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Shooting & Reloading - Mausers, Big Bores and others >> Big Bore Rifles
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tinker
.416 member


Reged: 12/03/05
Posts: 4835
Loc: Nevada
16 bore pinfire double rifle
      #35738 - 12/08/05 07:59 AM

I recently found another sixteen bore pinfire double rifle.
It's a Belgian gun with damascus barrels and flip express sights, back action locks and nice wood with flat top checkering and a straight wrist.
It also has a bayonet lug on the right side of the right barrel. I think I'll take this one pig hunting!

And it seems to shoot quite nicely.
I made up a couple of cases for it so I could get it out and run it, I'll be turning out quite a few more of the little critters this weekend.

I just got back from a morning at the ranch where I let ten ounces of pure lead do the talking for this nice old double.





--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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BillfromOregon
.333 member


Reged: 27/10/04
Posts: 254
Loc: Sweetwater, by God Texas
Re: 16 bore pinfire double rifle [Re: tinker]
      #35760 - 13/08/05 03:58 AM

Tinker: What a sweet find. Please keep posting as you shoot it more. I remember Ross Seyfried wrote about making pinfire cartridges for shotguns in a back issue of Blackpowder Hunting. Looks like fun.

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tinker
.416 member


Reged: 12/03/05
Posts: 4835
Loc: Nevada
Re: 16 bore pinfire double rifle [Re: BillfromOregon]
      #35769 - 13/08/05 06:08 AM

Will do-

Which issue of that magazine did that article appear in?
I'd like to see it.

My starting load for this rifle was 2-3/4 drams of Goex(LA)FFg. Take a look at the lower left hand corner of that cardboard target backer, those were the first two rounds through the gun in likely over a hundred years. They printed on the same horizontal line right next to each other.
Through some fiddling with the load yesterday I'm thinking that 2-1/2 drams may well be the right thing for this gun.
I was only going to do a quick few rounds yesterday to see how the brass I'd made would work out and if I was in the ballpark guesstimating a load for it. I may get back out again tonight to run it again.
I need to file the rear sight notch as well as narrow the front sight. Neither of them had been dinked with at all from the factory, the rear notch is just under .030" wide and the front sight is about .160" wide. They're only 20-1/2" apart and very difficult to see over. The rear sight notch is what seems to be a hammer strike 'start' for filing, the two flip leaves have even narrower sight notches.
The front sight pretty much completely obscures the view through the notch of any of the three.
I also need to bend the stock slightly at the wrist to fit me properly.
Very vew small and simple tasks to get the gun up and ready for business.

At this point I'm just thrilled with it. It shoots very well (sounds great!), is very handy weighing just over seven pounds and balancing at the hinge pin, and is in nearly new condition -- the bores, metal, and wood are perfect with handling marks that suggest that the gun's been handed around a bit over the last 145 years and shot little to not at all.


--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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tinker
.416 member


Reged: 12/03/05
Posts: 4835
Loc: Nevada
Re: 16 bore pinfire double rifle [Re: tinker]
      #35779 - 13/08/05 01:41 PM

Hm.

Shot the rifle again today, put another twelve rounds through it.
I ran different wadding today, did a tiny bit of doctoring to the sights, and ran a small adjustable aperture ring on my glasses. It was much easier to tell what was trigger issues and what were rifle issues.

I'd run 5/8" diameter quarter inch thick saddle felt wads with 5/16" donut holes cut out of the centers, soaked in bore butter and set atop a milk carton 'cup wad' punched out with a ten bore wad punch and spun into shallow little cups with a special die and punch I made up for the task.
That worked well. The idea of circular shaped felt wads instead of flat disc shaped wads was to get the felt wads pushing out against the bore, together with the cup shaped over powder cards creating a gas seal and keeping the fouling soft with the bore butter prep.
The diameter of a disc is less than half the circumference of a ball of the same diameter, I figured I'd have better luck starting off with a bowl shape via the disc and card than attempting to get that effect by wrapping the felt wad around the face of the ball under pressure.
Things were pretty consistent yesterday.
Today I used a harder felt, but with the same design idea. The felt I used came out of a hard felt cowboy hat. I didn't get as consistent of results today, I tried the same donut shape wad alone on top of the over powder card, I tried a donut shaped wad over a disc shaped wad too.
The saddle felt seems like the way to go.

