Wanzel Carbine

mooncoon

mooncoon

CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Rating - 100%
22   0   0
Location
Vancouver Island
I have been playing around with a new toy (that I needed badly) recently. A Wanzel carbine which was a Austrian military rifle @ 1866 - 1870 and is vaguely similar to trapdoor Springfield. They are .57 rimfire and are conversions from an 1850's vintage muzzle loader.
Accuracy at the moment borders on minute of elephant but the gun does seem to have potential, particularly once I put a new much lower rear sight on the gun. The rifling twist is about 1:70 which limits the slug to about .6" long and additionaly is a healed bullet.

WanzelProfileb.jpg


WanzelBreachb.jpg
 
Doug

You have to tell everyone how you get this one to fire, go through the loading steps :). I was up watching Doug at the range the other night shooting this gem.

Marc

Ps. You forgot to sign the post "Mr. Practical" :p ;)
 
As Timberhunter notes; this is an extremely practical gun to shoot :>) The gun locks shut with a pin tied to the hammer (internally) that extends into the breach block and I had to make that before shooting it.
I took a chamber cast with cerrosafe and made single shell out of solid brass based on the casting. Because of the twist rate I had to use very short bullets and because of the chamber dimensions these had to be healed bullets (like a .22). I made up a swage and tried reshaping both .570 round balls and .600 round balls. I need more testing to decide if the .600 ones shoot better.
Priming is with a Ramset or Hilti blank set in the case off center and punched out after each shot. Cases are loaded with .48 gr of 1F powder for the swaged .600 balls and the slugs are just sort of pushed into the case.
The rear sight I am guessing is from the rifle version of the gun and is much too high for the carbine so I intend to replace it with a new one that is much lower.
Apart from these minor inconveniences, the gun is easy to load and shoot :>) :>)

cheers mooncoon aka Mr Practical :>) :>)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom