superc
05-30-2016, 07:56 PM
I finally, after much hair pulling made sense of the chamber casting of my Rolling Block Carbine. The key was measuring the frame width. A precise 1.13". Only one variant matches that. The shipment to Uruguay of Light Baby Carbines in 44-40. As Mr. Layman points out in his book, many were rechambered to use shotshells.
I had previously spent many hours in tables trying to identify a .43 military caliber that matched the 2.3" straight walled chamber cast. The rifling was intact, so I knew it was something...
LoL, following Mr. Layman's lead I went to my CoTW and found the 11.15x50mm shotshell round. I had already been shooting .444 Marlin cases (w FFF BP of course), so trimming those down to 50mm was easy. I have fired quite a bit of these (see my video of the experiments at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va2J6Hf4zFs ). So I go to reload them and well, I can supply the missing OD dimensions in CoTW for this shotshell round. .460 straight. The annoyance is none of the fired rounds will fit into a 444 de-capping die. The only clear solution I see is to pull the pin out and run a 15/32 reamer through the die body.
Shotshell. LoL. It complies technically with the laws of Uruguay because it was a re-chambering. However, this chambering with 435 bullets (from 200 gr..44 Henry bullets - pulled 370 gr. 43 Spanish bullets) quite happily chambers and fires 44 Bulldog, .442 Webley, .44 American, .44 Russian, .44-40, .44 Special, .44 Magnum brass, and of course .444 Marlin brass. 44 Webley for plinking, 444x52mm with a 370 gr. bullet for bigger things. Must have been pretty handy back in 1903 to be able to use any 44 pistol ammo you could find, but still claim it is a shotgun for shooting birds. :)
I had previously spent many hours in tables trying to identify a .43 military caliber that matched the 2.3" straight walled chamber cast. The rifling was intact, so I knew it was something...
LoL, following Mr. Layman's lead I went to my CoTW and found the 11.15x50mm shotshell round. I had already been shooting .444 Marlin cases (w FFF BP of course), so trimming those down to 50mm was easy. I have fired quite a bit of these (see my video of the experiments at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va2J6Hf4zFs ). So I go to reload them and well, I can supply the missing OD dimensions in CoTW for this shotshell round. .460 straight. The annoyance is none of the fired rounds will fit into a 444 de-capping die. The only clear solution I see is to pull the pin out and run a 15/32 reamer through the die body.
Shotshell. LoL. It complies technically with the laws of Uruguay because it was a re-chambering. However, this chambering with 435 bullets (from 200 gr..44 Henry bullets - pulled 370 gr. 43 Spanish bullets) quite happily chambers and fires 44 Bulldog, .442 Webley, .44 American, .44 Russian, .44-40, .44 Special, .44 Magnum brass, and of course .444 Marlin brass. 44 Webley for plinking, 444x52mm with a 370 gr. bullet for bigger things. Must have been pretty handy back in 1903 to be able to use any 44 pistol ammo you could find, but still claim it is a shotgun for shooting birds. :)