doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Niedner Stuff

Now you've done it, Michael. That's the one Niedner I've lusted after since 1961 when I first got a copy of Ned Robert's book! Don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight!
Regards,
Ron

As a general rule if they are hard to seat they do not shoot well for me. I have no rifle that needs a mechanical bullet seater. Not sure that answered your question but if I have to force it I get another bullet.

Ron, If you should sleep and dream it's better in color.

How did the powder box work? Glass vials? My father was a watchmaker and used similar cases/boxes to hold small parts for watches. Each hole in the box held a small glass vial and its small cork stopper. But none of the vials I saw would have the capacity for a single charge of BP for Niedner's rifle.

Here is a partial answer to the question about breech-seating a Hoch bullet with a push-style seater. I have a 28-30 with a Stevens 44 action. I use a 140 grain Hoch bullet cast 1:30 or 1:25 for almost everything. I seat it with a plugged case with almost no effort. Just close the lever. You can feel the bullet engage the rifling, but the effort required is not great.

Maybe a measure of the diameter across the bullet where it has engraved by the lands and where it has not been engraved, coupled with taper and lead:tin alloy would give folks a good idea of how much force needs to be exerted (or more usefully, what diameter bullet needs to be cast).

Nice rifles indeed.

All the tools were spread thought out many lots at the Amber auction with some help from Ron Peterson and the auction people they let me go around with a box and collect all the tools and mould that fit this rifle. I never found the right nipple wrench so had to make the one shown.

After the auction I spotted, in a cardboard box, all the glass vials with stoppers for the powder box. I gave the owner my card but never heard a word back from him. In this big lot of stuff was also a box of Pope false chambers serial numbered to the rifle they were used in, I explained what they were and folks would pay good money to unite them with their rifle, never heard of these ever surfacing.

My old reliable has been delivering the goods for over 35-years. The rifle is a Niedner-Ballard stocked by my late friend John Wills. The caliber is 32-40 and throated for the Hudson bullet, even came with the correct Lyman-Hudson mould.

Sorry for the dark picture,

A little better picture.

I particularly like the table cloth� and the off-hand benchrest.

My friend, the late Crawford Hollidge (Ernest Stulshuter of Precision Shooting fame) used to use novacaine vials which he got (empty) from his dentist to store powder charges for loading at bench rest matches. He kept them in a metal file card box with a foam rubber liner in the lid, which effectively sealed them when the lid was closed. On the range, he would simply insert the neck of a primed Donaldson Wasp case in one of the vials, draw the vial out of the box and invert it and the case.

He used a Poole Tool (a variation on the Pope de-recapper) to neck size and prime his cases and a straight line bullet seater to seat the bullets. Since he used a small number of select cases for each rifle, he would simply set up and load the same cases behind the firing line between matches. His bullets were, of course, his hand made "Spin-Tru" bullets made with his own Biehler and Astles dies.