AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Black Powder Shooting => Topic started by: rich pierce on July 25, 2022, 02:31:48 PM
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I noticed this but hadn’t got a decent picture. This is a lot of grooves! The rifle was originally flintlock. The style is very similar to Silas Allen. The rifling is still in terrific shape as you can see. Slow twist; guessing slower than 1:48”. Anyone else encounter this on a flint period original? Or has anyone shot round ball in such a barrel on a contemporary rifle? I have a John Getz .54 with micro grooves but never built anything with it. It was a gun show spur of the moment purchase.
(https://i.ibb.co/zhz6sg1/E18208-C3-01-C3-4-CA4-8-BA0-92883-E56354-D.jpg) (https://ibb.co/nsFPryT)
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I have seen polygroove barrels on muzzle loading pistols but never heard reports about accuracy.No reason to NOT making a gun with one and no reason to think it can't be accurate until testing.N.G.Whitmore,maker of the fine rifle for General Grant made 12 groove barrels as a standard thing and they outshot everything and were declared as unfair competition according to the writings of Ned Roberts.Whitmore's test of the Grant rifle at 110 yards said all 10 shots went into a circle the size of a percussion cap box and he did not use the telescope sight.
I tried for years to get Bill Large to try Whitmore's idea and he was aware of the performance of the Grant rifle which is a 38 caliber.
One groove every 30 degrees shouldn't be too hard to do again.
Bob Roller
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I had a Durs Egg fowling gun with micro groove rifling like that. It was 14 bore and straight rifling for shooting shot.
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I am working on the catalog listing of a short takedown rifle from New York with similar rifling right now and have seen it on a few other New York rifles. Some looked like they were smoothbores when just looking at the muzzle but clearly had this style of rifling when you shine a light down the bore. The Model 1819 Hall rifles use "polygroove" rifling as well.
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When I had my 1819 Hall's I found it very easy to muzzle load and was accurate. Interesting multi groove bore and also it was counter bored smooth at muzzle.
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This might be straight groove; gotta check.
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I have examined Ruxton's percussion rifle at Casa Esquela & it has a micro groove bore. No hint of previously being flint, but the buttplate was changed from flat English to American crescent. That was done by the original maker at Ruxtons request for his second trip West which was ended by cholera before it went past St. Louis.
Roger B.
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A micro-groove bore, well that's a first for my eyes.
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A micro-groove bore, well that's a first for my eyes.
Never knew they existed. Would also like to know how common they are.
Jerry
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Like Hanshi micro-groove, that's a first for me also!
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there was a time in England that they were fairly common on fowling guns. Ca, 1780 give or take 10 years. Straight rifled to improve the shot pattern. I have never seen it on American guns. Something new for me.
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I had a .40cal. William Barnhart, Ross County, Ohio rifle that was rifled that way. 1855 or so. The bore had a bad spot so I never shot it.
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Tip Curtis had an antique barrel like that in his shop years ago, way cool!!!!! It was about .54 cal or so.
Curtis
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The Arizona Historical Society has a circa 1775 15 3/8-inch barreled Spanish rifle with straight micro grooves. It sports a beautiful patilla or miguelet lock.
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Good picture, Rich. Taylor's 1853 Joseph Lang has a bunch of grooves as well and more than most, but not as many as your rifle.
This one has a 48" rate of twist with 10 lands and 10 grooves.
(https://i.ibb.co/HHpVPRy/100-7311.jpg) (https://ibb.co/4Vg7SCL)
link uploaded net (https://imgbb.com/)
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Generally on these barrels is the rifling considerably shallower than on traditional barrels ? Whenever someone says “micro groove “ my mind automatically thinks marlins RF and CF barrels which have very shallow groove even by modern standards of that type of rifle
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well i guess marlin arms company wasn't the first after all!
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Maybe a test barrel could be made by a barrel maker with 8 grooves and another with 12 or 13 and tests with weighed powder charges and uniform weight balls or bullets and get more data.The Whitmore guns of the long ago proved the 12 grooved idea worked really well and the idea may be worth revisiting.
Bob Roller
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I’ve got a John Getz barrel with micro-groove rifling. Not in a stock yet.
