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I'm interested in hearing if any of you own black powder express oval bore rifles, by Charles Lancaster or others. How do they shoot? Any difference in loading for them vs traditional rifling or Henry rifling? Asking as I now have two, one in 450 3.25" and a second, slightly earlier rifle, in 500/450 3.25". Both are hammer doubles with Jones under levers from the mid to late 1880s.

TIA,
Chris

Congrats Chris. I've been trying to get one but haven't been lucky in the bidding as of yet.

The oval bore Lancasters will shoot paper wrapped bullet Express cartridges loaded with black powder as well as any of the other rifling styles.
There's nothing special needs to be done.

Thank you Mike and Mike. I'll report how the 450 3 1/4" does when I get home from traveling. The 500/450 needs a little fix to a chipped buttstock damaged in transit from Europe, so that won't be immediate.

FWIW, here's a few pics from the 450BPE 3.25". Colors are rich and the engraving sharp. Unfortunately the barrels were reblacked and the their engraving is a bit soft. Might address that after I find out how it shoots.

Chris,

Nice rifles. Hopefully, you bring them out next time to shoot!

Ken

Lancaster built spectacular guns and rifles, that one sure is great looking!

Steve;

You are very correct. And so did his brother Alfred Lancaster.
Look at this spectacular hammer gun by Charles Lancaster up for auction at Holts, maybe it should be termed spectacular deluxe....

https://www.holtsauctioneers.com/as...++1815+&refno=++232790&saletype=

Then look at this super rare Lancaster bolt action .280 rimless oval bore rifle.

https://www.holtsauctioneers.com/as...++1107+&refno=++231258&saletype=

Steve,
I have had two really nice Lancaster percussion rifles. The shotgun that you linked to is quite nice. Hard to beat a Lancaster. Many folks don't know it but Lancaster guns and rifles were more costly than a Purdey in Victorian times.

Steve

Steve;

I have coming today (it is on the Fed Ex truck as I write this) Alfred Lancaster 12 bore hammergun no 1 of a pair from 1873 30 inch damascus barrels (English made) formerly the property of William Douglas the Duke of Hamilton. Still has the Duke of Hamilton family crest in gold in the butt stock. Snap underlever made on the Emme and Woodward action design. I am satisfied that the action was built by Emme for Alfred Lancaster.

As you inferred both Charles Lancaster, jr and his brother Alfred Lancaster were the London gunmaking favorites of the British nobility during the 1870's. As a matter of fact the Duke of Hamilton gave to the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) a pair of Alfred 20 hammerguns built for the Duke a year or so after he had the 12 bores built of which one of I will soon be viewing. The 20 bore Alfred Lancaster hammerguns remain in the Royal gun collection at Sandringham.

Stephen Howell

One time I was in the Westley Richards shop in London and was offered a Lancaster oval bore double in 280 Ross that had been made for a minor Maharajah. Unfortunately, they wanted $800 for it.

The Lancaster that had arrived needing a new butt pad is now ready to try out. It's in 500/450 3.25". My plan is to take 500/416 brass and see if I can neck that up in my 500/450 2.75" dies. If not, then I was going to try fireforming with cream of wheat or grits, but that takes a 45 min drive each way to where I can shoot. Hopefully necking up with dies will work.

Any advice on either approach?

CJF,
If you wait until your wife has gone shopping and are willing to change to worn out polishing media (will not attract mice) as the filler, you should be able to fire form a few cases somewhere around the house. Since there is no bullet involved, you only have to consider the noise and the mess. In two different houses I have fireformed a few cases by shooting from the basement to the crawl space, through the access door. Another option is an enclosed garage, if you have a "shop vac". If nothing else, you could establish the necessary charge weight before having to drive to the range. I don't have good experience necking cases up with loading die expanding plugs where the final case needs to be the same length as the donor case. If you feel the need to neck them up, you should make, or have someone else make, an expander plug with a longer gentle taper. Expanding the necks by either method will shorten the cases but having to trim to "square up" uneven necks caused by loading die expanders make it worse. Just a couple suggestions.
Mike

2 suggestions. One is to fire form as tapered expanders can sometimes lead to odd necks. Of course, in a case that size it may not make much of a difference. The other suggestion is, if fire forming, don't use grits. For one thing they really make a stink that way and for another thing, that is a criminal waste of one of nature's most perfect foods.

I wish I could fireform at home but where we live here in town that's not something I think will go unnoticed by the neighborhood. Re grits value as a food for the gods, does that diminish after expiration date plus 2 years? I've got a package in the pantry that I've been holding onto for fireforming as it's now quite old.

