Bridger Hawken Muzzle

[Herb]

I am finishing a near-exact copy of the Jim Bridger rifle.  It has a .54 caliber 1 1/8 x 32 unused GRRW barrel, which was cut to 32" before I got it.  We examined the bore with a Hawkeye Borescope and this is a premium barrel, no marks or scratches.  I am now making the rear sight and will fire the rifle this week, even before I put the finish on it.  I plan to file the rifling like the original, but have never done this before.  The bottom photo is of the original rifle, been laying around the shop since Nov 1975 and is dirty, but I copied and enlarged it.  I think the notches are where the rifling has been filed back to give a coning effect for ease of ball seating.  I'd suppose it is done with a small needle file on each land, maybe 1/4 or 1/2" back.  A gunsmith friend tells me not to do this, it will hurt accuracy.  Has anyone else done this muzzle treatment, and if so, how?  The top photo is of the Bridger Hawken mule in the museum in Helena, MT.

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Herb, I haven't done a muzzle like that on a Hawken yet, though I know it was a common crown system then.  I did a similar job on the muzzle of my Virginia rifle though.  The photos are reversed...the bottom one is the 'before' shot , and is my standard way of crowning a muzzleloading barrel.  This is a round bottomed Rice .50 cal barrel.  Just for fun, and to see what would happen to accuracy, I filed the grooves with a round needle file - the top picture.  Accuracy did not diminish in the least.  As you can see, I only filed in about 1/8", which is what I observed in most of the Jaeger rifles in Steinschloss Jaegerbuschsen.  A lot of the muzzles on original Hawken rifles have this treatment, but the photography is never good enough to see exactly how far they've filed.
May I suggest that it is necessary to first give the muzzle a slight radius to break the edge of the lands, and polish it.  Then you can deepen the grooves.  If you don't first polish the end of the muzzle, you will most certainly cut patches upon loading, that is unjless you're using a patch/ball combo that is ridiculously loose, in which case you won't have any accuracy anyway, and unacceptable fouling accumulation.
Jim Gordon's book #3 has many examples of this type of muzzle treatment.

[shifty]

Herb,There was a article in Muzzleblasts Mag a few yrs ago that told how this was done,can't remember what issue and I think Elk Killer does this on some of his flintlocks.will try to find the magarticle.

[brobb]

I think I remember an article showing several barrels where the lands were filed out like this.  When you looked at the muzzle what you saw was that the grooves appeared to be the lands and the lands appeared to be grooves.  This was to give a coned effect to the muzzle which allowed a patched ball to be easily started.

Bruce Robb

[rich pierce]

Is there not a chance that this is not a crowned muzzle but merely narrow grooves?

[Herb]

Gordon's book, "Great Gunmakers for the Early West, Volume III, Western U.S."  pictures 33 Hawken muzzles and most of them have this treatment, some of them less than the Bridger and Kit Carson rifles.  I do believe it is the lands filed down into grooves at the muzzle.  I just don't know how far back to file, but have some cut-off barrel pieces to pactice on.  Thanks to all for your comments.

[PPatch]

I do believe it is the lands filed down into grooves at the muzzle.

Interesting, Just looking I would have thought it would be the other way around.

dave

[JTR]

I do believe it is the lands filed down into grooves at the muzzle.

Not to disagree, but I don't think anyone necessarily filed anything on that rifling. To me it looks just like one of the two most common forms of rifling done at that time. The other common type looks more like 7 (sometimes eight) flats forming the shape of the bore, without the deeper cut grooves. Also, then as now, the deep cut groove type could be done with square bottom cut grooves or round bottom cut grooves.
I have rifles with all 3 styles of rifling, and none of them have a coned bore. That's not to say that someone couldn't file the bore to cone it. I'm only saying that it doesn't need to be coned to have rifling that looks like that.  

John

[Dphariss]

You might want the read TK Dawson's description of the bore on the Hoffman and Campbell rifle in Baird's "Hawken Rifles..." before attacking the barrel with a file.
I am not sure that the originals were filed and the relief was not extreme in the 50 cal H&C rifle.

Dan

[Curtis]

Herb,

Her are a couple of pics of the muzzle on an original Leman I own.  The lands and grooves are filed in the manner of which you are speaking, effectively coning the muzzle.  Accuracy is "minute of squirrel".





Off topic, but just for conversation's sake, here is a pic of the rear sight as well.



Curtis

[Don Stith]

The coning you ask about is not unique to Hawkens by any means, and not universally done on them. My S. Hawken half stock does not have it, while the fullstock does. It is also present on the Lancaster 1792 contract rifles.   Just a quick survey shows it on Bedford rifles,Union/Snyder PA, Wm Antes , Vincents in Ohio ,and Sheets in VA. I do not have a good way to measure for quantifying the angle, but in all cases I examined the lands are coned and the grooves filed to a greater degree. The coning of the lands varies from 1/16 inch to 3/16 down from the muzzle. Ed Rayl has done this on some barrels I have ordered from him.

