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If the workmen on the factory floor at Kynoch's paid any attention to the drawings they were meant to go by, you ought to find a 1 in 12 bullet measuring .400 plus or minus a half thou wrapped in 3 thou paper. Or if they were loading grease groove metal based, .410 plus or minus half. But the buggers were English, after all, so you never know what you'll find.

The last 450/400 3 1/4" that came by here shot a 255 grain .400 bullet patched like that with 110 grains of OE 1 1/2F like that's what it was made for. But it is a Fraser. There's no telling what one of those contraptions the bodgers in London put together will do, is there?

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Originally Posted By: Der Ami
pamtnman,
You should be able to safely use any diameter bullet that will easily fit into the unsized neck of a case fired in that rifle. If the case can't expand to release the bullet, pressure will go up, but if the bullet is able to move before it enters the rifling, pressure won't go up significantly. This is true even for jacketed bullets and lead bullets are even less critical. I regularly shoot .321" bullete in a rifle with .318" groove diameter and .364" bullets in a 9.3x72R with .358" groove diameter. By the time a bullet has traveled it's length in the barrel, it has been sized to fit. I don't think you would be limited to the smallest dimension of the oval bore.
Mike

Mike,
You don't think this because you did not spend two years trying to make the Lancaster oval bore shoot right. The question of bullet fit in the oval bore is not about pressure, but accuracy. Everyone before thought just like you do now, and they tried to make the oval bore shoot like you say it should here, and they failed. We now know that the Lancaster oval bore shoots a bullet smaller than the muzzle diameters. On the older tapered barrels, the bullet is almost ridiculously small. Do not ask me how this works, do not ask me why this is, I cannot tell you. I can only tell you that this is exactly how the Lancaster oval bore rifling works. If you don't like it, I don't blame you. It is contrary to every rule of ballistics etc et al ad nauseum. If you want to see all the work I put into this, the DGJ published three articles in 2017-2018 about it.
It is so irksome that my cut-and-dry little recipe for success on this new rifle is not working out. I am pretty sure I know why, and the ball is rolling to get it working right. I do appreciate your help with the bulletectomy...

Last edited by pamtnman; 09/24/20 08:56 PM.

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Originally Posted By: Mike Rowe
If the workmen on the factory floor at Kynoch's paid any attention to the drawings they were meant to go by, you ought to find a 1 in 12 bullet measuring .400 plus or minus a half thou wrapped in 3 thou paper. Or if they were loading grease groove metal based, .410 plus or minus half. But the buggers were English, after all, so you never know what you'll find.

The last 450/400 3 1/4" that came by here shot a 255 grain .400 bullet patched like that with 110 grains of OE 1 1/2F like that's what it was made for. But it is a Fraser. There's no telling what one of those contraptions the bodgers in London put together will do, is there?

Thank you, Mike! I ordered two boxes of antique rounds. The first are paper patched BPE rounds, clearly what was shot out of the BPE guns. The other box has a label saying "KYNOCH .450/.400 Nitro Express Cartridges Case 3 1/4" For Black Powder Rifles" stamped "Metal Base"... These have no paper patch. Opening up one of each should be interesting, and hopefully not exciting. I know you will be interested.


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Originally Posted By: prairie ghost
You might consider posting over on Nitro Express.com as well. A wealth of info and very experienced double rifle shooters frequent that site. Graham Wright's books may shed some light on the subject.

Hi Prairie. I have read Graeme's book many times, because I shoot so many rifles in different calibers that the book really is a necessity. Unfortunately, while the information the book has about the 450/400 3-1/4" round is pretty good, it does not have anything about bullet diameter. Thanks for the suggestion about NitroX. I have posted over at NitroX and I am due for another visit.