I've got Unique powder. 10grs sound right?

CJF,
The way to know if a fireforming load is right is to try it. If you load the whole batch and they (or some) don't fill out, you have to drive back and try again.

The rule is that not much attention will be paid to one bang but a second one will draw attention. Try just one and see how it works for you.

Mike & HalfaDouble, you both hinted at the solution...trying the fireforming loads before driving to the range. Well I can report after driving 80 minutes round trip that 10.5gr of Unique is NOT enough to form 500/416 brass into 500/450 3.25". Basically nothing happened to the brass. It was entertaining to shoot a grit shotgun load 10 times. Sounded like what a BPE round would if suppressed

On a positive note, the other Charles Lancaster rifle, the 450 BPE in 3.25", shot very well with 300gr JHP .452" NfB loads that also worked quite well in my Edward Lang, and even better with .458" lead flat nosed bullets weighing 350gr with a NfB load using 4198.











I'll have to post some side by side comparisons of the two rifles. The earlier serial number rifle strangely has rebounding locks, while the newer rifle has the older style non-rebounding locks. Both have stalking safeties.

Note: we had rain yesterday and last night, so I did not move the shooting bench at our range due to the mud, and the range for these was only 22yds. The lighter jacketed bullets were chosen because my Lang has tight bores and I'd loaded them for rifle. With 45gr of 4198 these were doing 1799fps on average for 4 shots with a std dev of 8.9. The larger (.458 vs .452) and heavier bullets (350 vs 300gr) that generated the pictured target were faster at an average velocicty of 1865fps for 4 shots with a std dev of 15.8.

It was not uncommon for an owner to send a loved rifle or shotgun back to the maker to have the locks converted to rebounding.

CJF,
That is the way I learned and wouldn't be surprised if HalfaDouble did too.
Mike

It might be that Unique burns a bit slow for the task. I use a faster pistol powder or shotgun powder- and, Cream of Wheat;-)

Tried it out in the garage, discharging into a trashcan. I had ear pro on. Not too loud. Wife was on the porch listening to music with ear buds in and didn't hear it. 14gr Unique was enough. Sorry, still using up the ancient grits.

CJF,
You don't need to feel sorry about using grits, it's your project and your house, you can do what you want. BTW discharging into a trashcan is a good solution to the "mouse attraction problem", thanks for the hint.
Mike

Mike,

The trashcan even had one of those hinged lids, so everything stayed inside. So in the garage 14gr was 1 for 1 successfully blowing out the case. I replicated that load and tried it at the range for another 8. Only one formed. Weird. I did not yet try Curl's method for annealing the case mouths. That's next.

The one round I did try was 12 o'clock on the paper at 25yds, but quite high...4-5". That was with a 350gr unpatched .458" bullet over 45gr 4198.

Also shot two 500BPE rifles with NfB loads. Went well. Will start a different thread on those results.

Chris

That's great about the hinge lidded trash can. It must be working like a giant suppressor. Strange about not working at the range. I wonder if the powder is getting mixed in the grits during the trip and not burning the same. Of course, Unique is down about 32 powders on the burn rate chart. I've used faster powders like Bullseye or 700x or Red Dot or Clays, but I would start with a lighter load of those and work up until it does the trick.

An update on fireforming and the 500/450 and 450 Lancasters.

First, I did anneal cases using the kitchen stove (gas) and the hot fingers method. I tried new Jamison 500/416 cases for this, not the ones that I've tried forming twice with Unique. So annealed then loaded with a light charge of a fast pistol powder, HP-38, plus grits and kapok to hold it in. Of the 10 cases I brought, 9 formed. At least one still has a tight mouth; perhaps not annealed soft enough. Next step is to anneal the original 10 cases that resisted forming and re-try 14grs of Unique to see if it was the original lack of annealing or the powder that failed.

I was quite excited to try 5 previously formed cases as live rounds in the 500/450 rifle. Load was 4198 with kapok and a .458" LFN 350gr bullet. First 3 rounds were touching. 4th opened it up and I don't think I pulled that one (who knows?). 5th came back to the original 3. So the 4 were 1" center to center, but the 5th opened it up to 2". Range 30yards. Very promising.

On the flip side, the 450BPE rifle (3.25") really didn't like some black powder rounds I had left over from an earlier effort with a different rifle. Those were 110gr 2Fg Swiss, 325gr FN 20-1 SPG, using bullets from RCBS mould 45-325FN, .458”. Unpatched. Velocity was too low at 1618fps. Results were all over the map.

