Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Bringing Smokepole back from the dead

Dang nice work Crossfire. It looks like Trackofthewolf.com agrees with you on threads. Here is the link

http://www.trackofthewolf.com/List/Item.aspx/807/1

Y'all mean this one?

HOT-SHOT-RLP
Nipple, Hot Shot� for Lyman & InvestArms, 6-.75mm thread, for #11 CCI or Remington cap, stainless steel.

I'm going to verify that thread pitch,and leave the almost mind boggling (certainly intimidating) choice of nipple to you, Bud. I WOULD be dogone sure that .314" OD at the seating flange (That's 7.975 MM, e.g. a nominal 8 mm) is part of the program.

GTC

I gots a couple guns from the 1870s-1880s era that Tracks had nipples for. This oughta be easy to sort our.

Or we can just talk about nipples.

Wrong kind I fear.

I ain't dead yet but that pic makes me want to blow grits until I do expire........

Yep.

DD, only you can save this thread......with proper pics of course......don't disappoint.

He's probably out feeding "Bob" a dead crat.

....I'll do my best,....Shaman's barrel is back in his capable hands, and he commented that the threads in the breech plug / bolster look "pristine".

ANY of ya'll hit this snag,....send the thing over, or seek out your local TIG whiz, and show him this thread,.....or have him call me.

Mutilated, pharged up nipples (like those in the last pic )look to be the SINGLE biggest problem with these sidelock percussion rigs.

Best grade STAINLESS rated "Never Sieze",....and FREQUENT removal, cleaning,......THAT's the ticket, my friends.

Best Regards,

Greg

thats the real ticket . does away with so many problems
i bet you will find the nipple is a metric .
probably a 6.75 like deerwacker sugested .
while a 1/4 28 will thread into it , it would probably wabble tell it hits the nipple seat

the other thing is that it could have been re threaded
which means there is a number of both metric and standard threads to chose from . common pitch is 28 but there are some like on the Hopkins and Allen rifles that use a 32 or some of the TC's that use a 24 .
but you can get over sized nipples ranging from .250 all the way to ?? off the top of my head , .280, .285 or somewhere there abouts
ToW has a broad choice i belive

with imports there is also a few diffrent metrics depending on the company and model of gun .
so metrics can range from 6-.1mm, 6-.75mm to 8-1.25

if this gun is a Lyman or investment arms . i would start with trying a 6.75 . if its a Berdan or something along that line , then its more likly to be the 6.1mm.

well done on getting the nipple out Crossfire .

Just around the corner:



Someday I'll know 10% of what Cap knows about old guns...if I live long enough. Mebbe I can accelerate that if I buy a bunch. Speaking of imponderables, I have an 1876 Reinhard picket rifle with a 33" twist. More or less .38 in the bore and .40 in the grooves. That's an approximation 'cause it's too early in the day to do math. The grooves are .018" deep.

Seems like a tall order for patching a conical, filling the grooves with patch material and all that. I have not been successful to date. Well, I have, but the bullets tumble. -gnashing of teeth- It shoots RBs quite well, but....

Slugged RB:



Bore:



Target:



[img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/muddler/Guns/Black%20Powder/PAReinhardPicketRifle004.jpg[/img]

-sigh-

I'm back. The barrel's back. I'm leaving puddles like a poodle--I'm so happy.

I ordered the Lyman nipple from Track of the Wolf late yesterday along with some .50 cal possibles. I'm hoping that by weekend-after-next it'll be ready to shoot.

Would you expect this to be a better round ball or minie ball rifle? I was hoping to lob the larger .50 Lee R.E.A.L cast bullet at deer. I have both the small and the large molds. I'm just wondering if I need a .50 round ball mold.

Your barrel twist will answer that for you. My guess is it's probably twisted for round balls, but anything around 48" or quicker will handle the likes of a Maxiball etc. Either way it will take care of a deer easy.