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pamtnman.
Put me down as a student in your class room.
Mike

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Originally Posted By: Der Ami
pamtnman.
Put me down as a student in your class room.
Mike

You are a gentleman, Mike, thank you for the compliment. Please believe me when I tell you I am not a technically skilled man. I am all thumbs, super Cro Magnon furrowed brow to figure out over a long time the most elementary steps. I do not understand technology, at all, and for me to make things or to get them to work requires a good trait, a trait that has stood me well from a young age. That is perseverance. I just do not give up. Not on anything that is worthwhile, to me. I am fortunate to have my own small business that allows me the TIME to persevere on things, which most men do not have. Where most people understandably gave up on the Lancaster oval bore, because they had exhausted the time they had to fool around on it, I just kept plowing ahead. Literally two years of constant work. After I had exhausted every single possible bullet mold and patch that could or should possibly work for the .450 BPE chambering, I went back and looked at the data from all my efforts. And this is an area where I do have talent - numbers. I looked at the numbers and they all pointed like a giant flaming arrow at sub-bore bullets. It made no sense, it was incredible. But when I loaded up the gun with bullets smaller than the barrel exit diameter, bingo, amazing accuracy. Lancaster oval bores are really a black powder rifling. Anything over 2100 FPS and they fail. Paper patch is required. Soft lead is required. Wads are required. A few years ago Helsley put me in touch with an old Jewish guy in London selling old patents, including gun patents. With the original engineering drawings all folded up. The guy had bought the entire contents of the Birmingham public library, which included actual original patents for old guns, including Colts and Winchesters, and Lancaster, as well as Purdey, Holland, Henry etc. I bought all the Lancaster/ Thorn patents he had, from 1850 to the 1880s. And I studied them carefully. And frankly, I don't think even the Lancaster people understood what their oval bore does or how it works. They just knew that it worked really well. And the sportsmen of the BPE era bought them by the wagon load, because they worked so well. So there, that is today's lecture and it is all I know. Now you know what I know. Thank you for being a nice man!


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Good luck on the search. Its not clear if this rifle is now shooting? Anyway, if an inertial puller was ruled out, Id go with a collet puller, commercial or home made hole in a halved block of scrap on a press without a die in it.

The nose would get a little distorted, but that could be measured and verified before you pulled the cartridge apart. If(?) you can get all the info you need, Id stick the powder and bullet back in and shoot it over a chronograph just for curiosity?

Even in an old time bore, I would suspect that for black powder pressure loads, soft lead bullets would bump up back at the throat, regardless of how an unfired bullet fits the muzzle? Anyway, continued fun with the journey.

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Originally Posted By: craigd
Good luck on the search. Its not clear if this rifle is now shooting? Anyway, if an inertial puller was ruled out, Id go with a collet puller, commercial or home made hole in a halved block of scrap on a press without a die in it.

The nose would get a little distorted, but that could be measured and verified before you pulled the cartridge apart. If(?) you can get all the info you need, Id stick the powder and bullet back in and shoot it over a chronograph just for curiosity?

Even in an old time bore, I would suspect that for black powder pressure loads, soft lead bullets would bump up back at the throat, regardless of how an unfired bullet fits the muzzle? Anyway, continued fun with the journey.

Hey Craig, I did order the .41 caliber collet for the Rock Chucker press. We shall see. I am told by the seller that there are ten rounds of BPE paper patched and ten rounds of nitro-for-black rounds. Although nobody wants to see these neat antiques be lost or wasted, the information gleaned from opening up one or two of each will be shared publicly and I am sure put to use by at least seven or eight people around the globe :-). It will be a good use of a limited resource, and the plan is to do it slowly and carefully. Thanks for the guidance!


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pamtnman,
I believe the purpose of the oval bore was to lessen problems caused by black powder residue. Several different forms of rifling were for that purpose, some with the rounded lands are sometimes mistakenly thought to be worn out.
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Originally Posted By: Der Ami
pamtnman,
I believe the purpose of the oval bore was to lessen problems caused by black powder residue. Several different forms of rifling were for that purpose, some with the rounded lands are sometimes mistakenly thought to be worn out.
Mike

No doubt they started with that stated goal, and marketed with that purpose, but it does operate totally differently than conventional rifling. And my experience owning and shooting several oval bore rifles from the 1880s, 1890s, 1910s is Im not convinced its really a cleaning / non fouling advantage over conventional rifling. Its actually more difficult to clean because the oval bore creates shallow pockets where fouling collects. Requires many many passes with really big brushes, lots of big wet rags. More than the conventional rifling BP guns i shoot.
Anyhow, Im analyzing the antique 450/400 3-1/4 rounds that arrived today. Right now just aggregating exterior measurements. The average OAL of both the Eley 1880s paper patched and the Kynoch early 1900s-1910s NFB rounds is 3.8, much longer than shown in the old Kynoch catalogue and which I had seen elsewhere.


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