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Double Rifles, Single Shots & Combinations >> Double Rifles
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mickey
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Reged: 05/01/03
Posts: 4647
Loc: Pend Oreille Valley, Idaho
Used Double Trouble
      #40947 - 08/11/05 10:09 AM

In reply to:

Poster: jep21
Subject: Re: Used double rifle ... used double trouble!

Here are a couple of threads I started on AR about a recent used double rifle purchase. NitroX suggested I share the experience on this forum. Hopefully some of you will learn from my mistakes. Thanks for any other insights and advice.

Thanks,
Emory
http://forums.accuratereloading.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/1411043/m/460105063

http://forums.accuratereloading.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/1411043/m/778105163




I feel bad for Emory and his luck in owning this rifle. It is however an interesting problem. Let's get past all of the who did what to the rifle and when and try and figure out what happened to it?

It has been suggested that perhaps monometal solids were shot through it.

Overloaded ammunition? Emory has stated that one case he pulled was 4 grains higher than the other so marked.

What expanded the Chambers and how many rounds would it take? 1, 2, many?

One poster who has some knowledge of Doubles claims he loaded some rounds for it an it shot into 2 ". Emory says 11" with one barrel shooting high. Assuming both are correct what could have happened to the rifle to change POI?

On another vein, what causes a Double to lose it's correct regulation?



--------------------
Lovu Zdar
Mick

A Man of Pleasure, Enterprise, Wit and Spirit Rare Books, Big Game Hunting, English Rifles, Fishing, Explosives, Chauvinism, Insensitivity, Public Drunkenness and Sloth, Champion of Lost and Unpopular Causes.

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500Nitro
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Reged: 06/01/03
Posts: 7244
Loc: Victoria, Australia
Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mickey]
      #40948 - 08/11/05 10:16 AM


Mickey

"On another vein, what causes a Double to lose it's correct regulation?"

Some of the ones I can think of:-

- LiftingQuarter Rib
- Rust between the barrels / under the rib
- Lifting Rib / Rib becoming unsoldered
- Very worn barrels / Loss of rifling - big change in velocity
and therefore barrel time which affects regulation
- Bulged barrels
- Bulged chambers
- Damaged crowns
- Incorrect head space - causing split cases / mis fires
which cause change in pressure which affects regulation


Probably plenty more

500 Nitro

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mickey
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Reged: 05/01/03
Posts: 4647
Loc: Pend Oreille Valley, Idaho
Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: 500Nitro]
      #40950 - 08/11/05 10:25 AM

What about a rifle that you have had for awhile that has always shot well and sudenly goes South?

Assuming the rifle is still sound and no evidence of problems inside or out?

Bad crowning?

--------------------
Lovu Zdar
Mick

A Man of Pleasure, Enterprise, Wit and Spirit Rare Books, Big Game Hunting, English Rifles, Fishing, Explosives, Chauvinism, Insensitivity, Public Drunkenness and Sloth, Champion of Lost and Unpopular Causes.

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tinker
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Reged: 12/03/05
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mickey]
      #40953 - 08/11/05 10:47 AM

I have either the actual chamber casts or proper mechanical drawings -- blueprints of chamber casts of my double rifles.
That and I've saved the roundball bore slugs from each of them, both right and left barrels.

I also have X-rays of the barrels of my double rifles.

If something were to alladusudden go funky with the regulation/load for any of them, I think the first thing I'd do after taking a peek at the crowns is take a chamber cast and compare it to what I got out of the rifle when I first got it. I could also do another pass with slugging the bores, that could tell if there's been erosion or some other kind of change in the bore/groove dims

Funky rib issues... hmmm.
that'd likely come up on an X-ray, compare to original snapshot of the gun and go from there

Wood fit can also lead to trouble, a good hard look at how the wood's doing through the wrist, are there new gaps where there weren't in the past, cracks showing or growing...?


--Tinker

--------------------
--Self-Appointed Colonel, DRSS--



"It IS a dangerous game, and so named for a reason, and you can't play from the keyboard. " --Some Old Texan...

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500Nitro
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: tinker]
      #40955 - 08/11/05 10:56 AM


Good one tinker

I forgot about Broken or Cracked stock


Re slugging bores with round balls, I have never found this
to be as good a lead tube or small bullets
(ie Pistol bullets)
- have you tried either of these ?


500 Nitro

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500Nitro
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mickey]
      #40956 - 08/11/05 10:57 AM


Mickey

Never had one "go south" on me.

500 Nitro

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tinker
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Posts: 4835
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: 500Nitro]
      #40957 - 08/11/05 11:01 AM

I use pretty big oversize roundball, the slug I get is usually 1.7-2 X the bore diameter.