The barrels had been printing left barrel hits to the left, right barrel hits to the right. At two and three quarter drams, the average distance between barrel groups at fifty yards was about two and a quarter inches.
Giving it three drams of powder opened the space between hits to four and three quarters inches.
I left my saddle felt back at the machine shop today, all I had at the ranch was the hat felt and decreasing the charge to two and a half drams got the gun to print similarly to the two and three quarters drams charge, but with a bit more elevation change between barrels.
I'll be back at it again likely tomorrow, with the saddle felt.
I'll be paying closer attention to overall cartridge length and bullet jump tomorrow. I've been a bit cavalier about overall length thinking the gun would likely not be very sensitive to that.
More to learn.
Lots of fun to shoot though, I do like this rifle a lot.


--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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BillfromOregon
.333 member


Reged: 27/10/04
Posts: 254
Loc: Sweetwater, by God Texas
Re: 16 bore pinfire double rifle [Re: tinker]
      #35796 - 14/08/05 01:20 AM

Tinker: The Seyfried article was in the Spring 1997 issue of BP Hunting. If you don't have access to that issue, PM me and I will copy and send.
I'm envious as all get out about you rpinfire double rifle. Please keep posting.
Sounds like the gun was egulated with lighter loads, eh? Wonder if switching to a faster/cleaner powder, such as Swiss, would get the ball out the bore earlier in the double rifle up-and-away continuum, allowing you to print closer with stiffer charges.

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tinker
.416 member


Reged: 12/03/05
Posts: 4835
Loc: Nevada
Re: 16 bore pinfire double rifle [Re: BillfromOregon]
      #35801 - 14/08/05 02:38 AM

Bill-

This little rifle is really fun.
It does definitely look like it was set up for small charges of powder, but that was the powder from back then.
I'm thinking of trying FFFg Goex at a similar charge to see if I can get the groups to overlap at fifty yards.
I was handed fresh black can of Elephant Black Powder yesterday, but I'm hesitant to try anything yet that won't be available fairly easily in the future.
I'll run through more wadding experiments and Goex powder first to see if I can get what I want without using anything considered exotic.
FFFg might just do it.
More FFg just got it to shoot further apart.
I will fiddle with bullet jump too to see if that can help with bringing the groups together. Like I said about the first day out with it, I haven't really been working that angle thinking the big bore gun wouldn't give much of a hoot. I'll try the next set of rounds with the roundball at the mouth of the cases first, that'll give me plenty of jump and might just do the trick. Thinking about it, I think the first two out of the gun were seated pretty close to that and those were the closest together of the twenty or so rounds fired so far.

There isn't much written specifically on loading blackpowder cartridge sixteen bore side by side rifles. I don't think I've seen anything on that configuration in pinfire.
I've been taking what I can from other discussions I've heard or read about shooting bore rifles, some things I've heard about the sixteen bore, some things about blackpowder, some things about wadding...
As I still only have two pieces of brass for this gun and my enthusiasm in the right now time frame is firmly settled at the shooting bench and not at the engine lathe, getting sets of groups printed together is time consuming and very entertaining. I'm getting a rythm together prepping the cases and reloading the cartridges.

The little pincher mould is working out well for me for this excercise. I don't think the gun wants more bullet weight, but the balls I'm running are undersize for this gun, perfect for my Mahillon pinfire double rifle. I'm not getting leading, the wads are doing a fine job of gas sealing, and from the accuracy, it looks like I'm not stripping the rifling's engraving on the slow rifling in these barrels. I may just have lucked out with my bullet mould. I've heard that the big bores are easier to get amazinigly good accuracy out of though, and wonder if the thing would shoot ragged hole groups with balls of groove size. If I find a mould that throws .680" pure lead balls I'll cast twenty or so and see how the gun likes them.

Till then I'm gonna keep throwing the triple sixes down range and work through what I have till I get the best grouping and performance.

I don't think I have any errant chores around here today, might just get back out to the ranch and make some more noise today.



--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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