Ok,so this is a litte different

[Racing]

Ok guys.
I just picked up a rifle that´s a little different and would like to pick the collective brains on the subject.



It´s a Swedish m/1851 "kammarladdare" (chamber loader in english). Close relative to the Norweigan counterpart,but with a few marked differences. An underhammer design as you can see.

Rifling twist is rather slow,approx on Enfield/Snider level (Ie; 1:70-80 somewhere). 6 groves,that are rather deep (haven´t measured yet but will). Slugged the barrel to an even 16.00mm and the loading chamber holds the same diameter.



Chamber holds an ample amount of black gold. As late as yesterday we went shooting with it and at 120grains 3F it still laughs at us.
These were known to shoot far,which as i´ve understood was one of the criterias for it when the royal Swedish navy adopted them.
1 km has been told. As to the truth of that,yeah well..

So far we´ve used a sorts of Minie bullet for it,which is undersize to say the least at 15,6mm,with varying results. As this is a breech loader a Minie is of course wrong but that and roundball is ATM all we´ve got.
Which is where you come in.


16,00mm comes to approx 0,63 inches caliber which is a rather odd size i guess,why i´ve spoken with Tom at Accuratemolds on the subject and he´s willing to make me a mold for it. Duo design one.

Stock bullet for these is a spitzer of rather ample weight. Don´t know for m/1851 but it´s Norweigan cousin uses a spitzer for their "18 lödig" caliber ones,and those are some rather heavy weight slugs (18 lödig is a larger caliber still).
Them slugs,come to between a whopping 650 and 950 grains!
Thus i suspect that the OEM bullet for the m/1851 would hoover around the 500+ mark,as an educated guess.

So. Tom will make me a mold,dual forms. What would be a good starting point here? Any ideas welcome.







We went shooting with it as late as yesterday as noted. Chamber is of ample proportions why we tried up to 120grains of black which it digested with ease and basically just laughed back at us. (I guess the chamber will take about 150grains need be and still leave room for a bullet.)
From what we´ve gathered this particular rifle was made at Huskvarna back in 1854.

OEM bullet keeps grease grooves btw,so no patching per se is used. Just blackpowder,wad (or filler) and a bullet. I´m by NO means hellbent on it being a spitzer,on the contrary really.

[mozeppa]

thank you for your gracious give a way!...i'll take it!

seriously...good score....i'm jealous. good luck feeding her!

[redhawk0]

Wow...that's quite the find. It looks like it's real fun to shoot. I agree with you...the mini isn't the bullet for that gun...with a long twist round ball was its intended pill. I love the design with the flip up breach. That's a pretty sweet idea. To be honest, I've never seen one like it. If my memory serves correctly (and it usually doesn't)...isn't 12ga also 63 caliber. It could be interesting to try as a field gun. If it takes a 12ga 1 1/2 oz. shot cup with an over-wad....think of the additional possibilities/capabilities....sorry...just thinking out loud.

redhawk

[BlackpowderSweden]

Swedish Marine m/1851 chamberloader is not that rare.
We have a competition in my club for this rifle only.
50m standing with rope support, like shooting from the side of a ship
Last time we were 8 shooters shooting.

[BlackpowderSweden]

Not me, but a friend shooting our club competition.

[BlackpowderSweden]

A picture of the bullet I use, from an original brass mould, possibly made for this rifle?
Dip lubed, the lube is centering the bullet in the grossly oversized chamber.
The chamber is made for paper cartridge so therefore very big.

[Racing]

Ah! Motherload!!
"BlackpowderSweden"? As in blackpowder.se?

HOW can i obtain a batch of them spitzer bullets? Please let me know! Finding out what gives online is about dead set from step one...

As far as asking Tom for a more "modern" design,what do you think as far as that? What should such a bullet look like IYO? The basically these days uniform idea of a meplat of some sorts i guess,but that aside.?

I´d love to try a sorts of Snider design out,just it HAS to fit the gun which no current mold does to my knowledge.

My club...we´re debating on having match holds...and bring out a Monkey tail, a Chassepot and this gun for hold matches and day done finish it off with a crapload of beer! 1oo meters...2oo meters and then finally 3oo meters.

Team with the worst score picks up the tab..

That said. Back on track. Bullet shape for this piece?

[Racing]

Btw!
Lovely shooting!

[Racing]

Oh! What´s more.
Chamber diameter. Don´t know if you´ve slugged yours,i have. Point being that the chamber of mine dials in exactly at what the rifling tells too. Ie;16mm.

Thus we´ve reasoned as such that if paper cartridges were used these were most likely to be used as were the old musket ones. Ie;no patching per se,just rip the end off a cartridge and pour powder in. Ram the bullet home with some sort of rammer,most likely tho out of wood.

Them 16,00mm btw is dead exact. Measured with micrometer. Chamber and barrel both.

[Racing]

Ok guys.
Need input.



Went to the range yesterday for a few hrs. That there bullet is what´s used as that is what i have on hand. With filler added i have issue hitting a barn,from the inside...at 100 meters.
Remove the filler and...



It hits in approx same place no matter. Two of those are 90 grains of 3F and then one 140 grains,chamber filled to the brim basically in the case of the 140 grains setup.

Barrel has since been "bedded". As it turned out there´s a brass plate below the chamber which the breech basically rests upon and this brass plate had sunk into the wood over 160yrs+ that has passed.
Easily remedied by shimming said plate and net result is a barrel that floats freely,the entire barrel. Before it ran,literally,into the stock for about 75% of its length and..now floats free completely.
I suppose the band closest to the breech handles the felt recoil (upwards) and locks the barrel in that manner. At 90 grains and that 530grain bullet i´d say recoil is felt..and managable...at 140 grains thing are really starting to rock. For real.

