577 Snider with 54 minnie balls in plastic shotcups

[justashooter]

looking to shoot a couple of egyptian sniders with .590 smooth bores i bought some fiocchi shot loads for the cases (primed hulls are not in stock anywhere), and measuring the cases and cups noted that the case OD is .633, the case wall is .025, the shotcup is 0.025, and therefore the interior of shotcup is about .536. Lee makes minnie ball moulds at .533 and .540, and lyman makes one in .542. it occurs to me that this gives me forward weighted in an economical package, as shotcups and shotshells are cheap, when they are in stock. with a 410 grain minnie 14-18 grains unique should be quite mild. i have not considered the question of how much black I could get under an unmodified shotcup or how the cup could be modified to make more room for black or trip 7.

has anyone done this or is there an opinion?

thanks

[toot]

use black, T777, loads are 10% over the listed loads for black powder. i use 85 grs of 1FG or 2FG. black with a wad and grease cookie and no problem. i use 58 caliber Minnie's.

[toot]

i make my brass out of 24 gauge CBC brass shot gun shells, reformed.

[Idz]

I use reformed brass with a paper paatched 0.584 dia x 460 grain slug I made, 72gr 2Fg, and 1/2 fluffed cottonball.
for shotshell I use a 0.600 round ball, 48gr 2Fg, and 1/2 fluffed cottonball I found that the loaded shotshell has to be squeezed down in my sizing because the ball bulges it too much to chamber easily.
I also put a 1/4" grease wad under the bullet.

[john.k]

If you can get a roundball to come out the muzzle perfectly round,then theoretically 8" groups at 100 yards are possible.........any distortion,and its side of a shed groups...So if by matching shotcup and ball size ,you get a tight fit without ball distortion,then fair to good accuracy .......

[toot]

when i use plastic shot gun 24 gauge hulls with a .600 dia. RB. it will not chamber, so i just take out my decapping rod and run it in and out several times and it will get rid of the bulge and chamber.

[justashooter]

If you can get a roundball to come out the muzzle perfectly round,then theoretically 8" groups at 100 yards are possible.........any distortion,and its side of a shed groups...So if by matching shotcup and ball size ,you get a tight fit without ball distortion,then fair to good accuracy .......

great idea. i was focused on minnie or paradox and forgot about round ball after finding that a .600 in shot-shell will not chamber for me. noted that power piston section of shot-cup will have to be removed to get enuf black in or will have to stay with unique.

the .535 should be perfect, and is only 230 grains, as opposed to the minnie at 410.
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1010197969/lee-2-cavity-bullet-mold-535-diameter-round-ball
https://www.midwayusa.com/product/455685/lee-1-cavity-improved-minie-ball-bullet-mold-533-410m-533-diameter-410-grain

13-14 grains unique with 3/4 oz shot load in 28 gauge reads 10-11Ksi at 1200 fps.
http://www.alliantpowder.com/reloaders/powderlist.aspx?page=/reloaders/powderlist.aspx&type=2&powderid=3&gauge=28

the round ball is about 1/2 oz, and the minnie is 15/16 oz. it is clear which is safer with 13-14 grains unique. shooting over a chronograph is what needs to be done.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

when i use plastic shot gun 24 gauge hulls with a .600 dia. RB. it will not chamber, so i just take out my decapping rod and run it in and out several times and it will get rid of the bulge and chamber.

I said on the other thread on this subject that Magtech 24ga brass shotgun cases are .010in. thick at the mouth. That is 2½in. from the base, but I would be surprised if there is much taper from the 2in. mark. They should neatly accommodate .600 balls in the chamber you describe.

