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Hello, I am wondering if anyone knows the inside geometry of the nipples on an 1855-1875 English double barrel shotgun. This is a family heirloom I would like to shoot again.They are pretty beat up but I would like to dress them up and clear out the passage.Trying not to replace them if I can help it. When building flintlock longrifles I don't use a liner for the touchhole, just drill a .063 hole as they did in the old days before liners. But this is the first percussion gun I have dealt with.Thanks for any help, Mike K [img]http://s1361photobucket.com[/img]

Have the nipples been replaced with modern made ones or are they original to the gun?

One way to determine the diameter of the flash hole through the nipple is to buy you a set of oxy/acetylene torch tip cleaners. They are tiny rods (wires) with "serrations" part the way up the shank, used to run in and out of the holes in a torch tip to clean out soot or slag. The ends of them are not serrated. They are all different sizes. One of them will just barely pass through the hole in the nipple, and the next size larger won't go into it. You an extrapolate between the diameters of the two to get a very close hole size. All nipples don't have the same size flash hole anyway. They run between .020" and .030". The one thing I can tell you for certain is that the hole is nowhere near as big as a touch hole on a flinter. When the flash hole in a percussion nipple "burns out" it gets too big, and the result is too much blowback. I have seen people shooting them so burned out that the blowback would recock the hammer after ignition. It takes a cool, calm head to not flinch when that much gas is coming back out of the nipple.

SRH

They are original to the gun.I'll get a set of torch tip cleaners.thanks.

Heck, I always thought it was a neat trick when the hammer on my .451 Enfield Volunteer would self cock. Boy! those nipples had a short life. Though I only shoot flinters I always take the .451 as a backup in wet weather. It has accounted for several spectacular elk and deer kills, some at long range. Elmer Keith was right--slow and heavy trumps fast and light. (Don't mean to hijack the thread.)

If you have a micrometer to measure them you will be ahead of the game. The little box that they are contained in sometimes has the dia. of each wire printed on it somewhere, but I'd rather measure it if I could.

Good luck, SRH

have three different mic's i use at work,auto mechanic.also a hand turn tiny drill set,very small bits used for cleaning windshield washer nozzles.i'll look at those also.

Nipples were always designed to be worn out and replaced, I highly doubt the ones that are on it are original to the gun, but they may very well be old. Shooting a gun with old, worn out nipples is not a good idea. They need to be removed and the threads in the breech plugs need to be examined. Many times they are worn/corroded and might need to be freshened out to a slightly larger size.

There is a company called Track of the Wolf that specializes in muzzleloading supplies. They make oversized 1/4-28 (if that is the original thread size in your gun) nipples in increments of .005. You might need to get one (or more) of their oversized refreshing taps to get a good fit for a new nipple.

I can not stress enough to not shoot antique worn out nipples. If you really want to keep them, remove them and replace with new ones when you want to shoot the gun. When you hang the gun up for display put the old ones back in.

yes i have purchased stuff from Track when building my flint longrifles.my concern is the thread pitch of the nipples,British vs. American.This is an English gun, don't know if I can get the same thread pitch.Ran into that problem with flint rifle kit 5 yrs. ago for the lock screws.

Track carries one of the two common sizes of BSF (British Std Fine) threaded nipples

Very true. However, 1/4-28 is very common thread size for British nipples as well. First thing to do is determine what you have, you might get lucky and it will be a common thread size.