Check the twist and cast or slug the bore. No magic in doing either.

dont be fooled by the twist . try the R.E.A.L and see how they shoot .
if they dont shoot well , try a hollow based Minie with a thick skirt .
i shoot 435 grain Barnard minie in my 1 in 70 twist flintlock . not as accurate as a RB but shoots them more then accurate enough for hunting

Cap....you've no idea the possibilities just opened behind that door. Smilin' here.

LOL
.
My wife bought the rifle for my on our 1st wedding anniversary .
I think I have told that story before .
When we went and picked up the gun , the owner gave me a box of Minie�s with it .
Ill admit I was skeptical when he said he used them in the slow twist barrel .

Shortly there after I was down at Shapels .and was talking with Mr Shapel about the rifle and how it shot a Minie in a slow twist . Man I miss Bob and Mark .
But anyway . Mr Shapel goes into to telling me that the problem with shooting conical wasn�t the rate of twist , but the bullet design and its reaction to the depth of the rifling for a given charge . After all the original Minie was designed to be shot at a very slow rate of twist with a moderate powder charge .
So with a solid base design , you don�t get the expansion to seal the bore proper with deep rifling . The original Minie had a thin skirt which also complicated things because the skit would tear with heavy charges in deep rifling or skip the rifling if the twist was to fast .
Thus came about the Barnard design ..
Bob had this rather large bullet collection and thus showed me all these different adaptations from 2 part bullets to expansion cones ��..
Anyway . Another long story .

But in my 54 cal , 42 inch , 1 in 70 twist with radius rifling that bullet will hold the same group out to 50 yards as a patched RB does . At 100 the group opens up . But its still well below a paper plate size group at 100 ..About 6-8 inchs when shot off hand
Granted it does not shoot well enough to be a long range setup .
However on average for elk , im shooting in the 35 yard range . So that 435 grain conical backed with 110 grains of powder works wonderfully .

Let me also say this . When it comes to muzzle loading I have always subscribed to accepting the limitations of the system . Those limitations very from gun to gun , load to load and shooter to shooter , each one and combination there of , has its accurate range .
If we accept that and stay within that range , we are good to go .
Where we run into problems is when we try and shoot past that range . Expecting something different to happen

The Minie idea appeals, but you shorted out my circuits with mention of two piece bullets. In context of a Minie bullet?

I follow the Minie theory re: slow twist/mild loads but can find no images or sketch of what the Barnhard bullet looks like. Can you provide a description or picture?

two piece bullets have a front section and a base section .that fits together then you load it as one bullet .
here is a photo from the NMLRA
[img]http://www.muzzleblasts.com/archives/vol1no3/articles/stutz_4.shtml[/img]
also it wasnt the Minie that looked like this . my comment about 2 piece was concerning Shapels bullet colection which included 2 piece designs .
however it should be noted that the Minie did have a metal cup that was inside it . where the ones we buy or make today , dont .

I believe its spelled Bernard
Lyman sells a mould that�s close to it for the 54 cal . BUT its skirt is still to thin . So what I did was turn the skirt plug down alittle so as to give a thicker skirt . When I did this it produced 439 grain from the the 425 grain Lyman mould . The original Bernards i recieved from Shapel were 435 grain . so the Lyman mould cam in real close with minor modification
Here is a photo showing the difference
On the left is a 54 cal old style Minie design 445 grain .
On the right is the Bernard which Kinda looks like a Gardner but not a round at the tip or a thick in the skirt
Notice the difference in length .
But when we flip the round over , you really see the difference in the skirts .
Now don�t quote me on this part because I don�t know for sure . But from what I have been told is that the Bernard design was originally for what I think was called a pedestal breech or post breech .
How this was described to me was that there was a post that stuck up off the breech plug . A fixed amount of powder was then loaded and the conical was then ran home .
The post fit inside the conical cavity when the bullet was seated the post acted to expanded the base of the conical into the rifling
I want to say that it was called the 'Tige' rifle
But anyway as you can see the cavity is much smaller thus giving a thicker skirt . Where with deeper rifling , you can see that the original Minie design wouldn�t leave much of a skirt left to seal to the rifling .

i barrowed this photo and post from an old thread of Greg Edingtons over on the Civil war guns forum dated back in 2007.
to show you what the gardner round looked like