doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Surprising vitality of ancient ammunition

DON’T try this at home, although interesting it was not the brightest of ideas.

I bought at auction 2 boxes of Kynoch .295 or .300 Rook “Non-Rusting”. The part filled box had original contents and empties. The then full box pictured above had a variety of rounds from different sources some solid and some hollow point, a cartridge collector’s dream.

The block of 25 on the right with brass primers (some stamped ICI) are almost certainly non-corrosive with No. 69 .177 primers.

The 2 head stamped ELEY are at least 100 years old Kynoch taking over Eley centerfire rifle production in about 1924.

The rest with no head stamps, copper Boxer primers are even older, and were probably made over 123 years ago in the reign of Queen Victoria.

Last Sunday was the HBSA spring rifle competition at Bisley. I had loaded up nitro ammunition for the “Greener” for smokeless ammunition but none for the “Holland” for black powder only.

It occurred to me that the really old stuff was probably black powder loads and I could use them up in the Holland’s IF they worked.

Course of fire is 13 rounds sitting at 50 yards, and 13 standing at 25. To save time putting up sighting targets and shoot more details we use the muzzle loader rule of best 10 shots to count for score.

Having shot the smokeless event, I explained to the Range Officer what I was intending so he could watch to see that I was using black powder (they were).

At 50 yards I got off 13 rounds (a couple required re-cocking the hammer for a second strike and there was one slight hangfire as well as a total mis-fire).

My score of 53 ex 70 was not much worse than my admittedly indifferent nitro 50 yard score and bettered the 50 yard score of the only other black powder competitor in the Holland’s.

Half of my scoring shots hit the black (7 and 6 rings) which is about the size of a Rook’s chest, the rest being above and below the black.

I did not have a dead Rook handy, but I believe all 13 shotholes could have been covered by the carcass with the wings folded.

So far so good, but at 25 yards I had misfires followed but a squib that left the bullet stuck in the bore and I had to retire with no score at 25.

The stuck bullet pushed out easily, and I have boiled out the corrosive fouling with no damage to the rifling,

The cases had clearly become embrittled with age as can be seen with the stuck bullet under the box.

I won’t do it again and will try to find the time to load at least 26 black powder rounds before the next competition, but I find it interesting that ammunition perhaps over 125 years old would still largely function and still if well aimed kill a Rook.

It doesn't take some brass cartridge cases long to become brittle. I had some Winchester .22 WMR ammunition that wasn't but about 15 years old that split lengthwise, as you show. It may be a function of the manufacturing processes that cause aging straight-walled cases to do this.

As a testament to how long black powder can stay functional I offer this account. A friend of mine has been a lifelong War Between The States artifact collector. He used the best metal detectors that could be found at the time in his searching. The brand was Nautilus, AIR. Anyway, he found a cannonball at a depth of several feet with the metal detector and unearthed it, then in cleaning it he found that it was an explosive round that obviously had not gone off on impact. He disassembled it somehow and removed the black powder inside, which he said was actually grayish in appearance. He was an avid flintlock shooter/hunter as well and loaded his rifle with it and it actually fired. This was in the 1980s, so the powder was at least 115-120 years old.

I have a supremely accurate 6/284. When I built it years ago, I made a couple of hundred cases using bench rest prep (anneal, reduce twice, neck turn in and out, primer pocket etc). I loaded up several boxes of the most accurate load and then for one reason or another didn't shoot it for 3 years. I took the gun out one day with 60 rounds and noticed at the range that the necks of over 1/2 the cases were split all the way down. They worked and shot fine due to the small neck chamber, but I had put a lot of work into those cases. I re-annealed the unsplit cases along with the not yet loaded cases, and never had any more problems. I had even more extreme problems trying to star crimp paradox loads for a 16 ga.

It is hard to overestimate the problems you can have with post annealed formed cases. I suspect in those days, they made them primarily for one shot use in rook rifles.

"My dear fellow, my butler can't even be bothered to recharge spent casings."

The Brit's put the fru in frugality.
Mostly because they had nothing after the war.

I'd like to see some Rooks being shot and prepared for the table.
I want to see what kinds of shots those rifles were set up for.
I've always heard it described as waiting for the Rooks to be almost ready to take flight, shot while standing on the edge of the nest strengthening their flight muscles.
I guess like sqab, only out of a tree.
That lump of lead must really pelt them even on a glancing shot.

'Sing a song of six pence a pocket full of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie....

Stan,

I anticipated that if I could get the primers to detonate the the black powder would still produce an explosive effect, and that proved to be the case. Apart from the one that squibbed everything else that went bang reached the target at about normal elevation.

Fudd, for those with more biddable butlers (who would no doubt delegate the task to an under-keeper, second gardener or scullery maid with strict instructions not to smoke) Dixon made this combination mould and loading tool which I featured in a recent post.

Note it is nade for the early Boxer primers.

I doubt if the upper classes bothered with re-loading, other than the remittance man scraping a living in the Colonies.

At home they would send an order to their gunmaker who would put it on account and hope that the customer would settle at the end of the same year (some didn’t, ever - particularly if afflicted by slow horses and fast women).

Clapper,

During the war thousands of starlings were netted in Norfolk , plucked, dressed and shipped in cardboard boxes to the London poultry markets. The final stage before shipping was to choose which rubber stamp to apply - “Snipe”, “Plover” or “Quail”.

Young Rooks in season were a country staple food well before the Wars, going back at least to Victorian times.

Yes, the only time that I shot Rooks properly with a .300 Army and Navy the 80 grain hollow points opened up and spoilt a lot of breast meat.

Hrm. I'm wondering if those embrittled split cases weren't caused by the mercuric priming compounds of the day. I mean, brass work-hardens, but brass sitting still isn't getting worked much. Are those cracked ones from the non-headstamped lot?

The traditional date to shoot at 'perchers', that is young rooks just hatched out thinking about their first flight, is the first weekend in May, so very soon.

They used to live in Elm trees, but since all the elms died they have switched to anything tall. Rooks are vegetarian, and prefer to live next to a field of cows so that they can eat the insects hatching in the cow pats. Maybe that is one reason that we don't eat them much anymore...

HB