Anybody see the Snider on Sons of Guns?

bdft

bdft

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A guy brings what is obviously a Snider into Red Jacket's shop and they identify it as some kind of African rifle. :rolleyes: They never actually specify what it is, they just mumble about Zulus and Africa, lions etc. Then they jam what looks like a 12 gauge target load in it and fire away. I wouldn't have thought a 12 gauge would fit in a Snider, let alone shoot. Its a wonder these clowns didn't blow themselves up. Were there 12 gauge conversions done to Sniders?
 
bdft said:
A guy brings what is obviously a Snider into Red Jacket's shop and they identify it as some kind of African rifle. :rolleyes: They never actually specify what it is, ?
Click to expand...

The gun is actually called a ZULU and the name is written on the barrel. They started life as a french military muzzle loader, were then converted to a military cartridge rifle called a Tabatier which was rifled and roughly 12 guage. Finally after becoming obsolete, many were bought by a belgian firm and converted to 12 guage shotguns. About the only thing done I think was to ream the barrel smooth and chamber it.

Tabatiere shells can be swaged out of 12 guage brass shells. They are only about 1" long perhaps a bit more. For anyone interested, there is a Tabatiere on display in the Nanaimo Military Museum

cheers mooncoon
 
Photos of a Tabatiere musket I use to own, Belgian trade did such a good job converting these to cheap "Zulu Shotgun" that original military models are quite rare now.

ht tp://picturegallery.tripod.com/tabat.html
 
Below is a photo of a mock up cartridge that I made for the museum. I suspect that original shells are more scarce than unicorn droppings. My information was that the originals were coiled or rolled foil and paper similar to the first snider cartridges.

cheers mooncoon

Tabatierecartridge003.jpg
 
mooncoon said:
The gun is actually called a ZULU and the name is written on the barrel. They started life as a french military muzzle loader, were then converted to a military cartridge rifle called a Tabatier which was rifled and roughly 12 guage. Finally after becoming obsolete, many were bought by a belgian firm and converted to 12 guage shotguns. About the only thing done I think was to ream the barrel smooth and chamber it.

Tabatiere shells can be swaged out of 12 guage brass shells. They are only about 1" long perhaps a bit more. For anyone interested, there is a Tabatiere on display in the Nanaimo Military Museum

cheers mooncoon
Click to expand...

Reminds me a bit of the whole Greener-Martini "affair" :redface: , what with the 14 1/2 gauge chambering originally intended as a means of providing guards/troops with a weapon that'd - in theory - be useless to thieves/scroungers who came across it and lacked a supply of the unusual ammunition required to make the thing go bang....:yingyang:...which was then "circumvented" by means of wrapping paper sleeves around 16-guage ammo....:wave:....IIRC, I mean !......;)
 
I think it is a bit different in the case of foil wrapped cases. I think the case head was sort of swaged over the foil tube of the body. I can only remember making cases for one gun chambered for the wrapped foil snider cases and for it I had to swage down a regular drawn brass snider case to fit the chamber. Somewhere I have a photo of an original Tabatierre case that I used as a reference (used the photo not the shell)

Found it, finally found the photo of an original tabatierre cartridge. The green colour is paper not corrosion

tabatiere1.jpg


cheers mooncoon
 
I have a Zulu :)
Even fired it once with low a brass shell.
They were fairly crude but as I understand it they were quite common in rural Canada at one time. I have an old gun add from turn of the century(the one before:cool:) that shows them for sale at $1.00 a piece.
 
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