Finally....the Vetterli speaks!!

[3006guns]

The sun finally emerged long enough for me to try my Vetterli centerfire conversion this afternoon. I packed it out of town to a friend's house and gingerly loaded the first round, then held it at arms length with all the nervousness of someone dismantling a bomb.

I squeezed the trigger and the 10 grains of Unique went "boom" with a satisfactory spatter of dirt about 80 yards away. The recoil was quite mild and the fired case showed no unusual firing pin/primer issues at all. The second two shots were fired from the shoulder and both struck high, as I expected, but basically very close together. I stopped at that point until I can start shooting at a formal paper rifle target.

This rifle and home rolled ammunition is a "hoot to shoot". I'll need to procure a few of the Lee .44 310 grain bullets in place of the 245 grain swc. I'm using. Load development and accuracy work come next..........as long as the sun shines!

Man, I love this hobby:)

[Burrhead51]

Congrads on shooting your Vetterli. I have been loading for mine for about ten years and it is a lot of fun to shoot them. The Lee 310 is a good bullet for the rifle but if you make your own brass cut them long. I cut mine 42mm and they work fine, I start with 348 Winchester Brass and run them through my sizer die. At this length you might have enough length to use your mag. I alos have a hollow base bullet mould for the rifle that is very nice in this weapon. Unique is an OK powder but I like Accurate 5744 better and get pretty good groups at 100 yards from my 1881 rifle. I have tried FFg and got pretty good results but it is messy to clean up after a session.

[3006guns]

Thanks for the reassurance on the Lee bullet. I don't own the mold, so I'll probably ask someone that has one to cast a few for me. I trimmed my .348 brass to the 1.5" (short) length for the normal military bullet. I tried to make them longer, but for some reason they wouldn't extract (empty brass) until I put a gentle crimp on the case mouth. I wasn't sure if the gun had a tight throat or not. So, not wanting to run into problems, I opted for the standard military length knowing I could only use it a single shot for now (used a dummy round first).

Edit: I measured the fired case mouth and found them only about .001-.002 larger than the unfired rounds. I notice the neck has a mild but distinct taper also, which would explain the difficult extraction of the longer cases (this taper also made exact measurements difficult). Perhaps my rifle was chambered for the shorter Swiss hunting round? Don't know.

[Burrhead51]

Here's a link to an article written here by another member that might be interesting to you. I get a chance I'll take a pic of a couple of my longer loaded rounds. You might consider a chamber cast as the Vetterli is chambered for a heeled paper patch bullet and has a really long tapering throat.
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=21917

[Dutchman]

http://images47.fotki.com/v1464/photos/2/28344/157842/RLeeErmy-vi.gif

[3006guns]

Thanks Burrhead. The difficult extraction of the longer brass has me a bit puzzled too, so it looks like a chamber cast will be in order. When trimmed to the 1.645 mentioned in the article, they would chamber easily but you had to hammer the bolt handle to get it open. As I mentioned, a crimp on the empty brass allowed easy extraction, so the straight case mouth was binding somewhere.

Once I shortened the brass, they extracted easily. Since I was anxious to get the gun shooting, I trimmed all of them to that length and seated the boolits, knowing they were too short to function in the magazine. The chamber cast will tell the tale.

[twotoescharlie]

if you are using .348 brass you will probably have to turn the case down just above the rim, not much very little. you can do it with a small file.

not necessary with 8mm lebel brass.

TTC

[Burrhead51]

That's a possibility I have a buddy who has a 1871 and he uses the same cases as me but has to turn the brass down at the extractor groove forward for about .300" other wise same as me. I have another 50 348 cases coming and I'll see if I have any trouble with them, 42 mm works great in my rifle and his. Some of these rifles were converted in the 19th century to center fire and used for hunting in Switzerland they used a 42mm case and a lighter bullet to flatten the trajectory out.