I haven't thought of casting lead for the slug, I do however know of a shop in SF that sells lead wire, that's likely how I'll end up setting my daughter's 25-25 stevens double rifle for bullets. Snip the wire, into the bullet swage, then into the brass.
I'll pick through the top drawer for lead pistol bullets and re-slug the Tolley to see if I come up with different dims than I'd gotten with roundball.



The loose rib comment, I'd likely by the time I'd gone to cast chambers whacked the barrels with a block of nylon to see what the sound was like. When I was a bicycle framebuilder that was how we'd 'first check' a frame or fork for cracks. A good frame sounds like a good frame. A crack will sound off in a very distinctive fashion, even if it hasn't showed up through the paint yet.


Oh, and I saw your report on your last safari with the Searcy. Sounds like you had a ball out there!

--Tinker

--------------------
--Self-Appointed Colonel, DRSS--



"It IS a dangerous game, and so named for a reason, and you can't play from the keyboard. " --Some Old Texan...

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400NitroExpress
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Reged: 26/11/03
Posts: 1154
Loc: Lone Star State
Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mickey]
      #40972 - 08/11/05 01:49 PM

I've been mulling this since the original thread and am not sure I've got any answers. Previous posts are certainly all good info, but when a double shoots into two inches and then a bit later is shooting into eleven inches with vertical dispersion, with what we assume was the same load, I assume that it has come off-face in between. A Jeffery boxlock .475 No. 2 that was left with a friend and I to develop a load for didn't shoot worth a damn the first trip to the range. Going over the gun carefully, I discovered that it was slightly off-face. J. J. put it back on face and then it shot just fine. Sure cured the vertical dispersion.

Emory said that J. J. found that the rifle was off-face. Hmmm. Westley built this rifle on a PHV-1 action "bought in" from Webley & Scott (this one isn't of the typical Westley C-type). In a discussion with J. J. about another rifle a while back, he indicated that he rarely sees rifles with this action off-face. I can remember seeing one that had been re-jointed, but have never seen one that was actually off-face. Maybe I'm wrong, (interested to hear observations of others) but my impression is that this action is particularly resistant to the development of this condition. The "bulged" chamber is either bulged due to a violent overpressure load, or has been honed. If due to an overload, that might help explain how this piece got off-face.

Handloading isn't required to get an overload that violent. In all of my double rifle shooting over the years (I've almost always shot only my own handloads), I've encountered overloads violent enough to really scare me just twice. FACTORY ammo both times. We're talking purple-stripe double proof stuff of the fragmentation variety here guys. Ammunition of both makes is still in the marketplace and I know of one nearly new .500 Nitro that was blown up with one of them. I no longer shoot factory double rifle ammunition, unless it comes out of a red and yellow box that says "Kynoch" on it.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------
"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

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mickey
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Reged: 05/01/03
Posts: 4647
Loc: Pend Oreille Valley, Idaho
Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: 400NitroExpress]
      #40976 - 08/11/05 03:18 PM

It would be interesting to hear JJ's opinion. Is it possible that someone tried to cure a sticky extraction, perhaps caused by crappy brass, with a hone?

Could there have been some corrosion in the chambers from the old Kynoch that someone tried to clean up

Would anybody do such a thing?

I really wonder who loaded the ammo that was sent along with the rifle. With one case 4 grains different could quality issues enter in?

I also don't understand why it would take a year to sleeve the chambers, backlog?


--------------------
Lovu Zdar
Mick

A Man of Pleasure, Enterprise, Wit and Spirit Rare Books, Big Game Hunting, English Rifles, Fishing, Explosives, Chauvinism, Insensitivity, Public Drunkenness and Sloth, Champion of Lost and Unpopular Causes.

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tinker
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Posts: 4835
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mickey]
      #40979 - 08/11/05 03:23 PM

Hm.

That would really put a tangle in this nasty little web, wouldn't it...


The silence around the identity of the reloader has just gotten louder.


--Tinker

--------------------
--Self-Appointed Colonel, DRSS--



"It IS a dangerous game, and so named for a reason, and you can't play from the keyboard. " --Some Old Texan...

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500grains
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Reged: 16/02/04
Posts: 4732
Loc: Salt Lake City, Utah USA
Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: tinker]
      #40980 - 08/11/05 03:25 PM

Regarding the regulation problem, maybe the rifle was damaged in a TuffPak on its recent trip to Africa.

Possible?

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NitroXAdministrator
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: 500grains]
      #40986 - 08/11/05 03:55 PM

I think the source of the reloaded ammunition is, or was mentioned briefly.

In reply to:

Previous posts are certainly all good info, but when a double shoots into two inches and then a bit later is shooting into eleven inches with vertical dispersion



Remember Emery did shoot his group completely off hand. Even if he is a very good off-hand shot, some of the increase in the size of the group could be explained by this.