Will post more pictures soon.

The 500/450 and some promising early results with 350gr lead bullets, unpatched, and 4198.

Here are a few more pics of the earlier Lancaster, in 500/450 3.25" that I've been working to form cases for from 500/416. So far, the few rounds I've completed and fired have shown promise that this rifle will shoot as well as it's new brother, the 450BPE.

From what I have read and from my experience with my Lancasters, the bullet needs to be sized for the minimum bore size and soft enough to upset to fill the bore under BP push. I got very good results with PP soft bullets in my 450 BPE. I also got excellent results with my little 360 EX using naked cast bullets for a 38 Special but horrible results with hard cast, GC bullets (keyholing @ 50 yds and side of barn at 100yds.)

Chris,

Your Lancaster double rifles are beautiful! Thanks for posting them.

Curly

Thanks Curly, I feel quite lucky to have them.

I'm hoping to get to the range again today or tomorrow to try out 12 rounds in the 500/450 and see how that rifle groups with a proper sample size of rounds. I also plan to shoot the 450 Lancaster with a higher charge of 4198 based on a load from Wright's 4th edition. My current load of 45gr 4198 and a 300gr JHP are printing high and velocity is under historical speed for this round by 100-125fps. I'm hoping the higher charge brings that down without introducing crossing impacts.

Chris

Chris,

How was your new grouping and what load did you use?

BTW, although your earlier 50 yd group was very high, it was excellent, very tight with both barrels regulated.

It was not a great outing, other than letting a dad and his two sons shoot a double rifle for the first time.

I ran into a couple of problems. First, I forgot to print off different targets for 50 yards vs the usual 30 I do load development at. The targets I had with me had a very small bulls eye, so other than testing for elevation, it was hard to do anything about horizontal dispersion. I had blue masking tape with me and should have made my own on the spot. Next biggest issue was primer failures. I had a squib load and a hang fire. I'm using CCI BR-2 large rifle primers. I don't know if I got case lube on them or what, but I definitely had inconsistent ignition issues I didn't have last time.

Do you use an over-powder wad card before your foam filler? I am not. The cartridge cases I use store the rounds with the bullets facing down. I'm wondering if the powder is migrating into the kapok filler.

The last challenge is that my range is the primary outdoor range for a number of local police departments and 3 different towns were using it when I got there, so I had to use the main rifle range, and not the smaller berms where you're shooting by yourself.

Any advice on primers? Do you use Federal 215s or magnum primers?

Do you think that ignition issues are likely why my Garmin was recording some pretty inconsistent velocities (I weighed each charge and all the cases had been cleaned).

Chris,

Too bad that things didn't work out.

I have had primer issues also. I use Winchester LR primers and have had a few 360EX loads not fire, even though there is strong indentation on the primers. I attribute some of my failure to fire as perhaps the primer somehow got contaminated.

I have not seen much difference in performance using different primers. I use Winchester because that is what I could find. Previously, I used Federal primers.

In a different type weapon, I had the primer ignite but the powder failing to ignite. The bullet was driven into the barrel by the primer. Now that was my Ruger SR 454 and the load was 30 gr H110. I I am glad (lucky) I realized the problem before firing another round. I now use magnum primers with that gun.

However, with low pressure loads with the powder against the primer (held in place by the filler), I believe the issue is a primer issue. It sounds to me like there is inconsistent igniting the powder, giving inconsistent velocities. While I would think that regular primers would ignite your powder load, you might try magnum primers, just to see if there is a difference.

Now the main spring on some older guns will not fire magnum primers and one rifle I shot would only fire LP primers.

I don't use over-powder wads. I don't thing that the amount of powder that migrates into the filler is significant (if any powder does actually migrate)

I use a packing foam rod filler that is cut so that the base pushes against the powder and the top is at the case mouth. Seating the bullet compresses the foam filler.

Now, all that being said, the last time I was at the range, I got very inconsistent velocities with my Sherwood but fairly nice group. I was using 12.5 gr of 4198 which fills the case very well. However, with a long, skinny case and long stick powder, there could be an ignition issue.

Thanks Roy.

I don't know if I contaminated the primers as I was using the primer slide built into my Redding press, and feeding that one primer at a time, which is what I always do when reloading for express rifles, since the round count is manageable. But I may have gotten sizing wax/lube on them? Don't know. I have magnum primers here and have used those before. Will switch to those and keep the BR-2s for modern (e.g., smaller) cases.