[justashooter]

I said on the other thread on this subject that Magtech 24ga brass shotgun cases are .010in. thick at the mouth. That is 2½in. from the base, but I would be surprised if there is much taper from the 2in. mark. They should neatly accommodate .600 balls in the chamber you describe.

the case neck diameter is generally given as .605. a chamber with 0.010" over case diameter is ideal, and 0.030" is functional in low pressure cartridges. a plastic case with .600 ball would be 0.650 in OD, so not a possible fit. the users who get plastic 2" with .600 ball to chamber must have very generous chambers.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I don't know anything about Egyptian government use of the smoothbored Snider, or what case they used. It might be useful to remember the fuss they went to with the Greener Police Gun and its special 14ga cartridge, sometimes with a forked firing-pin, to prevent use of stolen guns, or of police weapons for casual score-settling without the officer's ammunition stock telling the tale. Other Sniders may have been modified for the surplus market, and it is possible that some were rechambered for 24ga cases. That is mostly a French cartridge, and Egypt used to be heavily French influenced.

http://www.dave-cushman.net/shot/shotshellloads.html

[john.k]

Military use of smoothbore sniders was widespread in the empire,as a man on guard duty was a target of rifle thieves if he had a desirable gun.......non military conversion of sniders to smoothbore was nearly always to 20GA,and this guage was also used with muskets smoothbored......20ga holds a lot more shot.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

WDM Bell the ivory hunter equipped his safari guards with rifled Sniders and rifle cartridges - .577/.450, which were all he could buy locally. They appeared pretty formidable at close range, and he claimed that his guards had the unusual quality of being very poor shots in daylight but much better in the dark.

Jeff Cooper held that the ideal weapon for security guards of dubious skills and loyalty in the Third World was a single-shot 12ga and one cartridge. It seems a bit like going 18th century, but the gun wasn't worth stealing or going freelance with, and you really don't want that single shot being in your direction.

[smkummer]

Any of those Egyptian sniders marked “Colt” on the lockwork? I am lucky that I found Lyman’s 585213 of which I load pyrodex for a friend’s snider.

[toot]

i haven't heard of WDM KARAMOJO BELL'S name mentioned in a long time!! the greatest ivory hunter of all time. he suposibly killed over 800 ELEPHANT'S. and he did it with a 7 m/m MAUSER, not a mag. every one with a straight on brain shoot. he would say your target is the size of a loaf of bread.PRESIDENT THEODORE ROSEVELT, (TEDDY), invited him to the US. for a hunt and he scored a GRAND SLAM. again with a 7 m/m MAUSER. not a magnum, straight 7 m/m.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

i haven't heard of WDM KARAMOJO BELL'S name mentioned in a long time!! the greatest ivory hunter of all time. he suposibly killed over 800 ELEPHANT'S. and he did it with a 7 m/m MAUSER, not a mag. every one with a straight on brain shoot. he would say your target is the size of a loaf of bread.PRESIDENT THEODORE ROSEVELT, (TEDDY), invited him to the US. for a hunt and he scored a GRAND SLAM. again with a 7 m/m MAUSER. not a magnum, straight 7 m/m.

I believe it was 1011 elephant. The 7x57, badged as .275 Rigby, undoubted accounted for the largest number, but he ended up considering that the .318 Westley Richards (which despite the name is very close to a .338-06) was the best he had found. He was also very taken with the 6.5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer (I've got mine!), which he pared down to very light weight, to suit a style which often involved long running or walking after the elephant, and didn't set the herd running as fast or far as some of the others. He would have made a lot more use of it if he hadn't had a bad batch of cartridges, on safari where they couldn't be replaced. He also had a lot of time for the .303 with a solid, round-nosed heavy bullet, and he made 16 successive one-shot kills on Cape buffalo with the .22 Savage High-power. He didn't attach nearly as much importance to power as to the right bullet, and one you had that that, a reliable and fumble-proof rifle to wrap around it. A lot of his kills were made on the heart and complex of major arteries around it, but for the frontal brain shot (the elephant skull having evolved to guard against blows from things his tusks couldn't point at), a loaf of bread would hardly do.

He was surely the best of big-game hunters at making his kind of hunting, which few others were doing, into a science to be learned, and at imparting to others. He was, for example, a consummate anatomist of the elephant. He modestly hints that a lot he learned wasn't suitable for someone on the trip of a lifetime. He also made a good job of enlisting the friendship and aid of natives any self-respecting Zulu or plains Indian would have considered barbarous primitives, and considering that few white men were as good as the best of them. That is how you get a quality of guides and gunbearers someone straight off the boat could never find.

