TVM Early Virginia Rifle Ratchet Rifling

[1874Sharps]

I had the good fortune a few months back of finding a Tennesee Valley Muzzleloaders Early Virginia rifle (Matt Avance's company). It is a great rifle and shoots quite well. A couple of days ago I was cleaning it after shooting and looked at the muzzle under magnification and noticed it had ratchet style rifling. Can anyone educate me on this type of rifling and the reasons why it is used?

[tomme boy]

Canted rifling?

Ratchet is a term that Shilen rifle barrels uses for their canted rifling.

[1874Sharps]

I think that "canted rifling" is another term for "ratchet rifling." What I am seeing at the muzzle end is that the depth of one side of the rifling is deeper than the other side, thus making it look like a ratchet. Any ideas why this is done and what the advantages and disadvantages are?

[tomme boy]

On center fire it is supposed to increase the velocity of the round because of less distortion of the bullet. I think the original was by Obermeyer.http://obermeyerbarrels.com/

I had a 308win by Rock Creek barrels that was a 5r and it shot very, very well. And it cleaned up with about 3 patches.

[1874Sharps]

I read up a little on the internet about canted rifling and there was a bit of information on the smokeless jacketed side of the house but no information about such barrels applied to muzzleloaders. The claim is that canted rifling with smokeless powder and jacketed bullets gives less copper fouling and higher velocity with no loss of accuracy. I do not know if that is true for muzzleloaders, but there must be some reason it is done for this application. I have noticed that no matter how tight the ball/patch fit is, the patch is always cut. My other muzzleloaders do not do that. I certainly have no complaints about the TVM, as it shoots great. I just would like to understand the reasons why it has canted rifling.

[tomme boy]

My guess would be is was meant to shoot conicals. What is the twist?

[1874Sharps]

I will measure the twist and get back to you on that a bit later today. I will say that it shoots RBs quite well. Also, I saw an antique German percussion double rifle (50 caliber, as I recall) on GunsAmerica.com a couple of months ago that had one barrel rifled conventionally and one with ratchet rifling. This type of rifling was obviously used back in the day and in this particular case the gun maker obviously was optimizing one barrel for one type of projectile and the other barrel for another. The million dollar question is "what."

[1874Sharps]

I shot the rifle this morning and it shot great as usual. In fact, it is the most accurate muzzleloader rifle I have ever shot. When cleaning it I measured the twist and it appears to measure around one turn in 68 inches.

[Idaho Sharpshooter]

the Early Lancaster Matt build me a while back is my favorite ML rifle.

Rich
Sua Sponte

[1874Sharps]

Idaho Sharpshooter,

This Early Virginia model flintlock is the first flintlock rifle I have owned and I feel very blessed the good Lord brought it my way. I took it out yesterday and tried shooting it with 0.025" leather patches because the 0.025" pillow ticking patches were consistently being cut and blown through. Interestingly enough, the same thing happened with the leather patches. With both the cotton and leather patches accuracy was the same -- just under 2 MOA at 50 yards. I am thinking that the sharp edge of the ratchet rifling is responsible for the cutting of the patches and that there is no way around this, but it does not affect the accuracy.

By the way, Rich, what kind of rifling does your Early Lancaster model have?

[fouronesix]

Sounds like a nice rifle! I think the other term used is "canted land". It may contribute to the cut patches but I have no experience with that type rifling in a muzzleloader. Since the land top is canted it may sharpen the angle of the leading edge of the land- thus the tendancy to cut. But if it shoots accurately- who cares. I know many of my brand new barrels cut patches, then slowly over time the land leading edge gets smoothed and the cutting goes away. And, I've noticed the same thing as you are seeing with many new barrels- they are very accurate when new even though they are cutting patches.

BTW the last flinter I built I used parts supplied by TVM. They were very good folks to deal with and seemed to hustle when needed as they are a very small company. I used a de Haas barrel (available at TVM at the time) with conventional rifling. And as a little plug for de Haas barrels, one of the best shooters I have.

[1874Sharps]

Fouronesix,

Thanks for the information and for your experience. I hope this rifle will be the first of many yet to come. Finding the rifle at a Boise gun show back in April was very fortunate. I do not know that much about quality flintlocks, but this particular rifle did stand out. You know how sometimes a gun just catches your eye and you can see the quality in it even though you really are not familiar with the maker? That is how it was. I am glad to hear TVM is a good outfit. I have never heard of de Haas barrels. Do they make only muzzleloader barrels, or standard barrels as well?

[fouronesix]

The only experience I have with a canted land barrel is in a high power center fire bolt gun designed for Jbullets. A few years ago some long range, high power silly wet shoots were won by canted land barrels so the increased interest within the competitive shooter ranks. The canted land barrel I have, made by North Manufacturing, shoots Jbullets extremely well. They are supposed to reduce fouling and reduce pressure per velocity. I don't know about the pressure claim but it does seem to reduce copper fouling in my gun.

I don't know a lot about de Haas barrels other than Mark de Haas is the barrel maker and is in MO. I think he makes barrels primarily for muzzle loaders but may also for certain types of single shots. De Haas barrels have a very good reputation among ML shooters. I think he used to work for the H&H barrel company (no longer in business). By coincedence, the very first muzzle loader I built from parts back in the mid-70s was with an H&H barrel- very good shooter then and still is.

Also, I've only used TVM parts once on this latest build. The de Haas barrel they had in stock just happened to fit my need. The only issue I had with the TVM parts was the stock. I ordered a medium grade figured maple with the barrel channel pre-inletted for my barrel size. But, whoever routed the barrel channel was in a hurry or let the bit get dull because it was chipped out more than it should have been. I did not send it back and worked around the problem. A good trade off because the maple turned out to be much higher grade than I ordered. The other small issues I had when getting the parts order straight with TVM was handled very quickly and with a "customer pays, so customer is right" attitude- a rare commodity in some businesses today.

[1874Sharps]

Fouroneisx,

Wow, very nice rifle! Maybe some day I will give building up a rifle a try.