577 Snider with 54 minnie balls in plastic shotcups

[justashooter]

looking to shoot a couple of egyptian sniders with .590 smooth bores i bought some fiocchi shot loads for the cases (primed hulls are not in stock anywhere), and measuring the cases and cups noted that the case OD is .633, the case wall is .025, the shotcup is 0.025, and therefore the interior of shotcup is about .536. Lee makes minnie ball moulds at .533 and .540, and lyman makes one in .542. it occurs to me that this gives me forward weighted in an economical package, as shotcups and shotshells are cheap, when they are in stock. with a 410 grain minnie 14-18 grains unique should be quite mild. i have not considered the question of how much black I could get under an unmodified shotcup or how the cup could be modified to make more room for black or trip 7.

has anyone done this or is there an opinion?

thanks

[toot]

use black, T777, loads are 10% over the listed loads for black powder. i use 85 grs of 1FG or 2FG. black with a wad and grease cookie and no problem. i use 58 caliber Minnie's.

[toot]

i make my brass out of 24 gauge CBC brass shot gun shells, reformed.

[Idz]

I use reformed brass with a paper paatched 0.584 dia x 460 grain slug I made, 72gr 2Fg, and 1/2 fluffed cottonball.
for shotshell I use a 0.600 round ball, 48gr 2Fg, and 1/2 fluffed cottonball I found that the loaded shotshell has to be squeezed down in my sizing because the ball bulges it too much to chamber easily.
I also put a 1/4" grease wad under the bullet.

[john.k]

If you can get a roundball to come out the muzzle perfectly round,then theoretically 8" groups at 100 yards are possible.........any distortion,and its side of a shed groups...So if by matching shotcup and ball size ,you get a tight fit without ball distortion,then fair to good accuracy .......

[toot]

when i use plastic shot gun 24 gauge hulls with a .600 dia. RB. it will not chamber, so i just take out my decapping rod and run it in and out several times and it will get rid of the bulge and chamber.

[justashooter]

If you can get a roundball to come out the muzzle perfectly round,then theoretically 8" groups at 100 yards are possible.........any distortion,and its side of a shed groups...So if by matching shotcup and ball size ,you get a tight fit without ball distortion,then fair to good accuracy .......

great idea. i was focused on minnie or paradox and forgot about round ball after finding that a .600 in shot-shell will not chamber for me. noted that power piston section of shot-cup will have to be removed to get enuf black in or will have to stay with unique.

the .535 should be perfect, and is only 230 grains, as opposed to the minnie at 410.
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/10...ter-round-ball
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/45...eter-410-grain

13-14 grains unique with 3/4 oz shot load in 28 gauge reads 10-11Ksi at 1200 fps.
http://www.alliantpowder.com/reloade...rid=3&gauge=28

the round ball is about 1/2 oz, and the minnie is 15/16 oz. it is clear which is safer with 13-14 grains unique. shooting over a chronograph is what needs to be done.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

when i use plastic shot gun 24 gauge hulls with a .600 dia. RB. it will not chamber, so i just take out my decapping rod and run it in and out several times and it will get rid of the bulge and chamber.

I said on the other thread on this subject that Magtech 24ga brass shotgun cases are .010in. thick at the mouth. That is 2½in. from the base, but I would be surprised if there is much taper from the 2in. mark. They should neatly accommodate .600 balls in the chamber you describe.

[justashooter]

I said on the other thread on this subject that Magtech 24ga brass shotgun cases are .010in. thick at the mouth. That is 2½in. from the base, but I would be surprised if there is much taper from the 2in. mark. They should neatly accommodate .600 balls in the chamber you describe.

