Removing rifling at the breech

[Old Ford2]

Has anyone tried removing the rifling at the beech?
Would making the powder area smooth ( no rifling ) assist in cleaning and perhaps better burning of powder if the chamber was mirror smooth?
Fred

[Majorjoel]

I will be the first to admit that I am no BP ballistics expert but I would think that you would run into problems by doing this. The patch that engages the rifling needs to be tightly fitted. It seems that you would lose this fit at the breech and with a shot fired, the patch and ball would separate before it was suppose to. Just my logic and overdose of coffee this morning.

[Ky-Flinter]

The patch that engages the rifling needs to be tightly fitted. It seems that you would lose this fit at the breech and with a shot fired, the patch and ball would separate before it was suppose to.

And I think you would have problems with cleaning.  Patches would likely come off the jag in the larger "chamber" area.

-Ron

[Hungry Horse]

I guarantee that if you use traditional materials, and technology, you will never discover anything that the old timers haven't already tried. If this was the slick answer to any muzzleloading problem, you would have seen at least one example. I suspect cleaning problems, and patching issues, would be pretty likely.

                  Hungry Horse

[Acer Saccharum]

It's almost like you'd be creating a forcing cone. The patched ball should NOT go below the rifling, or the patch may get displaced during firing.

[Old Ford2]

My query to this is if anyone has ever seen this done.
No unlike a modern day bottle neck cartridge, but yes not having he ball seated so deep as to enter the larger part of the chamber.
Would it give higher velocities? Kind of like the old Pope cartridges.
For sure this is not traditional muzzleloading.
Only an inquiry.
Best regards
Fred

[mark esterly]

It would be interesting the first time a ball was seated without powder

[Jerry V Lape]

Wouldn't it work better if the rifling went to almost the bottom then, instead of removing rifling, drill out the rest of the barrel and/or long breech plug with a smooth sub caliber powder chamber?  And aren't there already examples of this, at least in percussion breech systems?  I think Hugh advocated a flintlock system as well. 

[Acer Saccharum]

I built a rifle with this breech style, hoping for a faster ignition. But in practice, I see no advantage over a traditional flat faced breech. An advantage is if you dry-ball, the ball stops before it occludes the vent, so you can easily trickle powder into the gun and then clear the load. The disadvantage is that it's quite difficult to clean. I made up a special tip for cleaning the breech, but it's just not worth the effort to make this style breech over a flat style breech.

[Jerry V Lape]

Tom,   Agree there is minimal benefit over a flat faced breech plug and making the assembly is more difficult to make and repair.  But my point was why reinvent a system that isn't at least as practical as the one in your diagram versus the problem chamber of the original question. 

[Kermit]

K.I.S.S.?
 

[Old Ford2]

Thank you for the in-put guys.
Always and ever I have been assembling rifle barrels as is the norm, but wondered if this concept ever crossed some "NUT" gun maker's brain, making me the only one.
Have a great day!
Fred

[Bob Roller]

Acer,
At the time of Henry Nock,this type of breech did help with igniting
low quality powders supposedly by sending a jet of flame thru the
center of the main charge.Tom Dawson and I made a few of these breeches
and concluded that with the powders we had then in the late 60's and early
70's,the idea had little merit.But going back in time to Nock's day,apparently
there were wide variances in powder quality as far as speed of ignition and
terminal velocity was concerned.

Bob Roller

[Daryl]

Has anyone tried removing the rifling at the beech?
Would making the powder area smooth ( no rifling ) assist in cleaning and perhaps better burning of powder if the chamber was mirror smooth?
Fred

Take the barrel off the stock - shove the breech into a container of water and flush out the fouling with a pumping action of a patch on a jag- rifling or not, the bore is perfectly cleaned.
If the rifling was removed, and patched ball seated below the 'rifling' start, there is the possibility of gas blow-by which will usually destroy accuracy.

  It is highly unlikely the patch would be stripped off the ball when engaging the rifling though, if tight in the groove - if not, I suppose anything is possible, form gas blowy to stripping.

I have fired 12 as well as 16 bore patched round ball black powder loads from brass and plastic ctgs. in modern "rifled" shotguns, with excellent accuracy to 100 meters.  The accuracy and quite clean bores showed the patches stayed with the balls and were not stripped upon passing the roll crimps (brass cases) and entering the forcing cones and rifled bores. They were VERY tight in the hulls to start with.  That the crimp did not strip the patches, impressed me considerably.

[Acer Saccharum]

Cold water will remove fouling just fine.
Not hot water, for you will get flash rust that just won't quit, no matter how many patches you run down the bore.


This is a Nock styled breech. It has that little chamber behind the main charge. I never built one, having discovered the flat breech is so easy to clean.

[aross007]

The first of tom's pictures shows the way the chamber area looks in all of the hooked breech rifles I've seen.  I've never seen an original, but Thompson Center "Hawken" rifles are that way.  This is also the way Patent breeches for percussion rifles look.  I also have several pistols with this breech.  They are certainly harder to clean - water flush is the way to go (and thanks for steering me away from boiling water.) 
The one advantage I see for a flintlock is in the positioning of the touch hole closer to the back of the barrel. In "Recreating the American Longrifle" they talk about the tradeoff between having plenty of threads in the breech plug, and having the touchhole so far forward that the geometry of the stock is affected.  With this system you can have as long a breech as you want, and also put the touchhole as far back as you want.

Alan

[Don Getz]

Fred..........you gotta' lay off the coffee, or swith over to decaf............Don

[KentSmith]

It seems to me, this question must have been entertained when the idea of rifling a barrel first came up, along with how many grooves should I make and how deep, etc.  I wonder what the effect would be if when rifling the barrel you stopped an inch short of the anticipated position of the breechplug face, rather than removing metal from an already rifled barrel.

[Don Getz]

Kent...........not sure how you would do that.............Don

[jerrywh]

I wonder if my car would get more millage if I took off one wheel. Never the less I would only have to clean 3 wheels.
 Don. Maybe if you left out some of the grooves it would help besides stopping just short of the powder chamber, where ever that would be. This must be the result of boredom.

[Ryan McNabb]

[Don Getz]

Ryan........are you married?   If yes, she must be a great woman considering what she has to look at first thing in the morning........Don

[bob in the woods]

    The " Dude" abides !   

[Ryan McNabb]

Ryan........are you married?   If yes, she must be a great woman considering what she has to look at first thing in the morning........Don

You caught me after one too many White Russians.  All this heavy talk just blew my mind, man...

[Jerry V Lape]

Photo reminds me of an idea for an invention I thought about.  After walking through a mall and seeing all the old guys hanging out on benches while their wives shopped I noticed a great many of them have trouble keeping their lower jaw up.  Clearly they were suffering from bad cases of jerked, or dried tongues and their only physical abilities were to minimally swivel their eye balls to follow the passage of young women.  I envisioned helping these poor guys with a football helmet chin strap attached to a rubber band cut from an inner tube which they could wear to support their jaws.  Next time you are at a mall (if ever) take notice of these suffering guys and you will see what inspired the idea.  If you happen to see me sitting there with my jaw dropped it would be merciful to apply about a .54 caliber ball and end my misery.  Probably should change that to if you even see me approaching a mall (other than Cabela's or Bass Pro.)