24 ga plastic hulls
- Thread starter piper394
- Start date
Try Will Bilozir at bilozir.net.
He stocks Fiocchi plastic casings in 24 and 32 both, as well as regular sizes. Casings come in bags of 100.
He is in Alberta, hits a lot of the gun shows.
Come to think of it, gotta get another couple bags myself!
He stocks Fiocchi plastic casings in 24 and 32 both, as well as regular sizes. Casings come in bags of 100.
He is in Alberta, hits a lot of the gun shows.
Come to think of it, gotta get another couple bags myself!
antiqueguy
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- windsor ontario
they melt though pretty quick but sure is a cheap way of loading for the old girls
I looked at that site after reading this. I didnt see a big selection of round lead ball ammo.
From what I understand, a snider may take ( for best accuracy) .585 , .590 , .595 , .600 ball size depending on the gun.
Whats the best place to start? in the middle?
From what I understand, a snider may take ( for best accuracy) .585 , .590 , .595 , .600 ball size depending on the gun.
Whats the best place to start? in the middle?
antiqueguy
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- windsor ontario
pure lead .595" to .600" balls are the norm and seem to shoot the best
I would go with .600 because while the others would go down the barrel, the .600 would have more bearing surface, assuming a shell loaded with them will fit the chamber. I have found sniders pretty challenging to shoot accurately with mini balls and so far the best bullet for me has been a short flat based one of about .585. I also discovered that british minis are quite different from american minis. The british ones have a much thicker skirt and I think the skirt walls are not tapered as much. I have played around with varying the skirt thickness as well as the outside diameter with not a lot of success (was some improvement). The flat based bullet was from a mold either made by or for a british trained gunsmith now retired. He claimed to get roughly 4" accuracy at 100 yard (and I believe him) while I would consider myself lucky to get that at 25 yards. I did try fillet the hollow base with crumpled muzzle loading shotgun wads but I think that was a mistake because I think at least some of the wad stays with the slug and causes it to be unbalanced. I also filled the cavity with a soft lube and recovered one bullet from the snow; the lube was completely gone. Filling the base with lube seemed to work better than the wadding.
cheers mooncoon
The PROBLEM was that the Snider is a BREECH-LOADING rifle and they were trying to solve the accuracy problems with MUZZLELOADING solutions.
It didn't work.
That's why nine Marks of Service ammunition in just over half that number of years..... and yet the 1858 Enfield was famed as an ACCURATE rifle.
So what happened?
Easy: it became a breechloader.
WE are at a remove of a century and a half from the problem, but we DO understand more about Breechloaders today. To get best accuracy from a Breechloader, you must know the bore and groove diameters. Then you use an OVERSIZED bullet, something very close to Groove Diameter.
The Barrels on these rifles were held as close as possible to a Bore Diameter of .577" and a Groove Diameter of .584". If they are not perfect by OUR standards, just remember that they were also in the middle of INVENTING precision measurement. The Master at Enfield was none other than Sir Joseph Whitworth, the man who almost single-handedly invented the whole science of precision measurement which we take for granted these days. Britain was the ONLY Army in the world which measured its rifle bores in THOUSANDTHS. America was using TWO decimal places and Russia still was using TENTHS of inches. So let's give the Old Boys a bit of slack. Actually, they were pretty close, most of the time.
So you go to the Groove diameter and make up a bullet to fit. Measure your bore and make your mould. You can start with a pair of surface-matched Aluminum blocks, put in your alignment pins and drill to 9/16 inch, which is .5625", then finish with a boring bar in the lathe, using your 4-jaw chuck. Your finished bullet will be about .584" but you can make it a few thou undersized and raise it to diameter by rolling the slugs between a pair of Axe files; you then lubricate with something like that Lee Liquid Alox.
Hope this helps.
It didn't work.
That's why nine Marks of Service ammunition in just over half that number of years..... and yet the 1858 Enfield was famed as an ACCURATE rifle.
So what happened?
Easy: it became a breechloader.
WE are at a remove of a century and a half from the problem, but we DO understand more about Breechloaders today. To get best accuracy from a Breechloader, you must know the bore and groove diameters. Then you use an OVERSIZED bullet, something very close to Groove Diameter.
The Barrels on these rifles were held as close as possible to a Bore Diameter of .577" and a Groove Diameter of .584". If they are not perfect by OUR standards, just remember that they were also in the middle of INVENTING precision measurement. The Master at Enfield was none other than Sir Joseph Whitworth, the man who almost single-handedly invented the whole science of precision measurement which we take for granted these days. Britain was the ONLY Army in the world which measured its rifle bores in THOUSANDTHS. America was using TWO decimal places and Russia still was using TENTHS of inches. So let's give the Old Boys a bit of slack. Actually, they were pretty close, most of the time.
