Starting To Sight In a Bronze 2.25 inch Mountain Rifle

[CrufflerSteve]

I've had this for years but I'm finally getting serious and making time to see if can actually hit a target. I'm using a fairly light skirted Minie ball, weighing about 4 pounds for shorter range. I found a place in the national forest open to shooting southwest of Denver.

I standardized on 3.5 ounces of Goex 1f. The target was 3' at 210 yards. I arranged half the BP loads to pe plain. The other half had a little cotton over the BP and 2 ounces of grits for a wadding. Half of the the rounds had some beeswax poured into the Minie cavity. I had two sighters of rounds that hadn't cast perfect. I tried a best guess and fired. I was 8' high and 6' to the right. I adjust a bit and came close. I adjust a bit with the plain BP and plain Minie's. The first two were in a 3' target. The 3rd got dropped and had the skirt bent. It was a flyer. The rest of rounds weren't so good. The plain Minie with wadding had a lot of variation. The beeswax filled ones were all flyers. I don't think they rifled well. Without changing the sights one round would land way before the target. The next would be high and they all went randomly right or left. It was a first attempt.

I then finished with a few rounds of canister and it made me realize how fearful that stuff must have been. It dispersed well and with a video on my camera I got some stills that show it really hitting. I'll enclose a link to an album I.m doing at photobucket.

Here is an interesting one. I caught the primer igniting:


Unfortunately this won't be a calendar candidate since the photographer was standing far away and I had to crop it small to see it.

Steve

[Double D]

Steve you've been  stranger!  Glad to see posting again. 

Great looking gun.  There is nothing wrong with this picture for the calendar, post it!!

In fact post lots more pictures of this gun shooting.   Love to see pictures of the canister shot's.

Could those flyer be the lead.  Have you considered Zinc?

[KABAR2]

Steve,

You have a fine piece of artillery there! if you are open to experimentation
I believe the British used a hollow based bullet with a hard wood plug to help
spread the skirt I wonder if that would work better in larger caliber?

hope you post the link soon I would like to see more photo's


Allen <><

[jeeper1]

Link to album.
http://s692.photobucket.com/albums/vv281/CrufflerSteve/Cannon%20Shooting%20May%208th%202010/
Mold album.
http://s692.photobucket.com/albums/vv281/CrufflerSteve/Cannon%20Mould/
Nice pictures.
Really like the cannon.

[Double D]

Steve,

 
I believe the British used a hollow based bullet with a hard wood plug to help
spread the skirt I wonder if that would work better in larger caliber?

 


Allen <><

The Snider bullet!!  They did use a wood plug.  Some of the Snider folks make a mold that cast a solid plug out of bondo. 

[KABAR2]

I am liking your mold I may copy it for the Whitworth that is on the drawing board,

I'm using a 40MM  rifled barrel

[Cannoneer]

Steve,
I remember your CSA mountain rifle; that's one beautiful piece! I also really enjoyed looking at the album, especially the action pics of the canister shot hitting the stump, and the ground where they caused clouds of dirt to be thrown up in the air.

[CrufflerSteve]

DoubleD. I've been lurking but not doing any shooting. Family illness has kept me home but things are improving. I will have to cast more rounds before I can go again. I like this public area about an hour from my home. I'll have some leads on a longer range but I want to do a couple of more range visits at short range and achieve acceptable accuracy before firing at long range.

My mould is also set up to cast zinc so I could make Read projectiles. It does the casting with bolts embedded so a brass sabot can be bolted on. I got about a 100 or more of the brass sabots from my cannon builder. They're slightly oversize and need to be machined down. I'm not set up for any machining but could probably improvise.

I'm not inclined to get into this right away and stay with lead for short range. All the projectiles, zinc included are too short by the Greenhill formula but he came along after this gun was designed so I have to do the best I can. The zinc rounds cast way hotter and I'm not sure what the life of a mould like this is. A final reason to not use these at short range is they take 6 ounces of BP to reliably open up the sabot. A lot of effort and expense and a lot of power. it's like using a 50 BMG at the 100 yard range.

Kabar2, if you need any dimensions, let me know.

I'll be posting more pictures and videos to the photobucket as I work on them.

Steve

[rampa room artillery]

  I shoot the same thing,     you are shooting too much powder for it to be accurate. lower the powder to 96 grams of cannon grade  and see what happens, you can shoot to much powder with a lead skirted round. if they whistle they are going to fast. and can blow the skirt right off in the barrel . and those are hard to get out later.

rick bryan
  N-SSA email me if you want any more imfo.

[CrufflerSteve]

At 1 gram = 0.0352739619 ounces, you're using 3.39 ounces of cannon grade so it's not much less powder, just granulation. I am planning to vary powder amounts now that I've ruled out beeswax filling and wadding over the powder. I will agree that 3.5 would be a max for 200 to 300 yard range. These Minie balls are short range. I can cast some very heavy skirt ones if I ever get accurate.

Here are some of the recovered rounds that were less banged up. There are a few more that slid up the hill and are too messed up to stand up. The taller ones were dug out of dirt. The banged up ones skidded off hard clay into rock.


The rifling is well engraved and the skirts are in good shape. I agree that blowing the skirt off would not be fun. The fellow I bought the cannon from, Steve Cameron, said it took hours to clean a cannon when he did that.

Since I'm running low on powder I'll see about trying some cannon granulation. All the data I have to start is from Steve Cameron who shot many, many rounds through the twin of this. He always used 1f so I'm following this. He is oriented to long range and ultimately sold his off and switched to a Blakely since he felt that this was too small for Grayling.

The rounds did not whistle. I have electronic earmuffs that I usually keep turned up high to amplify the sound. The canister was cool.

So you have a 2.25? Who made it and what do you use for a mould? Some of the moulds that look like the air pellets rounds look like they would require a light load.

Steve

[Double D]

Pressure.

Remember Switlik found that equal amounts amount of Fg and Cannon resulted in 40% higher pressure in the Fg load.   Higher pressures have never been conducive to good accuracy.

Try the cannon grade and see what happens.

98 grms is 1482 grain.  3.5 is 1531 grains.  That's 49 grains difference and not insignificant.   Try 3.5 ounces Cannon grade.  

Also the scale you are using does it measure just ounces are will it measure grains.  

You probably got all these angles covered, but I wasasking just to be sure.  

[little seacoast]

Steve, Should the minie show rifling along it's entire length or only on the expanded skirt?  I only shoot smooth bore so far and I'm curious about how hard it would be to load a minie that engaged the rifling full length.  Regards, LS

[Artilleryman]

I agree that cannon grade might be a better option, or reduce the 1fg by 1/4 at a time and see if that improves accuracy.   

[CrufflerSteve]

I'm not disagreeing. I had a whoops making the loads and did the first few 3.5 rather than 3 so just kept going. My scale is an ebay special and is only ounces. The grams one cost more.

Little Seacoast. It only engraves the expanded skirt. of course the skirt runs most of the length of a light load like this. It would probably be possible to do full rifling be having a heavy enough charge to make the round 'bump up'.

I do have my album in better shape at http://s692.photobucket.com/albums/vv281/CrufflerSteve/Cannon%20Shooting%20May%208th%202010/

There are 5 videos. See if you can run them in slow motion. Amazing things happen there.

Steve

[Cannoneer]

Thanks Steve, both the stills & vids were well enjoyed, especially the canister demonstration.