577 Snider

F

freire

CGN frequent flyer
Rating - 100%
65   0   0
Location
Eastern Ontario
Anybody want to share there favorite loads?
Recently bought a 1872 dated Snider Mk3 two band Sergeants Pattern manufactured by Birmingham Small Arms.
Not that i'm new to reloading, but i'm new at reloading this caliber, soon i will be ordering some brass and reloading dies.
What i want to know is what combination of bullet weight and powder works best for you?
Thanks.
Victor.
 
Last edited:
its not so much bullet weight as it is the proper size bullet the go to projectile used in the snider is the round ball these are cast in pure lead and use in sizes anywhere from .585 to .600" as for bullets these should be cast in 20 to 1 lead/tin or air cooled clip on wheel weights and could be anywhere from .585" to .595" people seem to have better luck with .590 to .595" bullets. now for bullet length it will depend on the rifling 3 or 5 groove 3 groove is around 1 in 78" twist and will like round ball and shorter conicals better where the 5 groove will be 1 in 48" and can stabilize just about any length.

as for powder you will want black powder I recommend real BP like goex I prefer 1f because it fills the case better and is more like the powder used in the military load
 
freire said:
Won't i have problems trying to seat my bullet, brass might collapse, Have you tried with a .595 bullit?
Not sure on the rifling, but i believe is a 5 groove barrel.
Victor
Click to expand...

I use .600 round balls the trick is too fire form them mark the case so you know how to seat it every time(some chambers may be slightly out of round) and just not size your cases. im also not using proper .577 snider brass im using 24ga magtech shot shell brass that has been cut down much cheaper then the $8 a piece .577 snider brass.

the bore on these thing is huge because the barrels were from the p1853 enfield rifles(the mk3 used new made barrels) the p1853 enfield used minie balls that were under bore size(.577) to load easy the base skirts were made to expand into the rifling with a breech loader we want to cut out the expanding process and use a bullet slightly above bore dia it gives a much better seal and is more accurate
 
Most peculiar that the weapon that was so effective in the American Civil war with Minie balls, should turn out to be less effective with them 150 years later.
Is anyone here experienced with a Snider and Minie balls / HB conical bullets?

Edit, I am referring to the Confederate usage of the P53/61 when speaking of effective usage in the US civil war. Because someone is bound to bring up that Sniders were not a weapon used in the US civil war. True, but a Snider is an altered Enfield correct?
 
Last edited:
tokguy said:
Most peculiar that the weapon that was so effective in the American Civil war with Minie balls, should turn out to be less effective with them 150 years later.
Is anyone here experienced with a Snider and Minie balls / HB conical bullets?

Edit, I am referring to the Confederate usage of the P53/61 when speaking of effective usage in the US civil war. Because someone is bound to bring up that Sniders were not a weapon used in the US civil war. True, but a Snider is an altered Enfield correct?
Click to expand...

the minie works well for its intended job easily loading through the muzzle and expanding but with a breech loader you want a bullet above the bore diameter for a good seal
 
To my mind the reason that an under-bore-size Minié-type bullet doesn't work well (at least not consistently) in a Snider is because the expansion of the base skirt to engage the rifling (which is what gives that type of projectile most of its its accuracy in a muzzle-loading rifle, of course) occurs instantaneously (or nearly so) in the muzzle-loader, with the bullet still seated where it started when the gun was fired. With the same bullet seated in a cartridge case (especially the solid-brass type of cases we now use, as opposed to the coiled sheet-brass construction of original Snider cartridge casings) that skirt expansion is retarded by the case until the base of the bullet moves clear of the case mouth. That forward movement is only a half inch or so, admittedly, but by that time full skirt expansion cannot take place. The Boxer-designed Snider-Enfield cartridge was one of the earliest self-contained metallic center-fire cartridges, when they were "feeling their way in the dark", figuratively speaking. We currently know that by far the best way to achieve an effective tight rifling-engagement fit of a bullet in a breech-loader is to start out with a bullet which is slightly greater in diameter than the bore. This seems so obvious nowadays that one really has to wonder why the British War Department floundered around (through no less than nine different "Marks" of Snider cartridge over a short period of about three years) trying to achieve that result with an under-size projectile!

I have done quite a bit of shooting with Snider-Enfield rifles ....much of it in competition, in what could be called "Victorian-era Military Action Shooting" -

c890609d-257e-418a-985e-5fbcf57594f4_zpsn1l0lfy8.jpg
7bcb3e54-dd10-498f-9fc1-8e803a2f9ee9_zpsmysyqjv9.jpg


I achieve consistent accuracy using this short, solid-base bullet (designed by Kerry Jenkinson, a British-trained gunsmith now located in British Columbia) which is so short that it is sometimes referred to as a "ball-ette". This is an image of one side of the double-cavity mould

590Jenkinsonjpg.jpg
 
Hmm, my 3 groove gives a maximum bore dia of .585 at the muzzle and the Lee HB are a dia of .575...should actually shoot it at paper one of these days...does OK on squad size targets at 600 though, lol
 
tokguy said:
Hmm, my 3 groove gives a maximum bore dia of .585 at the muzzle and the Lee HB are a dia of .575...should actually shoot it at paper one of these days...does OK on squad size targets at 600 though, lol
Click to expand...
The grooves on the .577" Enfield and Snider Enfield were tapered from the breech to the muzzle from .012-.014" depth at the breech to .007" at the muzzle. Measuring the groove size at the muzzle gives a wrong reading when selecting what bullet diameter to use. Groove size at the breech is usually about .600" +.002".
 