[Herb]

Thanks to all.  Don, I thought the way to do this is to file the land down maybe a 1/4 or 3/16" length.  Then to even out the length of the filed notches, lightly cone the muzzle.  I'll ask Doc Gary White about this before I do it when I take my rifle to him for advice on final shaping and finishing.

[brobb]

When you look at the muzzle posted by Curtis remember that you are not seeing bore diameter but the diameter from the bottom of one groove to the bottom of the opposite groove.  For example: .50 cal with .012 groove depth.  What appears to be a .50 cal bore is actually .50 +.012 +.012 = .524.  Notice that their is no crown or chamfer on Curtis's Leyman which would make it almost impossible to load this barrel if it had not been treated in this manner.

Bruce Robb

[Don Stith]

Curtis will need to answer this, but the middle picture appears to show a crown on the lands. Bore or caliber, if you will, is land to land not groove to groove

[blaksmth]

 My Dad when he would crown a barrel he all ways did it with a square needle file he called it a (Patch folder), when we would go to the range to sight the rifle in he would take some files with him and he would shoot some and check the group and maybe file a little more on one side , he swore by this type of crown, put them on all the guns be made,  I have a 36 cal swivel breech that shoots really well and loads very easy with this crown .

[Herb]

Thanks, Blksmth.  If the lands don't end exactly the same distance from the muzzle, the ball will be blown towards the last land holding it.  I once finished up a rifle someone else started, and he had "coned" the muzzle with a round stone in a drill, except he got it lopsided.  That rifle did not need the front sight filed down because the crowning made it shoot high.  But it grouped very well.  I would expect to use a square needle file, too.

[Herb]

This is the crown of the GRRW barrel.  I have done nothing to it here.  I made the sight from silver, like the original, but I don't have a close picture of it.

Photo of Jim's sight in the background.  Track's Jim Bridger sight to left, which is too small, then the one I filed out of a piece of steel like the one to the right.

My first shots through this rifle.  I marked a center line with ink on the back of the rear sight and held on that.  Load data on the targets.  The second target, I held the left edge of the front sight against the left edge of my mark (wrong), then the right edge in line with the right edge for the rest of the shots.  Now I know where to file my rear notch, which I did.  After my final shaping, I'll install the key escutcheons.  Linen that crushed to .013 was too thick for the .530 balls, but the .009 crush patch worked with no cut patches.  The bore is very smooth, easy to load.

[blaksmth]

Herb,

 I was looking at a rifle that Pop made for my cousin .50 cal  Gr. Douglas  XX bbl, Hawken style that has a crown filed  and it is angled  in the bore about .050 thousands inside the muzzle  and this one loads and shoots well , my cousin has won a lot of turkey shoots with this one.
 
 I borrowed it from him to get some ideas on a rifle that I am building it has 32 inlays, 24 german silver inlays including the ( pineapple) style patch box with 8 abalone teardrops around the patch box on a dark walnut stock. I allways thought it was a real nice rifle My cousin was 32 yrs old  at the time and is now I believe close to 60 but rifle still shoots good.

 That GRRW barrel  good bbls and good looking rifle you are building

[Herb]

.050 sounds like a deep crown.  Thanks for that info, would have expected that filed angle to be longer, but I never saw one.  Could you post photos of this interesting rifle?

[Herb]

Shifty or Bruce Robb, have you found which issue of Muzzleblasts that muzzle treatment article was in?  I have both MB and ML magazine back to about 1993.  Been  too busy building this rifle to look for it.  Herb

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

This is the muzzle of my Uberti Deringer pistol.  It is a reproduction, but I think an excellent one.  Whether the muzzle treatment is authentic, I'm just guessing at, since I don't have original stuff to compare it to, but I think it is. The bore itself has seen no coning or crowning - just a very small radius of polishing.  But the grooves have been filed down into the bore .065".  I have no idea if this is the same treatment as the Bridger Hawken, or all those jaegers in Steinschloss Jaegerbuschsen, but it is interesting.

[blaksmth]

 Herb,
 I aint forgot on the pics of the rifle , I need to get some pics first, and I don't have a digital camera, to download to pc I guess I will have to get a cheap one

                        blaksmth

[Hungry Horse]

Blksmth;

  For heavens sake be careful when working with abalone shell. the dust is poisonous, and should not be worked dry. More than a few craft workers have become very sick, and some even died from these toxins.

                        Hungry Horse