So you go to the Groove diameter and make up a bullet to fit. Measure your bore and make your mould. You can start with a pair of surface-matched Aluminum blocks, put in your alignment pins and drill to 9/16 inch, which is .5625", then finish with a boring bar in the lathe, using your 4-jaw chuck. Your finished bullet will be about .584" but you can make it a few thou undersized and raise it to diameter by rolling the slugs between a pair of Axe files; you then lubricate with something like that Lee Liquid Alox.
Hope this helps.
antiqueguy
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- windsor ontario
using LLA with black powder is not a good idea. if you want something that will go bang and sometimes get you on paper a minie ball will work but its found a bigger sized round ball works best problem is the plastic cases are thick your lucky to get a .585 ball in there
Assuming you have a metal lathe, I find it far easier to start with a second hand aluminum mini mold, put it in a 4 jaw chuck and modify the base plug and bullet diameter from there. You can drill a small hole (smaller than pin diameter) on the opposite side from the pins that hold the mold to the handles on Lee molds, and punch the pins out to remove the handles.
I tried liquid alox many years ago and was not impressed. The best black powder lube for cartridge bullets, for me, has been SPG and Paul Mathews type lubes. Roughly a 50 /50 mix of animal grease (lard or bear grease) and bees wax.
cheers mooncoon
I use a steel, hollow base mini mold ( can't remember the brand offhand, Lyman?) and a lard/ beeswax lube like Mooncoon stated above. I paper patch the bullets to proper size,lube the grooves and fill the base flush with the lube and my two band shoots accurate as heck. Tried everything to get my Sniders to shoot good and that was the only thing I found worked perfectly all the time so far.
antiqueguy
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- windsor ontario
the problem with minies is their length a rifle with 3 groove is 1 in 78" and one with 5 grooves is 1 in 48. the two early pattern sniders used enfield muzzleloader barrels the mk 3 used a new steel barrel
The rifled musket barrels were intended to use a hollow based bullet.
Why would a bullet that shoots well in a muzzleloading barrel not shoot well in a breechloading barrel?
Bullet length and rifling twist are the same in both cases.
Why would a bullet that shoots well in a muzzleloading barrel not shoot well in a breechloading barrel?
Bullet length and rifling twist are the same in both cases.
antiqueguy
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- windsor ontario
because when loaded from the muzzle the skirt is supposed to expand to fill the rifling when loading from the breech bullets are supposed to be over size to fill the rifling. the 1 in 78 like short bullets and the 1 in 48 can take bullets that are longer. of course we are talking about guns that where meant to be volley fired accuracy was not the most important thing but now we want accuracy best to use a bullet that's over sized .590"-.600" in a softer alloy seems to work best
There seems to be a belief that the Service long Snider was less accurate than the Enfield ML. Tests showed that the Snider BL was more accurate in a ratio of 1 1/2 to 1.
Accuracy was important.
All service Snider ball ammo used had an under size bullet as did the commercial ammo by Eley, Kynoch and DCCo.
It is strange that British ordnance and major ammo companies would have continued to make inacurate ammo if indeed this was the case.
PS I am still waiting for pics of the paper case Indian made .577' ctg and documentation about the 57 Snider "Cadet" ctg.
Loaded from the muzzle, the skirt will expand when fired.
Same bullet breech loaded, the skirt will expand when fired.
That was the whole point of the hollow based bullet.
Please explain how a bullet designed for a 1:78 muzzleloading barrel is too long for a 1:78 breechloading barrel.
Do some research. The Enfield rifled muskets were designed for accurate, aimed fire. They may have been fired in volleys under certain circumstances, but that doesn't mean that they weren't developed and tested for accuracy.
antiqueguy
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- windsor ontario
1 in 78 is very slow im talking round ball slow (why so many snider do so well with round balls) proof is in the pudding the minies don't do all that well really hollow based bullets in general don't do that well in breech loaders(big write up on British militaria a few years ago as to why) its best to use over sized bullets
I think antiqueguy is getting confused by the system Thouvenin (carabine a tige) and system Delvigne (small diameter powder chamber with a shoulder where it joins the main barrel). Both were French and the system Delvigne in particular allowed the bullet to be pounded by the ram rod and expanded. The Thouvenin had a post to prevent compacting the powder and may or may not have allowed the bullet to be expanded by pounding
a mini ball with a hollow base is expanded (obturated) as a result of inertia regardless of the twist rate of the rifling
cheers mooncoon
a mini ball with a hollow base is expanded (obturated) as a result of inertia regardless of the twist rate of the rifling
cheers mooncoon