I do have a Enfield 1861 replica by Parker Hale, and groups really nice with a .575 diameter 566 grains minie by Lyman, but i have been watching a few clips online related to the Snider and pretty much everybody says the same-thing, to achieve decent accuracy you need an oversize bullet.
So i do agree with GrantR when he says ( skirt expansion is retarded by the case until the base of the bullet moves clear of the case mouth. That forward movement is only a half inch or so, admittedly, but by that time full skirt expansion cannot take place)
 
green said:
The grooves on the .577" Enfield and Snider Enfield were tapered from the breech to the muzzle from .012-.014" depth at the breech to .007" at the muzzle. Measuring the groove size at the muzzle gives a wrong reading when selecting what bullet diameter to use. Groove size at the breech is usually about .600" +.002".
Click to expand...

this is why we can get away with using things like .600" round balls cast in pure lead
 
P53group.jpg


I was able to achieve the sort of accuracy shown above at 100 yards (rested) using a .578 Lee Improved Minie bullet (oversize - the "standard" bullet of this design being .575) in my Parker-Hale 3-band muzzle loader .... it is a hollow-base "semi-wadcutter" design (which does cut nice neat holes ;) ) -

LEE578IMPMINIE_zpsihvvqzvd.jpg


However, I couldn't come close to that at 50 yards (in fact, I couldn't even keep all shots on the target) trying to use the same bullet in a Snider cartridge!
 
freire said:
GrantR, if you don't mind me asking, what's the diameter and weight of your ball-ettes?
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Nominal (i.e. as marked on the box) specs for the Jenkinson bullet are .590" diameter and 450 gr. I don't recall actually measuring either diameter or weight of cast bullets .... or, if I ever did, I have no record of it ....

Unfortunately, these were a special run of molds done up for Kerry Jenkinson some years ago, and to the best of my knowledge are no longer commercially available .... :( :( :(

However, single-cavity mould blocks for a very similar bullet (.590" diameter, 480gr at 0.795" long, or 420gr at 0.700" long) are offered by Cast Bullet Engineering in Australia - this is apparently the 420gr version:

590-480PB.jpg


http://ca.castbulletengineering.com.au/bullet-moulds/rifle/577-snider/590-480pb-single-cavity

The price of $101.40 shown on that link is in Canadian dollars I believe, since that is the region I set it to. (If I set it to "Australia" the price changes to $114.99, and set to USA it becomes $78.41.) I have had the Jenkinson-design Lee mould for a number of years, and paid C$75 for it back then .....

Another option for a similar solid-base short-bodied "ball-ette" type of bullet is this one from Accurate Moulds in the US -

ACCURATE%2060-480B%20MOULD_zpshk0dj1ji.jpg


It is one of quite a few different .590 and .600 solid base bullet mould designs offered by Accurate - http://www.accuratemolds.com/catalog.php?page=14

NOTE: I have a set of double-cavity mould blocks for this exact .600-480 gr. bullet which I would sell for C$100 plus shipping. (I used the mould pricing function on the Accurate website just now and it resulted in a price of US$98, plus shipping.) The mould casts very well, but I have reverted to exclusive use of the .590 Jenkinson bullet because it works so well for me, and because the one time I did cast a batch of these bullets, I neglected to adjust my loading dies for the slightly larger diameter, and ended up with a number of "crinkled" cases. I am confident this bullet would work fine if the loading dies were set properly for it (but don't want to have to switch back and forth) and that this bullet would perform particularly well in one of the many Sniders out there with a more generous chamber .... as you may know, there is considerable variation in actual chamber dimensions, and it seems necessary to develop a load specifically for one's own rifle to get optimum accuracy. (My primary "shooters" - a 3-band and a 2-band - both have relatively tight chambers, so I also experienced a few problems chambering some of the rounds loaded with the .600 bullets. They worked well in other larger-chambered Sniders I have.) If anyone is interested, PM me ....

Yet another option might be one of two mould designs offered by my friend Martyn Robinson through his Spokane home-based business X-Ring Services (his 'handle' is PommyB on British Militaria Forums) -

http://britishmilitariaforums.yuku.com/topic/18851/577-Snider-Bullet-Molds-Available

Note, these are in fact the two designs made/sold by Accurate as 60-530XR and 60-440XR. Either of these single-cavity designs is US$85 plus $12.50 postage ordered from Martyn.

(By the way, Martyn also sells .577 Snider and .577/.450 Martini-Henry cartridge cases, already-formed from .24 ga. Magtech shotgun cases - http://britishmilitariaforums.yuku.com/topic/16005/577450-MH-and-577-Snider-Unprimed-Cases) (Availability may depend on whether he has been able to get in the Magtech cases to form up ....)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom