Thursday, August 25, 2016

12.7 x 44 Boolit


Image



As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.

In the effort to collect data on the Swedish Remington Rolling Block rifle chambered for 12.7 x 44,  I have run into the typical online asstards who have no friends or family willing to deal with them, and their pets all ran away, so they sit in front of keyboards posting shit for brain stuff they have no comprehension over.

The reality is that old Remington Rolling Blocks never were intended for high pressure modern powders. The Europeans in the lowlands shoot piles of these Swedish designed rifles without a glitch, because they are not morons trying to make this rifle do what it never was intended to do.

In explanation, the 50 70 American or the 12.7 x 44 was designed to put a big hole into enemy soldiers by soldiers who could not shot that well, but if you lined up 10,000 bad shooters, and told them to fire a volley at another massed line of soldiers, they tended to hit something eventually.

These rifles work well on buffalo, elk, bear, deer, moose etc... because the old adage is, enough lead, moving at good speed, kills, and that is what these old darlings do.

They do require some work in figuring out what bore diameter they have, but that is not some great lunar landing. It is just soft lead pounded down the bore and measured, so you know what bore diameter you have.

Then you get your cast bullets, resize them to the proper diameter and you will have the accuracy you need.

As for casing, as they are expensive. The best method is ordering fire formed cases from someone else. These cases are going to last forever as you are not going to overload them, so that is the reality. If one cares to play with the making of cases, the best is to trim 50 70 brass on the rim and then obtaining the correct length sizing for the 12.7 so it chambers easily, one has all the shells they will ever hope for.

Loading is basically following the careful mandate of correct FFg powder dropped into the case, a powder wad, correct compression of the black powder as with black powder you must not have air spaces in it due to pressures which will build up, seating the bullet and then carefully making certain that all your new creations chamber and eject before use, and you basically have your oyster in a world of pearls.

None of this is hard, but you have to PAY ATTENTION, and stop thinking you are not a complete man unless you have some magnum loads. If you want magnum, buy a Weatherby. These are black powder firearms from the horse and buggy era, when bison still were in America in herds and George Custer had not been murdered by his own government and the Indian terrorists were duped into taking the blame.

The reason people have problems with these guns is because people are morons. The much publicized blow up  that killed some European, was because the idiot chambered some smokeless 500 Nitro Express into this old gun and touched it off. The idiot must have used some hammer to pound the cartridge in there, but having some sense in you probably would not bake a cake with an atomic bomb, should probably keep anyone from having the gun metal break down.

The helpful people have added a great deal to the information on this Swedish firearm which has slain volumes of moose for years and some of the best insights I have saved in my files and publish the latest posts here. The main point is, the people in the Netherlands fire these guns off all the time. Americans get the leftovers, but the best of these rifles stayed in Europe and those that penetrated America are fine rifles too. The one in my possession has a clean bore and looks to have had about as much wear as a new gun out of the box.

This firearm never was a 70 grain black powder gun and if all matches to the majority of what these guns are, excluding the daisies that are oddballs, the loading of this gun was 65 grains of FFg powder with an appropriately bullet in the 350 grain range, seated to the proper length. If the bullet is heavier, it will be longer and one has to adjust with less powder.

With that, this additional information is included as it is almost impossible to find good data on the 12.7 with all the morons out acting like experts and getting in the way.


The 12,7x44R is probably one of the most used black powder cartridges today. We call it the European .50-70, it’s almost identical in the measurements. We all so use the same bullets and size them back to .510.

I have great success up to 300 meters. The Husqvarna and Remington RB rifles are in abundance over here (the Netherlands), for a mint condition rifle you pay about $ 800.– and for a regular one about $ 150.– (a perfect shooter). Barrel qualities like the one from ******Wallice are thankfully no exception from Husqvarna.

The brass can be bought in the US by Huntingtons it’s from the German manufacture Horneber. The quality is absolutely superb and almost every one of us here prefer them above the Bertram cases. Indeed all so forming them from 348 Winchester is possible, but it is a waist of money and brass. Some of us even size (case forming) .50-70 brass back to 12,7x44R and turn the rim back a bit to fit the chambers. This is the most cheapest and easiest way when you don’t have a choice.

In the past I even turned my own brass (see my pictures), the left one is the self made case and the right one is the Horneber case. The right one I all so did some paper patching with the bullets, just for the fun of it. But these rifles actually don’t need it.

The bullets that I use are the two left ones on the picture. The most left one is with a Lyman mould the other one is with a Seaco mould. In the past I used even Lee Minie-Ball bullets. For load data we use the .50-70 data without any troubles.

These RB rifles are a lot of fun to use and come with an unlimited amount of different calibers (a reloaders dream). I have Husqvarna’s in .50-70 / 12,7x44R and 11mm Danish / .45-70 / 7mm / 43 Spanish, Egyptian and Reformado / .577BPE / .450 BPE / .12Gauge. All of them are original (not modified!!). The RB’s are all so made over here by Francotte, Carl Gustav, Remington- Husqvarna and Beaumont, to name a few. The differences are in the detail.

I think that the Husqvarna RB rifles are just fun to have, especially when they are good shooters. :razz:

Peter (Stampede)


For those of you that cant get the case drawing to make scense then here is some conversions:

1 Lod = 4 Kvintin = 15,56gram ~ 240gr
1 Kvintin = 3,89gram ~ 60gr
1 Linie/strå = 3,14mm ~ 0.123"

So:
Powder weight 1 kvintin = 60gr
Boolit weight 5.85 kvintin = 351gr
Cartridge weight 2,3 lod = 552gr

Case length 13,3 linier = 1.64"
Boolit diameter 4 linier = 0.494"



The "small" diameter was due to the fact that the Swedes had more than 30,000 Vredes M1860 frontloaders that they wanted to convert instead of discard (money you know!). So the boolit was made small enough to go into a tight chamber and at the same time obturate to fill the deep rifling (like the original Minié boolit).

Mine (3) has always had a chamber big enough to chamber the Lee 515/450 boolit and shoot it very well.

Here is the maker of "Jämttangen" as it is called in the scandinavian countries:

Ole Tinggaard
Box 61
83070 Hammerdal.

Hjem +4664410764
Mobil +46706890473

The original cartridge had no grease in the cavity and no wad.


The Swiss sold to shooters in the U.K. goes by the Swiss grain size numbering system.
Converted to the U.S. Market system.
Swiss #1 powder is sold here as 4Fg.
Swiss #2 powder is sold here as 3Fg.
Swiss #3 powder is sold here as 2Fg.
Swiss #4 powder is sold here as 1&1/2 Fg.
Swiss #5 powder is sold here as 1Fg.


I have a 12.7x44mm in a Swedish roller. I use 450/400 Nitro cases which when cut to length are a perfect fit to the original extractor.

My load is also 65gn Swiss No2 (FFG) and the Lyman 515141 bullet sized to .510


 



agtG