577 Snider with 54 minnie balls in plastic shotcups

[justashooter]

I don't know anything about Egyptian government use of the smooth-bored Snider, or what case they used. tml[/url]

the actions from obsolete unserviceable 1866 pattern guns were given to Khartoum arsenal in 1880 or so, where they were rebuilt into smooth-bore guns with egyptian made barrels and wood. the chamber in the 2 examples that I have appears to the a standard cut for the regular 577 snider cartridge. one gun is marked "For Ball BP" on the barrel. the other is not. this is in english, so must have been applied on importation post-WW1, when surplus and factory ammo was still readily available from many sources.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

You can read quite a bit free on www.gutenberg.org . Authors worth searching for are Frederick Courtney Selous, Sir Samuel White Baker

Title searches for "big game" and the various animals etc. will also find you quite a few, including this one, for which there is also a Volume 2. This is more often termed the Badminton Library books, part of a large series on sport. I've got mine, and the ones on other forms of shooting, all of them methodically stalked for a lot less than you can sometimes pay.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48584...-h/48584-h.htm

I think a small minority of Bell's elephants were shot from a ladder, and few would hunt them with a 16ga. Baker approved of the common use of 10ga in India, where elephants are smaller, and though smoothbores were widely used and adequate in jungle, he preferred rifles. 4ga were common in Africa, but he also had a single 2ga, used sometimes with explosive shells - which he regretted, since he held that his shooting with anything was never quite as good again after its use. In later life he held that there was no need to go over 8ga of normal velocity, or a .577 black powder Express.

Baker's "Wild Beasts and their Ways" contains about the best summary I know of black powder big game rifle development. He had possibly the most interesting career of all, as a pasha of the Ottoman Empire. Lady Baker was a Romanian slave whom he acquired by purchase or theft (by Turkish standards), and accompanied him on his expeditions. She was personally very popular in the UK - it wasn't like she was a member of the British lower classes. Queen Victoria, although she must have approved his knighthood, wouldn't receive them at court, because they had been intimate before they were formally married.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Baker

There are also collections of out of copyright big game and gun books on disc, on eBay. The British ones are enough cheaper to pay the postage. But if you start reading all this, watch out. You might end up writing a book about it.

[justashooter]

respectfully, you can't believe everything you read on wiki.

speake wrote quite negatively of baker and other nile source seekers in his journals, some of which i have from gutenberg some years ago. they were in direct competition for grants from various governmental and social providers, and published competing literary works vying for consumption and the riches associated with acclaim and book sales in volume.
Alan Moorehead's White Nile is a great read into the politics of this period in exploration:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.536588

i have a first edition that i picked up in a book store some years ago for a buck.

the comment about 16 gauge smooth bore doubles with round ball is from period source references involved in the Zanzibar ivory trade. at that time any ivory was shootable, and any white with a gonne was an "ivory hunter". all you had to do was take a whack at any animal carrying ivory, have some natives track it to death site, and move your camp there for a few days till the tusks loosened and could be pulled out by hand. in the meantime the natives were happy to butcher and market the meat.

Samuel Baker's 2 bore "Baby" was about 40 pounds, and his double 4 was 34 lbs, IIRC. they were muzzle loading curiosities he had made to allow for sensational writing and public appearances, not for carrying. the animals these men faced in the 1840's did not need to be dropped en charge. they were un-hunted and bewildered by their own demise, and did not charge hunters until 1860 or so, according to period reports.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

the actions from obsolete unserviceable 1866 pattern guns were given to Khartoum arsenal in 1880 or so, where they were rebuilt into smoothbore guns with egyptian made barrels and wood. the chamber in the 2 examples that I have appears to the a standard cut for the regular 577 snider cartridge. one gun is marked "For Ball BP" on the barrel. the other is not. this is in english, so must have been applied on importation post-WW1, when surplue and factory ammo was still readily available from many sources.

That was an excessively interesting time in Khartoum. The Mahdi's siege which ended with the death of Gordon was in 1884 to 1885, so if the Sniders were there at the time, they would have spent some time in the hands of the Mahdist forces. If so I doubt if they did much but store them, as they had plenty of military assets from the massacre of Hicks Pasha's army, including a large number of Egyptian Remingtons, and didn't make much effective use of them.

Presumably "BP" means black powder, and wouldn't have dated from the time of the smoothboring. It is nearly sure to have been done when no powder was any other colour, and even after the introduction of smokeless, the term "gunpowder" was more often used than black powder for the old-fashioned variety.

[justashooter]

"I am the mufti. the one who has been spoken of. the one who's coming has been foretold."

i have read that these guns were imported post-WW2, and imagine that some snider ammo was still available, and that some guns were marked in english before release to sale, and some just were not. there is no significant apparent difference between the 2 examples that i have.

i have no knowledge of any significant source of snider ammo that is not black powder, historically. perhaps semi-smokeless ammo was made after 1900 or so, but that was also low pressure.

smokeless came into it's own in about 1910, so reloading of BP cartridges with smokeless was a known activity. Unique powder was designed by hercules just for such purpose. 2400 was considered dual use by 135 or so. Hi-Vel or Sharpshooter would not have been recommended. I will look into my copy of Reloading, by Sharpe tonight if i remember. it has a long section of recommended loads for obsolete cartridges with smokeless and black powder loadings.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

respectfully, you can't believe everything you read on wiki.

speake wrote quite negatively of baker and other nile source seekers in his journals, some of which i have from gutenberg some years ago. they were in direct competition for grants from various governmental and social providers, and published competing literary works vying for consumption and the riches associated with acclaim and book sales in volume.
Alan Moorehead's White Nile is a great read into the politics of this period in exploration:

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.536588

i have a first edition that i picked up in a book store some years ago for a buck.

the comment about 16 gauge smooth bore doubles with round ball is from period source references involved in the Zanzibar ivory trade. at that time any ivory was shootable, and any white with a gonne was an "ivory hunter". all you had to do was take a whack at any animal carrying ivory, have some natives track it to death site, and move your camp there for a few days till the tusks loosened and could be pulled out by hand. in the meantime the natives were happy to butcher and market the meat.