the case neck diameter is generally given as .605. a chamber with 0.010" over case diameter is ideal, and 0.030" is functional in low pressure cartridges. a plastic case with .600 ball would be 0.650 in OD, so not a possible fit. the users who get plastic 2" with .600 ball to chamber must have very generous chambers.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I don't know anything about Egyptian government use of the smoothbored Snider, or what case they used. It might be useful to remember the fuss they went to with the Greener Police Gun and its special 14ga cartridge, sometimes with a forked firing-pin, to prevent use of stolen guns, or of police weapons for casual score-settling without the officer's ammunition stock telling the tale. Other Sniders may have been modified for the surplus market, and it is possible that some were rechambered for 24ga cases. That is mostly a French cartridge, and Egypt used to be heavily French influenced.

http://www.dave-cushman.net/shot/shotshellloads.html

[john.k]

Military use of smoothbore sniders was widespread in the empire,as a man on guard duty was a target of rifle thieves if he had a desirable gun.......non military conversion of sniders to smoothbore was nearly always to 20GA,and this guage was also used with muskets smoothbored......20ga holds a lot more shot.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

WDM Bell the ivory hunter equipped his safari guards with rifled Sniders and rifle cartridges - .577/.450, which were all he could buy locally. They appeared pretty formidable at close range, and he claimed that his guards had the unusual quality of being very poor shots in daylight but much better in the dark.

Jeff Cooper held that the ideal weapon for security guards of dubious skills and loyalty in the Third World was a single-shot 12ga and one cartridge. It seems a bit like going 18th century, but the gun wasn't worth stealing or going freelance with, and you really don't want that single shot being in your direction.

[smkummer]

Any of those Egyptian sniders marked “Colt” on the lockwork? I am lucky that I found Lyman’s 585213 of which I load pyrodex for a friend’s snider.

[toot]

i haven't heard of WDM KARAMOJO BELL'S name mentioned in a long time!! the greatest ivory hunter of all time. he suposibly killed over 800 ELEPHANT'S. and he did it with a 7 m/m MAUSER, not a mag. every one with a straight on brain shoot. he would say your target is the size of a loaf of bread.PRESIDENT THEODORE ROSEVELT, (TEDDY), invited him to the US. for a hunt and he scored a GRAND SLAM. again with a 7 m/m MAUSER. not a magnum, straight 7 m/m.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

i haven't heard of WDM KARAMOJO BELL'S name mentioned in a long time!! the greatest ivory hunter of all time. he suposibly killed over 800 ELEPHANT'S. and he did it with a 7 m/m MAUSER, not a mag. every one with a straight on brain shoot. he would say your target is the size of a loaf of bread.PRESIDENT THEODORE ROSEVELT, (TEDDY), invited him to the US. for a hunt and he scored a GRAND SLAM. again with a 7 m/m MAUSER. not a magnum, straight 7 m/m.

I believe it was 1011 elephant. The 7x57, badged as .275 Rigby, undoubted accounted for the largest number, but he ended up considering that the .318 Westley Richards (which despite the name is very close to a .338-06) was the best he had found. He was also very taken with the 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer (I've got mine!), which he pared down to very light weight, to suit a style which often involved long running or walking after the elephant, and didn't set the herd running as fast or far as some of the others. He would have made a lot more use of it if he hadn't had a bad batch of cartridges, on safari where they couldn't be replaced. He also had a lot of time for the .303 with a solid, round-nosed heavy bullet, and he made 16 successive one-shot kills on Cape buffalo with the .22 Savage High-power. He didn't attach nearly as much importance to power as to the right bullet, and one you had that that, a reliable and fumble-proof rifle to wrap around it. A lot of his kills were made on the heart and complex of major arteries around it, but for the frontal brain shot (the elephant skull having evolved to guard against blows from things his tusks couldn't point at), a loaf of bread would hardly do.

He was surely the best of big-game hunters at making his kind of hunting, which few others were doing, into a science to be learned, and at imparting to others. He was, for example, a consummate anatomist of the elephant. He modestly hints that a lot he learned wasn't suitable for someone on the trip of a lifetime. He also made a good job of enlisting the friendship and aid of natives any self-respecting Zulu or plains Indian would have considered barbarous primitives, and considering that few white men were as good as the best of them. That is how you get a quality of guides and gunbearers someone straight off the boat could never find.

