doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Chambered for brass?

I have a Williams & Powell (Liverpool)circa 1875 that has 2 1/2" chambers and the forcing cone is barely 1/4" in length. Would this indicate the gun was made for brass hulls or is it merely one of the variations that occurred early in the breechloading era? Is there any clear way to determine if a gun was chambered for brass or paper?

A gun chambered specifically for brass cases will have a larger bore than one chambered for paper. If the chamber itself was cut with the same reamer having the same angle to the cone this would result in a shorter length to the cone. If the gun has a nominal bore dia of .729 or close then the short cones would only show it was cut with a reamer having a steeper angle to the cone, & still intended for paper shells. A subsequent "Back Boring" would of course produce the same results as an original boring for brass.

The chambers are "normal" sized and the gun remains at its original 13 proof.

I would call this a gun bored for parer cases with a short cone. In 1875 a bore stamped 13 would take a .710" gage, but not a .729" one. A bbl bored specifically for an all brass hull would have been much more likely to have been an 11 ga which would accept a .751" plug but not a .775" one. Intermediate sizes as 13/1 & 12/1 did not start to be stamped untill 1887 in the British proof houses I believe. The thinner walls of the brass hulls required larger wads so bbls bored for them were larger. Prior to the advent of the plastic obturating wad a cone length of about 3/8-7/16" was fairly standard, to allow the wad to bridge the gap from case mouth to bore without gas escape. Many early cones as in this 1875 example were even shorter.

My 1880 Vintage Westley Richards has 12 bore dimensions and
practically no forcing cones.
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I do not quite follow what you are saying here. Nominal difference between 12ga chamber end & bore dia is about .070". Whether long or short this reduction in size is in the form of a cone, "unless" it is one of the very early guns with an abrupt step, which would be unusual as late as 1880 I think. If it is in fact a "Long Cone" rather than "No cone" it may well have been intended for use with brass shells to ease the wads into the standard bore size.

Just looking through the bore from the breech, all the older, standard cones "look" very short and abrupt. My Skeet's bore mike isn't large enough to measure the actual end of the chamber on a 12 ga. It hits metal part-way into the forcing cone. So I have to measure the actual chamber length with my very sophisticated tool, made from a stainless steel ruler, and calculate cone length with a combination of that information and where my bore mike determines the cone stops and bore begins. Most of the ones I've measured are in the 1/2" to 5/8" area, even though to look at them, they might appear to be much shorter than that. To say there is "no, or "practically no" forcing cones implies the chamber end and bore are the same size, as 2-P suggested.

My bore is .730 which is nominal. I did a chamber cast and there is an abrupt end to the chamber and no forcing cones.

I seem to recall both W W Greener & Burrard discussing this method of chambering. I had thought it had been proved impractical well prior to the 1880's. Perhaps Westley Richards simply gritted their teeth & bored it to order for the whims of a customer.

You might enjoy reading about Anglo experiments in Heyday of the Shotgun by David J. Baker pp. 91-92 Guns Without Cartridge Chambers. There might be something of interest in chaper 10 The Cartridge of the Heyday. Great lil' book I got at Border's for $39.95 minus 40% member coupon.
You proly aware there were at least two types of brass shell one just thin brass and second with brass cartridge base extending over almost entire paper case. You can see variety of ole' Anglo shells in shell collectors corner of each issue of Shooting Gazette. Neat page Joe.