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Its not “Micro-groove” which is a modern thing with extremely shallow grooves (thus the “micro”). Barrels with many grooves were common in England and Europe. But the people buying rifles in England, for example, could afford to pay for the time needed to cut 15 grooves as opposed to 7.
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I sold a pair of French pistols that had a lot of grooves in the barrels. I have a half-stock rifle that was built by Arthur Huscusson in Franklin, NC that used an old hand forged barrel. He had the barrel recut by someone that bored it to .40 and rifled it with 10 grooves. James Levy
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Its not “Micro-groove” which is a modern thing with extremely shallow grooves (thus the “micro”). Barrels with many grooves were common in England and Europe. But the people buying rifles in England, for example, could afford to pay for the time needed to cut 15 grooves as opposed to 7.
I guess Marlin gets to own the term. Not sure what it would have been called back in the day. Maybe many-groove. For sure it’s not as deep as conventional round ball rifles of the flintlock period. It may also be common on straight groove barrels.
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I like that Lang rifling. Wide grooved with narrow lands. I hope modern makers take note. Narrow, deep grooves are a blight in my opinion.
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I like that Lang rifling. Wide grooved with narrow lands. I hope modern makers take note. Narrow, deep grooves are a blight in my opinion.
They were only done that way because it was easier, I think. Less power needed to scrape a narrow groove. It’s especially bad on large caliber barrels. Having re-cut the rifling on a number of original barrels done this way, I think they may have used the same cutter on various calibers. Grooves are often around 0.100”, though I’ve seen narrower. On anything larger than a .45, cutting 7 grooves .100 wide results in lands wider than grooves. Not fun to load.
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Ditto to what Rich said. Having made my own barrels for a long time, I can attest to the effort to pull the cutter through the bore (manually powered machine)! Also agree with the same cutter thought; I have several but they are used to rifle within a range of bore sizes, the time and effort to make a different cutter for each bore size wouldn't be a good use of time (in my application). Also the cutter rod would probably need to be considered, and if a new cutter didn't fit you would need a whole new rod assembly, which is more time, effort and cost.
Years ago I made a 14 groove barrel by mistake. A visitor played with my rifling machine while I was away and left the square guide bar indexed 90 degrees to where I left it. Oops...but that barrel was suitably accurate (one slightly ragged hole off the bench at 50 yards when proofed) Just my opinion (opinions are like belly-buttons, we all have one!)
Best,
Carl
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I like that Lang rifling. Wide grooved with narrow lands. I hope modern makers take note. Narrow, deep grooves are a blight in my opinion.
Alexander Henry and Joseph Whitworth showed us the advantage of wide grooves and Bill Large did so later.The Whitworth was a hexagon with a long bullet configured to it and later tests show that ordinary cylindical,elongated bullets work as well in his system.
I had a Whitmore rifle with 10 or 12 grooves a Whitmore scope and it was a 40 caliber with a round ball twist and gave superb accuracy but the scope prevented my using it in shooting matches.I was not interested in cutting dove tail slots for regular sights.The barrel was made from a Remington Cast Steel blank and had a false muzzle.If these long ago makers got superb performance why can't it be re[eated now??
Bob Roller
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I don’t know how to share a link but if you go to utube and look up Wendy Mcclung Roane county mountain man he shows an original jaeger rifle with micro groove.
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I had a percussion Westley Richards 16 bore stalking rifle with 10 lands and grooves.
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I remember reading about grooves in barrels were to trap fouling and then someone figured out how to spiral them and after that,the first accurate shot was fired from some now obscure rifle.That might have come from "The American Gun" in the 1960's and I will look at them to see if that's part of a story.Whitmore's rifles with 12 grooves proved their superiority before 1860 and if I had the facilities of Bill Large and the current group of barrel makers I would see about a prototype and test it.Bill Large was aware of Whitmore's rifles but never explored the barrels with more than 8 grooves.
Bob Roller
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This rifle was built in 1885, 18 lands and grooves, .0025 deep. Uses a lead bullet cross patched with paper.
