 the navy had very large stocks of the naval cartridge. They issued a few of the standard Army 1873s with an anchor mark, and then their own 1873 with a larger recess for the wider rim of the 1870 round. This one had a letter M (for "modifié", not "marine"), and the early ones may or may not have had that recess altered. I would suspect that the chamber dimensions made the cartridges otherwise interchangeable, as indeed is the chamber on my Belgian Spirlet, although it was probably sold as a 12mm Spirlet. In about 1877, as the stocks of the Lefaucheux round ran out, the navy went back to the standard Army 1873.

It is, in fact, an exceedingly robust and reliable revolver. I know of a couple with minor springs weakened, but never any major part broken. The specification required the ordinary soldier to be ablt to open up and clean or examine the lockwork without tools, and without any danger of parts becoming detached without his wanting them to. They fudged the "no tools" part a little, by requiring a screwdriver blade on the axis pin to undo one very large screw. But just compare that with what the heirs of Col. Colt did in the same year, by looking glumly at idle Civil War machiners and wondering "How little can we get away with changing from the cap and ball Army?" Or the German ordnance revolver of 1879, which was single action only and solved the problem of simultaneous or single ejection by having no ejector whatever.

They could easily have used a .45 round similar to the .44 Russian or .455 Webley, which were perfectly adequate. Possibly they had in mind the same problem as produced the .30 M1 Carbine and the .38 Enfield: the difficulty of training short-term conscripts to effective use of a high power handgun. Or maybe it was the philosophy that an officer's duty is to direct his men and the prime purpose of a pistol, which you can hardly state in design conferences, was to stop a run.



There is a lot that is fishy about velocity figures. That 475ft./sec. would be considerably better than a .25 or .32ACP against most of France's actual antagonists, in cotton robes or tasteful patterns of wood-ash. (The intention was revenge against Germany for 1870, but we all make mistakes.) The White lab got 375ft./lb. with possibly deteriorated original ammunition. The Commission also chose a 115mm. barrel because they found it gave higher velocity than a longer one, and although I could easily believe "not significantly less", more suggests poor quality or the wrong granulation of the powder. Similarly claims than the lighter 1890 bullet permitted enough velocity increase to double the energy, without altering the charge, seem very suspicious. I think they did alter the charge. But they had already taken the decision to got from one mistake to the opposite mistake, as armies do, with an extremely well-made jacked-bullet 8mm. revolver. The logic was that the 1873 was found to be incapable of piercing a cavalry breastplate at any range, and the 1892 probably pierced all the breastplates they needed to in 1914.

Another factor is that the shotgun-style primer and fibre filler of the case head greatly reduced the powder space, which a drawn case and the usual European Berdan primer would have improved upon. Authorities such as Surgeon-Col. La Garde, whose Chicago stockyard trials brought about the .45 ACP, considered a lead bullet the most likely to break major bones instead of glancing off, and advocated a thinner jacket than he thought his post-Hague Convention government would stand for. I think an officer reverting to his or a relative's old revolver and buying his own ammunition for trench warfare, would have had an advantage over anyone trading first shots with an FMJ Luger.

Commercial versions were made in the 20th century, with the addition of a rebounding hammer. The original Chamelot Delvigne design lent itself quite well to a rebounding but not blocked hammer, and for the latter some similar-looking revolvers turned to other designs, such as the Nagant. This wasn't much of a safety issue in the very stout "jambon" or leg of ham moulded leather military holster, but you wouldn't want it stuffed down your trousers.

The 1873 has often been chambered for the .45ACP, both informally and with reamers which were air-dropped to the French resistance in wartime. I have seen some very convincing calculations by a French engineer, who argued that .45ACP loads, but with a lead bullet, should leave a good margin of safety. What happens is that the use of hardball, although of the right bullet diameter, breaks topstraps due to the more abrupt impact of bullet on rifling. I haven't heard of the cylinder failing. I don't think there is any reason not to use moderate smokeless loads, which worked very well in the Webleys.

If you want to use this revolver, the heel diameter has to match your specific brass. One method of achieving this is to use a .45 hollow base mould, and make a replacement hollow-base pin which is just the reverse, i.e. tubular at the end. A cartridge case, marginally thinner than the ones you will load, will do it.

There are two very good books on these revolvers:

Bastié, Jean-Pierre and Casanova, Daniel, "Le 1873 Bâtisseur d’Empires"

Vuillemin, Henri "Les Revolvers Militaires Français"

The former, particularly, would be good value at the original price even if you don't speak French, for the illustrations of this and other revolvers, and the tabular information. But both are out of print (I've got mine!), and people are asking prices which would make your eyes water on www.bookfinder.com etc. But here are two inexpensive downloadable e-books on the excellent Naturabuy website, which is also a good source for parts.

https://www.naturabuy.fr/Le-Revolver...m-4915621.html

https://www.naturabuy.fr/Connaissanc...m-4826090.html

[Outpost75]

^^^^Bravo Zulu^^^^ for the above outstanding post!

