Original Hawken twist question

[Standing Bear]

Further thoughts.  A button rifled barrel 1/66 or 1/70 may not attain high enough MV without stripping to impart a fast enough spin to stabilize a larger ball.  Here a gain twist would benefit.

[Dphariss]

I will add another note on the original Hawken rifling - been digging through my mountain of files for info that I kinda/sorta remembered.

Anyhow, a good number of years back there was an attempt to verify that the rifling machine at the Missouri Historic Society was in fact the one from the Hawken's shop.

A Dr. Tom Hoops and Clarence Fall (NFI) got permission to move, study and photograph the machine.

They started by making lead plugs from existing barrels to compare to the product the machine would produce.

One of the points of comparison was the bottom of the rifled grooves.

They were noted in both the plugs made from barrels (and they note one barrel in particular was in "near unfired", pristine condition) and the cutters on the machine that the rifle groves were "ROUNDED" on the bottom.

So if this source/examination is accurate, the Hawken's used 7 groove, round bottomed rifling with a right hand twist.

The article also noted that the machine was capable of cutting 7 groove left hand twist which was used by Dimick (they kinda leave that hanging to let you draw your own conclusion there, if any).

How large was the radius of the cutter? A radius to match the groove diameter is not what people today see as round grooves.
 It appears that some were cut with narrow grooves and some fairly wide. Some are "square" from photos. Given the time frame it is unlikely that all Hawken barrels were cut with the same cutter. So it would be virtually impossible to use the cutter as a key to who's rifling guide it was. Best way would be to make sure it was EXACTLY the same twist. But this would be difficult. So the best one could do would be to say that it might be.
But this one is hard to tell and the really good one I have came off an auction site or some such a few years ago so I will not post it.


This is the silver mounted rifle made in 1836 at the Cody Museum. Poor photo but the best I could get. Could be a "round groove" but looks fairly "square" to me.
The barrel and the guide might be a  48" twist but this might mean the barrel is 47 1/2" and the guide 48 3/4" but it would be impossible to determine this without putting the barrel in the machine and actually checking.  One way would be etting a piece of wood in the cutter head to see if it would exactly follow the grooves in the barrel would be one way but this would require debreeching etc. Something most owners are not going to go for.
Dan

[Daryl]

Other than the Military, when did the "general" population make the switch over to conicals for hunting?

Seems to me from what I've read (Forsyth - Sellers) - that conicals became widely used for hunting, only with the ctg. gun era in fixed ammo - not in muzzleloaders.

In India, it never came to pass due to the inability of a pure lead bullet (required in ML) to penetrate deeply enough on dangerous game.  They were tried, ie; the Enfield with minnie balls and many English guns 'in case complete' had a conical mould, but the soft lead bullets were found poor killers on dangerous game.  A hardened round ball which was used in the ML's, not only penetrated more deeply but oft times exited. I assume that is what "Through and Through" means. Conical became popular only in fixed ammo in India only after the ctg. guns were invented & became popular. 

The only way to shoot a hardened bullet accurately was in a self contained ctg.  There were attempts with winged bullets (Jacobs) but they were mostly for military experiments, not for sportsmen & certainly not in general use.

[Dphariss]

As I am sure you know, Baker's experience with his "devil stopper" when he had a conical made for it was classic. So I will repeat it here.
 It got him into such "scrapes" that he abandoned it and went back to the belted ball which "never failed to floor a charging Elephant". "Scrapes" when hunting something like Elephant are not the same as having a hard time finding the Whitetail that can't be easily tracked after the shot.
Elephants have a disconcerting propensity to hold people down with a foot then pull off the arms and legs. Or bash the offender repeatedly against trees or other objects.
I have a friend and fellow Guild member who has told me that ringing barrels on LR MLs is very common if the shooter simply tip the muzzle down when walking to the firing line. On a horse they would unload in a mile or so if carried muzzle down as they would have been at times. Having used a loop over the saddle horn the gun WILL tip muzzle down and will be required on narrow trails in the timber.
But folks want to do what they want to do and have bought into the fallacy that the RB cannot be reliably used on medium or large game.

Dan

[Daryl]

Yes - Taylor and I were on a ML bear hunt up the Nass valley in BC with a close friend.  At that time, we were all shooting "Maxiballs". With freshly loaded rifles, we were headed for the "Theater", a sort of amphitheater-shaped area where we could watch three converging slides for bears, all from the same central spot. 

I was looking at some old moose tracks on the ground in front of us and must happened to look over at one of the rifle's muzzles and said - Tommy - look at the muzzle of your rifle.  The Maxiball was 1/2 in, 1/2 out of the muzzle.  After 'scare' he paper patched them with cigarette paper. His was the TC barrel with only .0015 deep rifling. After that trip, I worked on developing round ball loads for my rifle, then within 3 month's, re-barreled it with a
cut rifled Bauska barrel.

[Vomitus]

   Here's my worthless opinion: moose don't care.  ;D

[Dphariss]

   Here's my worthless opinion: moose don't care.  ;D

But if the bullet slides off the powder and the barrel is of one of the dismal alloys used by many ML barrel makers in the US one could easily end up short some fingers or a hand or his hunting buddy could catch some frag in his head. 

Dan

[Vomitus]

   Yes Dan, I forgot about bullets. I tried bullets in the mid eighties and never liked the possibility of the slug sliding off the charge.Switched to round balls and never used slugs again. That TC BigBore( my first ML) shot the bullets pretty darn good though.If my memory serves me correctly, the TC .58 shot @!*% fine with it's 48" twist and patched round balls also.(90gr. 2f,.570rb, .025 patch,IIRC)