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Hi Josh

I am guessing here but imagine that some form of primer was insterted into the meplat and which ignited on impact, I would love to see such an example myself. I have seen modern examples of Remington law enforcement ammunition in 9mm that had a lacquer sealed primer fitted to the meplat.

A number of years back, an English entrepaneur and gunmaker named Giles Whittome in London created a sreies of falling block actioned rifles based loosely on the Farquason falling block action, these calibres ranged from .400 bore upto 4 bore, a number being built in his "Mastodon" rifle in .700 N.E.

As a special commisssion for the Royal Armouries Museum, which houses part of the Tower of London collection of arms and armour, Giles commenced work on a "2" Bore falling block rifle that was a copy of an Alex Henry harpoon gun uised for whaling, the gun had a side hammer

As to whether it was ever finished I cannot say, I saw it in the white around 6 years ago but mention of it has gone very quiet since then. I have a single example of a round for the gun, which I will try and photo next to one of his "4" bore rounds. Each cartridge utiulises only a lead bullet, the 4 bore is around an inch in diameter, the 2 bore slightly larger.

As with Baker's "Baby" the Whittome round is not a true " bore" as the bullet weight was only around 2500 grains, of course the designation of a "bore" rifle was how many ROUIND balls of pure lead fit exactly into the bore, not unnaturally if you used a long conical bullet, then you would increase the weight for the calibre, hence a 4 bore could have utilised a 3,500 grain bullet, it would simply have been longer than the more usual 1850 grain lead bullet.

The picture posted of Baby above is interesting in that it shows a section around the breach that had been reinforced with elephant hide, reportedly to mend a split in the stock, the hide would have been wetted and wrapped around the gun and once dried out would shrink and act as a binding to hold things together, imagine trying that on a .600 O.K!!.

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