(https://i.ibb.co/pj2Gq58/20220506-175409.jpg) (https://ibb.co/23qmJHQ)
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Generally on these barrels is the rifling considerably shallower than on traditional barrels ? Whenever someone says “micro groove “ my mind automatically thinks marlins RF and CF barrels which have very shallow groove even by modern standards of that type of rifle
The barrel of Taylor's Lang rifle was made in 1853 or thereabouts- maybe 1852. The depth is .010" - approx. maybe .012", just a guess. It would be easy to measure.
Modern microgroove aka: Marlin, is very shallow.
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These are from my 1896 edition of “The Gun and It’s Development”
(https://i.ibb.co/H2jBVHf/CD54306-F-A741-4980-AB31-3-A655699-C597.jpg) (https://ibb.co/hMSLymJ)
(https://i.ibb.co/2Ntkv7X/5-C2-FBD01-D50-D-4-F2-B-8-D07-0-E9-C430-FF65-C.jpg) (https://ibb.co/Srn3tXq)
(https://i.ibb.co/dtmdT0J/C862-C3-CF-FE8-C-491-C-A6-CD-8522-F1-AB3-A4-F.jpg) (https://ibb.co/4216qZg)
I love how they still thought that slow twist ideas for RB rifles were “experimental” at this time and probably from earlier editions (this is from the 6th). Even though a slow twist (1/4 turn in a “2 ft 6 in barrel) was used in the army issue Baker rifle of 1800. The 20 bore barrel apparently outshot all comers at 300 yards. I believe it was 8 grooves. All the barrels listed in “British Military Flintlock Rifles” were 8 groove but one with 7 and all had grooves .015” deep but one which was .01 deep. Forsythe had rifles made by at least the 1850s for hunting in India that used slow twists from 8’ 6” to 10’ and very narrow lands and heavy charges of powder (compared to what Greener listed above for the 16 bore, which charge would be useless for anything but short range deer hunting. Forsythe used 5 drams in a 14 bore rifle. Which would give about 1600 fps and adequate penetration for Indian Elephant.
Marlins “Micro-groove” barrels were/are VERY shallow so much so that they were not very reliable with cast bullets unless very hard. Burt this was developed long after lead bullets were abandoned in factory ammo for the calibers Marlin offered.
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I don't have the depth measurements of any given "brand" of rifling.....but all I can say about shallow groove cut rifling is.....I'll run...not walk away from any firearm that has such a rifling cut. I've owned two in my life. A T\C kit rifle, and a Marlin micro-groove. Neither shot well no matter what load\patch\powder charge or lube type used.
JMHO
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Nice condition!! WOW. Weren't some of the earlier Halls, carbines maybe, .69 cal. & smoothbores?
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Some firearms are just plain INTERESTING to look at. That one would fall under that category! Nice rifle!
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I don't have the depth measurements of any given "brand" of rifling.....but all I can say about shallow groove cut rifling is.....I'll run...not walk away from any firearm that has such a rifling cut. I've owned two in my life. A T\C kit rifle, and a Marlin micro-groove. Neither shot well no matter what load\patch\powder charge or lube type used.
JMHO
Grooves for a CLOTH patched bullet need to be .008" deep and probably no more than .012".
TC was making barrels for their "naked" bullets and this shallow, brass suppository depth rifling, does not work well with a cloth patch. Also I think they were button rifling them which mandates shallow grooves.
The shallow grooves were just one problem with the T/Cs there were others but only the old "Buckskin Report" magazine detailed them.
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Back in the 70's, 3 guys I knew (all cops) had those TC's, Taylor, myself and friend Tom. Taylor's barrel had something like .0025" deep rifling, mine was .004" and Tom's was .0015".
We, at the time were all shooting the Maxiball. We did not know what a dismal failure it would be on heavy game (moose). Tom had to use a cigarette paper around his maxiball
to keep it in the barrel. We discovered this while walking along the path (wide game trail) under a huge slide. I just happened to look at the muzzle of Tom's rifle and the bullet
was sticking 1/2 way out.
They were buttoned, for sure.
Nass Valley (BC) Bear Hunt 1973
(https://i.ibb.co/dPtyjB1/Nass-valley-Bear-Hunt-1973.jpg) (https://ibb.co/F5Xtm6N)