Interesting thread, indeed!

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Thank you for those kind words. Just one thing to add. You may find that nominally excessive rim thickness isn't a problem. But if it is, use drills and a counterbore to cut a dummy "chamber" with the rim the depth you want, in a block of steel. Then use another block to squash the rim to thickness. It is much easier than turning every case, as you only have to do the machining bit once. If you can only drill, just drill the hole and cut a rim-diameter hole (a little over diameter won't hurt) in a piece of sheet steel of rim thickness, and soft solder it in place.

[loiner1965]

as you know here in the uk we cannot use these revolvers due to our gun laws but we can collect and display them.
i made some dummy rounds using .45 acp cases and the reloading die from h and c in france.
so in theory these cases are more suited to the revolver than the converted .44 special / magnum.
edit.... oops read your reply on an iphone so didnt take it all in....can you explain in simple terms why the .45acp is not suitable either

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The .45ACP could be used. But it might give only a couple of thousandths of rim to prevent the cartridge from sliding deeper into the chamber, based on my actual chamber diameter. Or it might not. The only thing those cases are guaranteed to function in, is a .45ACP firearm. The chamber has no shoulder for the case to headspace upon, and fit of case sides to chamber sides isn't enough.

Indeed, in the UK such pistols can only be used if you keep them in an approved shooting centre, which few people do. My interest in revolvers is only out of technical and historical interest, and arose when and because our legislators said we couldn't have revolvers, which aren't nearly as obliging as rifles in the matter of pointing in the right direction for me. It's a pointless nuisance, but it isn't like we get nothing for it. In the UK only a tiny splinter group of propeller-heads believe firearms enthusiasts actually want to shoot anybody.

Antiques owned as a "curio or ornament" have been exempt from legislation as long as we have had legislation. If you use it to shoot or threaten anyone, that isn't curio or ornament any more and you take the fall - but anybody who does it to you, does too.

But an antique was never defined in legislation. In the early 90s most regional police forces had a policy of prosecuting for possession of centrefire antique firearms. But some of those prosecutions were ably resisted, and failed. Bill Harriman, who was and is a consultant on the very popular "Antiques Roadshow" TV programme, was invited to compile a list of cartridge antiques which should be considered antiques. The government conceded his list, which you can read as Section 8 and Appendix 5 of the following great doorstep of a book:

https://assets.publishing.service.go...l_2016_v20.pdf

It has been expanded on occasion, a few cartridges at my suggestion, and it has been recognised as a great success, bringing thousands of firearms into the hands of collectors, rather than passing from one schoolboy to another in secret. It applies up to 1939 manufacture, and rifles and shotguns can be passed on and off licence for use. They have been pretty reasonable about firearms unlisted, when a comparable argument for commercial non-availability of ammunition can be made, and the ability to produce it as an amateur doesn't count.

Bill, for his work, was made a member of the government's Consultative Committed on Firearms. It is part of a process that has produced various relaxations of restrictions. For example it seems likely that concessions on antique firearms, equalling or improving on what is now only a policy document, will soon be embodied in law. I'd hope for an application of the same exemptions you currently get for pistols of special scientific, artistic, scientific or family significance.

It is not a time for some idiot - I speak hypothetically - to be caught illicitly using an antique, and undermine what others have worked, fought, taken risks and worn out good brain cells to obtain.

[loiner1965]

i believe they are a few ranges here in the uk where you can use centrefire pistols which i think are sec 7 ?
you cannot take them home and they must be kept there at all times.....not sure about ammunition for them if they come under the same ruling.
as far as i am aware no antique / section 58 firearms have been used in any crimes in the uk....they was a 11 mm french mas revolver found with ammo at a riot but they was a dispute about the ammunition not being for that revolver.
as you say you must be an idiot to try and use an obsolete calibre for the purpose of crime, thankfully all fac license holders here in the uk are very sensible and law abiding

[Ecramer]

There is a cartridge case available to American shooters that looks to me like it would be of some help. The "C45S" or Cowboy 45 Special is used by Cowboy Action shooters. I think brass is available from Starline. The case is a .45 Colt case shortened to .45 ACP length. I'd think that would answer most of the requirement here.

[loiner1965]

would be better just need rim thinning and shortening to 17mm

[modified5]

My middle kids favorite movie right now is the mummy movies.
When I saw this thread I thought how cool it would be for him to shoot the same guns that Brendan Frazier shoots in the movie.
Then I saw the cost of them. Cool revolvers but for $750 on gun joker I will have to pass!