Samuel Baker's 2 bore "Baby" was about 40 pounds, and his double 4 was 34 lbs, IIRC. they were muzzle loading curiosities he had made to allow for sensational writing and public appearances, not for carrying. the animals these men faced in the 1840's did not need to be dropped en charge. they were un-hunted and bewildered by their own demise, and did not charge hunters until 1860 or so, according to period reports.

Speake? Perhaps you are talking about someone else, but John Hanning Speke wrote or spoke negatively of almost everybody, and fatally shot himself the day before a .public debate requested by the Royal Geographical Society to settle the rift between himself and Sir Richard Burton. If not suicide, it appeared to be the product of a deeply troubled mind. There are independent sources for much of Baker's experience, and his grasp of technology seems sound. He did indeed come to consider the 2ga and even the 4ga unnecessarily large, but we have to remember how little was known when he started out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H...ird_expedition

Islamic countries are full of muftis, plus a grand mufti or two, and those are just appointed positions. Muhammed Ahmed claimed to be the Mahdi, who would be God-appointed as in prophecy. Churchill, despite coming very close to being chopped up by his followers after his death, rather admired him as a man of huge vision and purpose, who unfortunately needed to be done away with.

We should always remember that the first shot is worth a lot more than several that follow, and the Snider or even Brown Bess herself at close range, could be as deadly as any firearm ever made.

[john.k]

There were still Snider carbines in the armory in the basement of police HQ at Makerston St in the early 1980s......there was a considerable fuss at the time about the sudden disappearance of old guns en masse from the police armory......especially old revolvers.......the Snider was very effective against troublemaking teens on the reserves and missions......a spear and axe fight could be broken up by merely inserting a shot round and cocking the hammer of a Snider.....they didnt like the shot on their bare legs and posteriors.

[toot]

who made the 2 and 4 bores, and were they muzzle loaders or cartridge guns, paper or brass hulls? did they shoot solids as in iron or lead?

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The ones to which Baker refers were muzzle-loaders, and no doubt there is a record somewhere of who made his, if not the guns themselves. He tells us in his "Wild Beasts and their Ways" of George Gibbs of Bristol making his earliest heavy rifle, and I believe also his four 10ga muzzle-loaders, and a "2 ounce" rifle was by Blisset, so it is very possible that either of those made the others too.

I never heard of anybody making a 2ga shoulder gun for cartridges, although cartridge punt guns, made to arm a stalking boat like a large kayak, went up to 20oz. of shot. 4ga and smaller cartridge rifles used paper and later drawn brass cases, and most people who went to the trouble and expense of getting themselves into the wilds of Africa probably preferred the latter. I expect there were also cases with a paper-covered rolled-brass body and iron head, like the military Snider and Martini-Henry rounds, but I have never seen that confirmed. I don't think those large cartridge guns were long in use before Baker took to preferring the .577 and smaller black powder Express rifles.

I am sure all his large projectiles were lead or lead alloy. He mentions lead hardened with mercury - and anybody who can get the stuff and tries that nowadays, not only needs his head examined but is likely, eventually to get it. I believe he more often used more conventional alloys, and he firmly advocates pure lead for tiger. You don't shoot enough of those in a day to worry about lead fouling.

[toot]

WOW! you sure can give a guy a great history lesson! again in the very large muzzle loaders what would the charges be, in the hundreds of grains? 1 FG and if you know solid iron heads, round balls or hardened water dropped lead RB'S, ? and were the muzzle loaders rifled or smooth bore?

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I've just edited my last post with a little more on hardness. Baker was a firm believer in rifled muzzle-loaders, but abandoned the deep two-groove rifling for a belted ball which he favoured in his early rifles. You should read him on http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3657

[justashooter]

I never heard of anybody making a 2ga shoulder gun for cartridges,

a modern 2 gauge double cartridge gun:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYlDgwo52tI

the first of 40 segments by Stolzer detailing the process of making a 2 bore double:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg3XDe791oY

the other videos and some shooting tests and videos on other big bore project guns on this page:
https://www.youtube.com/user/cstolzer338/videos

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Well, I was thinking of those made in the days when they were a serious answer to the needs of hunting, rather than emotional needs on which it is unnecessary to dwell. Even Baker thought his 2 bore was unnecessary, and said that he saw no need of more than the more modern .577 Express for any animal, and nobody needed more than an 8ga with 3-ounce bullet.

The 2ga might come in handy if they ever invent a bigger elephant, but the inability to raise or swing it quickly is a liability in many circumstances. I think even a 4ga was rarely used on buffalo, which will lay an ambush yards from his own trail, so that speed is worth more than power. WDM Bell reckoned that he walked 75 miles per elephant - including between camps, of course, but I don't think he would do much with a 44lb rifle.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

All right, this has been thread drift, I know, I know... But to make amends, here is the best Snider picture I know, of Lord Roberts's Gurkhas and Highlanders storming the Peiwar Kotal, which is the back door into Afghanistan.