Elric
Well-Known Member
Period struggles....
Experimenting With A Ballard.
Shooting And Fishing, page 388-389, vol 30, No. 20, Aug 29, 1901
https://books.google.com/books?id=b...nepage&q=Experimenting With A Ballard&f=false
The subject of this article is a Ballard rifle recently purchased in a pawnshop. It is stamped .32-40. The trimmings and action are plain. The barrel is 28 inches long, half octagon, rifled with one turn from left to right in 16 inches. It is sighted with a fine Mogg 'scope, 32 inches long, of about 10 power, having a wind gauge front mounting, and a micrometer, split sleeve, elevating rear mounting with stop. The rifle was purchased because of two inducements: the fine telescope and the unusually good cutting of the rifling. The grooves are un-usually deep, .009. They and the lands are remarkably sharp, clear and true appearing. Apparently the cutter was passed through the bore a great many times, taking a very fine shaving at each cut, and the barrel was left as it came from the cutter, unleaded. There was no bullet mould with the rifle. Ballard rifles, like other articles not now made, and so somewhat difficult to get, are now very fashionable. In their day they were considered extremely accurate. They, like the Maynard, had, however, a serious demerit: rarely were two of a kind bored and rifled alike. Hence factory cartridges were frequently useless for both these rifles. The rifles were carefully chambered to take the shells they were named to take; a mould to cast a bullet to fit the bore was furnished with each rifle, and the rifleman had to reload his ammunition. This was usually the case; there were, of course, exceptions. But the Ballard of this article was no exception. A soft lead core, upset in the barrel, and measured with a micrometer caliper, showed the bore to be .317 in diameter, and the diameter between grooves to be .338. This, of course, precluded the accurate shooting of a .32-40 factory cartridge. The following experiments with this rifle, and the facts stated in this article and in articles on other firearms to follow, are offered with apologies to the many able riflemen who read Shooting And Fishing. Although technical terms and abundant statistics would be acceptable to the experts, there are hosts of readers of Shooting And Fishing who are but occasional readers of the paper, and occasional handlers of firearms, though fond of both. There is also a constant supply of youths attaining to manhood who read to accumulate firearm knowledge, instead of reading to pleasure a mind already stocked with knowledge. For these readers this article is written.
The .32-40 cartridge was originated by the Marlin Company. It has been adopted by other companies, all but two of which, the Remington and the Bullard, consider .319 to be the proper size for the bullet. These two last companies consider that .308 and .311, respectively, are the proper diameters. My Ballard, bored to .317, was chambered to take a shell having a .319 inside diameter at the mouth. Probably the mould made for this rifle cast a heeled bullet, similar in shape to the .22 caliber long-rifle bullet. If not, then the bullet must have had a hollow base, somewhat on the Minié principle, because there seems no other way that a bullet could be contained in the shell and also fill the barrel, when fired, completely to the depths of the grooves. No matter what other relations bullet and barrel have to each other, one relation must always be constant, if accuracy is to be maintained: the bullet, when driven through the barrel by the force of the explosion of the powder charge, must be an absolutely tight fit. A bullet .319 in diameter, starting ahead of an explosion, would have, in this Ballard, six spaces between it and the bottoms of the grooves, each about 3-32 of an inch wide by .008 of an inch deep. The impact of the gas upon the bullet would jam it into the grooves, or upset it somewhat but not enough to make it fill the grooves completely. The gas would, therefore, squirt by the bullet, cut grooves in it and otherwise deform it, and, perhaps, tip it as it left the barrel, so that it would not fly true.