If your technique involves a 1% chance of being killed, you may have a little better than a 90% chance of survival. (I say "may" because I'm not sure whether the inability to get killed twice is a legitimate part of the calculation.) Do it 1011 times, though, and you have a .0038% chance of coming out on your feet. He had devised methods much better than 99% safe.

I have a photograph on my wall of my grandfather, wearing spurs in a modest military capacity in Macedonia in the First World War. I am fairly sure he must have seen Bell in one of the fighter aircraft he mentioned seeing overhead.

[toot]

thanks for sharing that with us. but you realize bottom line he was a ivory hunter (poacher) of the enth degree. i be leave in his book i read that he said that an elephants brain was only as large as a loaf of bread. on the US. hunt TEDDY used a mod. 95 WIN. i be-leave .405. and he did use a 7 m/m on the US. grand slam he scored is that rite?

[toot]

a 7 m/m, is .284 dia. close to a 275 or 276. still one accurate, great shooting, sporting / military rifle. just see what the ROUGH RIDERS wrote
what they thought of them when they faced them on the hill? has been 40+ yrs sense i read BELL'S book. forgot the title, was it, OUT OF AFRICA? or THE GREEN HELL?. i would like to get a copy and read it again. if any one knows, thanks.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

a 7 m/m, is .284 dia. close to a 275 or 276. still one accurate, great shooting, sporting / military rifle. just see what the ROUGH RIDERS wrote
what they thought of them when they faced them on the hill? has been 40+ yrs sense i read BELL'S book. forgot the title, was it, OUT OF AFRICA? or THE GREEN HELL?. i would like to get a copy and read it again. if any one knows, thanks.

I suppose this is off topic, but I don't think that is wrong when nobody is doing much else with the thread now.

Try www.bookfinder.com or eBay. Amazon is included in Bookfinder, a consortium of websites and bookstores. The books are "Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter" (the best I think), "Karamojo Safari" and the posthumous compilation "Bell of Africa" . I believe he was rarely if ever a poacher, though. He worked mostly in unadministered territory, or within the rather generous licencing laws of the time, just ahead of a conflict of elephants and civilising influences which would have come into conflict if the elephants had nothing but teeth.

This picture shows the elephant's weak spot, but for both this and the "Bell shot" (the brain through the back of the neck from ¾ rear, which does have to penetrate more bone), a bread roll is probably closer to what you have to hit.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Location..._Oklahoma.html

Jim Corbett, who is still revered in India, eventually turned to conservation and hunting exclusively of maneaters, for the sake of "My friends, the poor of India. He also favoured the 7x57 in its .275 Rigby incarnation, probably coincidentally, as Rigby weren't the only maker of quality Mauser sporters. He sometimes used a .400 double for tiger in close cover, which for him sometimes meant feet rather than yards. One of his most harrowing memories if feeling the breath of the maneater on his ankles, and wondering if he should risk a shot or risk waiting for a cloud to uncover the moon. He always knew that his quarry were experts too, knowing their job in a way some random tiger or leopard trophy doesn't. But I don't think he considered himself badly armed with the 7x57.

[toot]

thank you for the information you so graciously supplied to me. you are a very knowledgeable person on the subject. and it was a pleasure on this end talking to you! i am going to my library and get and read the titles you provided me with. those were the days when there were REAL MEN, no matter how you cut it!!! thanks, later.

[justashooter]

Bell is believed to have taken most of his elephants from the top of a folding ladder in 12' high savanna grass with a shot thru the ear, which is more easily penetrated than any other part of the skull.

that being said, in the days of Speake and Baker, the weapon of choice for elephant was a 16 gauge double smoothbore with round ball. lots of writers of the 1840-1880 period reported this. i assume that a chest shot was taken and that the animal was allowed to bleed out. the elephants of this time had not been hunted with gun, and had no collective knowledge of the threat. by Bell's time, they were well aware and had become much more dangerous in close quarters.