Muzzle has been recrowned and this in a rather anal fashion.

Now.



Rifling of this thing is rather deep. Very so in fact,and seing that the thing hits first up way tighter sans filler,no matter which filler really, and in turn hits in approx the same place regardless of amount of blackpowder i´m starting to think that...

..that the bullet is to soft. That Minie bullet,out of obvious reasons i guess,is cast from pure lead. Ie; HBN around the 2 mark or so. I´ve asked the vendor around here that supplies us with them there bullets to cast 30pcs out of wheel weights instead as alloy,rendering around the HBN 7-10 mark or so.
In turn load these bullets up with a greased wad behind them to aid sealing upon firing.

Thoughts?
Is my thinking reasonable or am i completely up the proverbial wall?

[BlackpowderSweden]

I have been "Blackpowder" or BlackpowderSweden" on several online-Forums since 2002
I am not the man behind the company "Blackpowder.se" (Rickard W)

Regarding the bullets used in our club, here comes some pictures:


Original mould


Another Original mould, two grease grooves (this one shoots really good)


More of the same mould.


Hardcast roundballs


Our master mechanic made his own "airgun-bullet"


More of the same


Another shooter with soft roundballs.


Our master mechanic with another mould this year.

The standard loading procedure is:
45-60gn Swiss No. 2
3-4cc COW (Mannagryn)
Lubed bullet dropped in the chamber.
A squeced rws 1018 cap put on the nipple (unfortunately we can not get original size caps to fit the nipples today)
Close the chamber an fire.
No cleaning between shots.

All these different bullets and loads seems to shoot pretty okay all of them.
Roundballs are .610" I think

My spitzers shown earlier are cast of 80% pure and 20% lino, probably 12-14 Brinell

Our Mechanic loads the bullet forward pressing it into the forcing cone in the barrel, loading only blackpowder in the chamber, leaving alot of air in the chamber.
This seems to work also extremely well, the airgap in the chaber seems to be no problem at all, actually seems to lower the pressure as his load seems realy weak in relation to the amaount of powder he loads.

I have also tried this method of loading but gave it up because I had no bullet that fit he forcing cone really good.
I also had some delayed ignitions/hang-fires due to the air-space, or the powder moving forward during the closing of the breechblock? Solved it with a small piece of toilet-paper ontop of the powder.

I dont think any one of us shoots a bullet that will fill the grooves of the barrel, a bullet that big will be totally deformed and will not shoot good according to my experience with this rifle.
The COW (Mannagryn) will do the sealing, the bullet will ride on the lands only.
Adding someting like a fiber wad has been tested by many of us, nobody use it today...

Good Luck/ BP

[Racing]

Thank you SO much for chiming in BPS!
Downright invaluable information to me!

Then it might very well be that i´ve been on the right track with this,the current minie boolits being way to soft. For the lack of a fitting mold ATM i´ve asked Geoffrey of Sixgun to cast me a small set of the same minie´s,just out of harder alloy and these are en route.
In turn i´ve debated back and forth with Tom at Accurate as far as such a mold,and it will be a two cavity with two different forms. One of being a take on the original spitzer sorts of bullet. Tom has already done such mold for the heavier caliber Norweigan ones.

I guess i´ve enhanced the issue seing the loads i´ve used then?

Having worked on the rifle i can only agree on the strength of the breech and receiver. It is no doubt steel and hardened such,the entire thing.

That said,a question if you don´t mind.
Why is it you doubt that a bullet that´ll fit will perform if cast to barrel dimensions? Reason i ask is that there´s loads of conflicting info on the subject. In turn,having talked this over with others it seems MOST rifles were made with chamber dimensions of 16,3mm and then in turn there´s those claiming 17mm or there abouts and in turn little old me that has checked with a turned plug that the chamber on MY rifle is exactly 16,08mm.
(Yes,i keep a machine park since my racing days to this day. Lathe,Bridgeport and what not).

In summary it seems that those dimensions are all over the map.

Firing a loose fitting bullet will no doubt present gas leakage. Comes with the territory i´d say.? Filler or no filler. Knowing from other breech loaders that many of them use some sort of seal/gasket or along those lines why would the chamber loaders of ours be any different?
Westley Richards "monkey tail" for instance uses a greased wad. The Chassepot a rubber seal,or in reality two of them really of which one doubles as a seal for the needle and a chamber "scraper" of sorts and the other being the actual obturator,and so on...
Seing the pressures and temps involved i´d believe we´d see some gascutting? Or no?

In turn i agree that the forcing cone on these rifles is ample to say the least. Rifling starts a good stretch down the barrel.

On nipples taking regular musket caps in turn..
Mine didn´t fit squat either. What i did was add some silver solder and then turn it to size on the lathe using regular single cut files and finally emery instead of cutting them in a regular manner.
Works great.
In turn i believe Geoffrey has had nipples made to size that fits since a while back (Sixgun)

What´s more.. I saw an awful lot of soot due to leakage between chamber and barrel. Sealing surface on my rifle was damaged no doubt why i hand lapped that with an emery clad srtaight regular file,ending up with even bigger clearance between the two.
Then i took a regular copper gasket for the oil plug on..is it a SAAB? Turned that to size and in MY case made it 0,75mm thick. 21,35mm outer and 16,3mm inner.. As i close the chamber with the lever i get this resistance like the last 5mm or so and the difference in seal is like night and day.
Soot has been cut to like 1/10th. Major source of it now is the actual nipple! Why i´ve ordered one from Geoffrey that sports a way way smaller flash hole. Current nipple on my rifle is basically just bored through.