--------------------
John aka NitroX

...
Govt get out of our lives NOW!
"I love the smell of cordite in the morning."
"A Sharp spear needs no polish"

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400NitroExpress
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Reged: 26/11/03
Posts: 1154
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mickey]
      #40991 - 08/11/05 04:15 PM

Mick, maybe I misread the thread, and I don't feel like wading back through it right now, but didn't they decide to sleeve the barrels (monobloc 'em and fit new tubes) rather than just sleeving the chambers? That would take considerably longer, but I'm not sure why that should take a year.

I suppose its possible that damage to the barrels in transit while in the Tuff-Pak could mess up regulation, but I would think that damage of that kind would be something J. J. could spot. I guess anything is possible though.
------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------
"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

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mickey
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Reged: 05/01/03
Posts: 4647
Loc: Pend Oreille Valley, Idaho
Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: 400NitroExpress]
      #41000 - 08/11/05 05:05 PM

In reply to:

Mick, maybe I misread the thread, and I don't feel like wading back through it right now, but didn't they decide to sleeve the barrels (monobloc 'em and fit new tubes) rather than just sleeving the chambers? That would take considerably longer, but I'm not sure why that should take a year.



Cripes I hope not. That would turn that rifle into a real abomination. If that is the only alternative than new barrels (chopper lump) is the only fix.

--------------------
Lovu Zdar
Mick

A Man of Pleasure, Enterprise, Wit and Spirit Rare Books, Big Game Hunting, English Rifles, Fishing, Explosives, Chauvinism, Insensitivity, Public Drunkenness and Sloth, Champion of Lost and Unpopular Causes.

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mbogo375
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Reged: 09/02/04
Posts: 68
Loc: southeastern Georgia
Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: 400NitroExpress]
      #41005 - 08/11/05 05:38 PM

400NE,

I don't think the "sleeving" referred to was monoblocking. The impression that I got was that barrel liners would be used.

Jim

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400NitroExpress
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Reged: 26/11/03
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mickey]
      #41008 - 08/11/05 05:43 PM

Mick:

Yeah, I know. I agree.

Mono bullets were mentioned, but I don't know how that plays into all of this. Somewhere in one of these strings, somebody said that J. J. mentioned that he thought that monos had been fired in it. I think that has to mean that he sees evidence of overstressed rifling on the outside of the barrels, as this is the only evidence that monos leave behind. So, with stuffed chambers and overstressed rifling, maybe he figures the barrels aren't worth saving, or are too unsafe to try.

BTW, the original string on this rifle over at AR back in January seems to indicate that this gun has post-1925 marks. If so, the existing barrels are almost certainly shoe-lump, not chopper.
------------------------------------------------------------------



--------------------
"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

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500grains
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: 400NitroExpress]
      #41009 - 08/11/05 05:45 PM

This is second hand, but I understand that JJ can see the rifling coming through the outside of the barrels for a few inches ahead of the chambers, but the new owner can't really pick up on what JJ is seeing.

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500Nitro
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: 400NitroExpress]
      #41010 - 08/11/05 05:56 PM


Overstressed rifling on the outside of the barrels
is quite hard to see from what I have been told.

The rifling actually goes back but it is supposed
to leave a mark on the outside of the barrels that
can be seen in certain light conditions.

500 Nitro

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400NitroExpress
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mbogo375]
      #41012 - 08/11/05 06:03 PM

Jim:

OK, I just re-read it. He says $3.5 to $4k. That's J. J.'s standard charge for sleeving (using the old barrels to make a monobloc). Sounds like what you're speaking of is something on the order of a full-lenght liner, maybe something on the order of "Parker-rifling"? To my knowledge, J. J. has never offered this, nor am I aware of anyone who currently does. It would be wonderful if that option were available. Maybe J. J. is offering something new?
------------------------------------------------------------

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"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

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mbogo375
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: 400NitroExpress]
      #41013 - 08/11/05 06:14 PM

400 NE,

You are probably right. I was basing my interpretation on Emory's description
In reply to:

Mickey,

The $7K for new barrels is what I think I remember from Champlin's site. The nearly $4K for resleeving of both chamber and bore is based on JJ's estimate. Understand we are talking about making significant chamber and bore damage safe - something like a barrel inserted inside a thin outside shell of what is there now - that's my interpretation - don't challenge JJ on that.

Regards,
Emory




I can see on re-reading where he could be describing monoblocking.

Jim

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DUGABOY1
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mbogo375]
      #41037 - 09/11/05 02:22 AM

In reply to:

400 NE,

You are probably right. I was basing my interpretation on Emory's description

In reply to:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mickey,

The $7K for new barrels is what I think I remember from Champlin's site. The nearly $4K for resleeving of both chamber and bore is based on JJ's estimate. Understand we are talking about making significant chamber and bore damage safe - something like a barrel inserted inside a thin outside shell of what is there now - that's my interpretation - don't challenge JJ on that.