If your technique involves a 1% chance of being killed, you may have a little better than a 90% chance of survival. (I say "may" because I'm not sure whether the inability to get killed twice is a legitimate part of the calculation.) Do it 1011 times, though, and you have a .0038% chance of coming out on your feet. He had devised methods much better than 99% safe.

I have a photograph on my wall of my grandfather, wearing spurs in a modest military capacity in Macedonia in the First World War. I am fairly sure he must have seen Bell in one of the fighter aircraft he mentioned seeing overhead.

[toot]

thanks for sharing that with us. but you realize bottom line he was a ivory hunter (poacher) of the enth degree. i be leave in his book i read that he said that an elephants brain was only as large as a loaf of bread. on the US. hunt TEDDY used a mod. 95 WIN. i be-leave .405. and he did use a 7 m/m on the US. grand slam he scored is that rite?

[toot]

a 7 m/m, is .284 dia. close to a 275 or 276. still one accurate, great shooting, sporting / military rifle. just see what the ROUGH RIDERS wrote
what they thought of them when they faced them on the hill? has been 40+ yrs sense i read BELL'S book. forgot the title, was it, OUT OF AFRICA? or THE GREEN HELL?. i would like to get a copy and read it again. if any one knows, thanks.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

a 7 m/m, is .284 dia. close to a 275 or 276. still one accurate, great shooting, sporting / military rifle. just see what the ROUGH RIDERS wrote
what they thought of them when they faced them on the hill? has been 40+ yrs sense i read BELL'S book. forgot the title, was it, OUT OF AFRICA? or THE GREEN HELL?. i would like to get a copy and read it again. if any one knows, thanks.

I suppose this is off topic, but I don't think that is wrong when nobody is doing much else with the thread now.

Try www.bookfinder.com or eBay. Amazon is included in Bookfinder, a consortium of websites and bookstores. The books are "Wanderings of an Elephant Hunter" (the best I think), "Karamojo Safari" and the posthumous compilation "Bell of Africa" . I believe he was rarely if ever a poacher, though. He worked mostly in unadministered territory, or within the rather generous licencing laws of the time, just ahead of a conflict of elephants and civilising influences which would have come into conflict if the elephants had nothing but teeth.

This picture shows the elephant's weak spot, but for both this and the "Bell shot" (the brain through the back of the neck from ¾ rear, which does have to penetrate more bone), a bread roll is probably closer to what you have to hit.

https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g51560-d2103602-i102086902-Museum_of_Osteology-Oklahoma_City_Oklahoma.html

Jim Corbett, who is still revered in India, eventually turned to conservation and hunting exclusively of maneaters, for the sake of "My friends, the poor of India. He also favoured the 7x57 in its .275 Rigby incarnation, probably coincidentally, as Rigby weren't the only maker of quality Mauser sporters. He sometimes used a .400 double for tiger in close cover, which for him sometimes meant feet rather than yards. One of his most harrowing memories if feeling the breath of the maneater on his ankles, and wondering if he should risk a shot or risk waiting for a cloud to uncover the moon. He always knew that his quarry were experts too, knowing their job in a way some random tiger or leopard trophy doesn't. But I don't think he considered himself badly armed with the 7x57.

[toot]

thank you for the information you so graciously supplied to me. you are a very knowledgeable person on the subject. and it was a pleasure on this end talking to you! i am going to my library and get and read the titles you provided me with. those were the days when there were REAL MEN, no matter how you cut it!!! thanks, later.

[justashooter]

Bell is believed to have taken most of his elephants from the top of a folding ladder in 12' high savanna grass with a shot thru the ear, which is more easily penetrated than any other part of the skull.

that being said, in the days of Speake and Baker, the weapon of choice for elephant was a 16 gauge double smoothbore with round ball. lots of writers of the 1840-1880 period reported this. i assume that a chest shot was taken and that the animal was allowed to bleed out. the elephants of this time had not been hunted with gun, and had no collective knowledge of the threat. by Bell's time, they were well aware and had become much more dangerous in close quarters.

[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/48584/48584-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_Hanning_Speke#Return_to_London_and_third_expe dition

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.

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