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.