Regards,
Emory
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I can see on re-reading where he could be describing monoblocking.

Jim



Jim Im almost certain the $4K job is sleeving in new barrels in the old barrel butts (MONO-BLOCKING)! Emory may have understood something else, however!

Actually, unless the barrels are replaced at Westley Richards even chamber reline is a collector's killer deed, no matter who does it. The full length reline in a barrel much larger than a .22 LR is frought with down falls. This has caused many failiers of one or both barrels, on many occasions,some with disastrous results. Chamber liners on RIFLES are not without some danger of a blow, and not something I'd reccomend!Most relineing of chambers is done on shotguns, because of the very low pressure. I don't think JJ will do a full length re-line anyway, especially at a $4K price.

400NE is probably right, the left chamber may have been honed to get rid of pitting in that chamber. If that is the case, and the left chamber is safe, I'd simply hone the other chamber to match, and have custom dies made to load the rifle with. I'm sure if this is a honeing problem, very little chamber wall was removed, and after the honeing to match the chambers, one could re-proof the rifle.

If this were my rifle, I would simply let JJ sleeve in new barrels, to the configuration of the old ones, and be done with this fiasco once and for all. A lot of buffalo will go down to a double rifle re-sleeved (mono-blocked)by JJ, and in my opinion, for all practical purposes, outside collector value, will be a better rifle in the field, with fresh NEW barrels, cut to specs! I'm glad, however, it isn't my rifle!

--------------------
..........Mac >>>===(x)===>
DUGABOY1, and MacD37 founding member of DRSS www.doublerifleshooterssociety.com
"If I die today, I have had a life well spent, for I've been to see the Elephant, and smelled the smoke of Africa!"

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mbogo375
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Reged: 09/02/04
Posts: 68
Loc: southeastern Georgia
Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: DUGABOY1]
      #41038 - 09/11/05 03:01 AM

Mac,

I understand and agree. I wondered at the advisability of putting liners in barrels that thin in the first place (even with a relatively low pressure cartridge).

Jim

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mickey
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: DUGABOY1]
      #41040 - 09/11/05 03:24 AM

Relining the old barrels is a big mistake. I don't think any proof house in Europe will even proof a rifle with barrel liners.

Resleeving the chambers is done all the time and if the job is done properly than it's virtually undetectable with the naked eye.

Replacing the barrels with a mono bloc, and having it done here and not reproofed is foolish IMO. Emory would have 18-20k invested in a rifle that could only be sold for 6-7k.

He would be much better served to have the barrels replaced to original, reproofed and move on. The cost would be more but the return would be much more also.



--------------------
Lovu Zdar
Mick

A Man of Pleasure, Enterprise, Wit and Spirit Rare Books, Big Game Hunting, English Rifles, Fishing, Explosives, Chauvinism, Insensitivity, Public Drunkenness and Sloth, Champion of Lost and Unpopular Causes.

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500grains
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Reged: 16/02/04
Posts: 4732
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mickey]
      #41044 - 09/11/05 03:51 AM

What about sleeving the chambers to make it a rifled .410 shotgun? It would be great for New Jersey deer hunts.

Seriously, I agree that any work on the rifle should be performed by Westley Richards.

Or maybe Champlins will give a decent trade in value for the rifle in AS-IS condition. There are some decent doubles on Champlins website, and a new Chapuis is probably looking pretty attractive at this point.

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400NitroExpress
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Reged: 26/11/03
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Re: Used Double Trouble [Re: mickey]
      #41055 - 09/11/05 05:18 AM

Mick:

I don't disagree, but what will a re-barrel at Westley cost and what will the rifle be worth then? Last quote I heard for new chopper lump barrels was from Paul Roberts and was 10,000 pounds nine months ago. Lets say Westley will do it for $17,500. Will the rifle be worth 17,500 with replacement barrels from the maker? I think that's a pretty big maybe.

From a utility perspective, which is what we're left with here, sleeving for $4000 is pretty attractive. J. J.'s sleeving jobs are nicely done and very accurate. I would have it reproved in England though.

Were I Emory, I would write off the money spent so far and make the most of what's left. Sure, I'd send it back to Westley for new .450/.400 barrels. You and I would do it that way, but most others wouldn't. But I would also have J. J. sleeve the old barrels to 9.3X74R, add a claw mounted scope, and regulate it to the scope. The option for a second set of nicely sleeved tubes is too cheap to pass up. That would be a great rig.
-------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------
"Serious rifles have two barrels, everything else just burns gunpowder."

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