The question was, then, what could be done to or for this fine hunting rifle to make it shoot as accurately as, from appearances, it was capable of shooting? Bullets to fit it seemed the first requirement. Next, in testing the rifle, the possibility of human errors in sighting and holding must be eliminated. For the making of bullets, a hole .335 was bored truly in a block of steel, in which lead plugs could be cast. From these plugs bullets of varying shapes and weights could be made on the turning lathe. For holding the rifle a machine was made of wood and metal on the principle of the machine rest devised by H. M. Pope, but differing entirely in appearance. The apparatus is in two parts, one of which clamps to the rifle barrel near the muzzle, and is a support for it. The other part holds the rifle near the rear of the forearm, is not attached to the rifle but to a firm bench, lets the rifle slide backward at recoil, is loose yet firm, and adjusts vertically and horizontally.
The next step was to lay out and prepare a range. A long and narrow glade in the forest was chosen because of the absence of wind there, Winds, especially when both strong and fickle, would greatly hinder the experiments by blowing the bullets out of line. The longest range obtainable was 150 yards. These ends were marked and stakes 25 yards apart set up between them. Each stake had on top a slender strip of light cloth, to mark what little wind might blow. A large, empty box was finally chosen as a base on which to stand the sand box bearing the target, because it could be easily moved from stake to stake if ranges were wanted less than 150 yards. The box of sand not only was a firm bearing against which to place a target, but served to catch the bullets. The bullets could then be examined for gas cutting, distortion, mushrooming, penetration, and could be remelted. Fifty pounds or more of them would be worth saving. A natural bank in the forest was a buttress to catch stray bullets. At the firing point two holes were dug 3 ½ feet deep. In each was set a stout post 8 ½ feet long and each post was braced. On top a plank, laid horizontally and true, was spiked. The rear end machine rest was screwed to the rear end of the plank. The whole was so laid out that when it lay in the rest the rifle pointed at the sand box, and from target to chamber of rifle measured 150 yards to the inch. A piece of blank white paper was secured to face of sand box, and firing was ready to begin.
There was no need to use Standard targets in the beginning. The rifle was to be shot in strings of ten to eleven if it could group its bullets closely. If a load were found which uniformly gave a close group, then, by adjusting the telescope and barrel correctly, the rifle would play on the target. In order that the telescope should be vertically above the rifle barrel—the sights of a target rifle are so held by aid of a spirit level—a plumb line was drawn on face of sand box, and one edge of target placed to it. By having one of the telescope crosshairs parallel to target edge the desired result was secured. With out the machine rest this would be a necessity, as tipping of sights complicates trajectory and line of sight. With machine rest it was a mere refinement, as, if line of sight is tipped, it is tipped the same each time. Although no good results were expected from .319 bullets, they were to be tried first, because, if by any combination or simple device they could be made to do good work, the money necessary for altering chamber of rifle could be saved. The bullets used varied from pure lead to 10 parts lead, 1 part tin. They were cast in the Ideal mould No. 31944, and weighed within a grain or two of 165 grains. They were selected for their perfect finish from many hundred cast. They were lubricated with a mixture of ozocerite, japan wax and sperm oil, the mixture being of the consistency of medium hard butter. In addition were a few, for trial, of same kind of bullets lubricated with beef tallow. Twenty-five .32-40 Winchester shells were each loaded with U. M. C. No. 2 ½ primers and 40 grains King's Semi-Smokeless powder. Unless otherwise stated, all loads contained this powder, because previous offhand trials had shown excessive fouling of the deep grooves from use of black powders. The powder was loaded into the shells with the Ideal powder measure No. 2. The machine used is not absolutely accurate, as it frequently varies a few grains either way, but is probably as good as any loading machine on the market. If great inaccuracy from any load were found, with the exception of vertical errors showing variation in powder charge, then weighing each powder charge in apothecary's scales would be worth while, but not until then. Five shots were fired as sighting shots, then two strings of 10 shots each. As expected, the result was simply shocking. Many of the bullets failed to hit the face of the sand box, 16x18 inches. Such as struck were variously located. The bullets taken from the sand showed gas cutting. Each ridge on the bullet, corresponding to a groove in the barrel, was deeply channeled. Most of the shots which hit the box were among the last ones fired, showing that the rifle shot better dirty than clean, as expected.
The powder charge was then reduced to 5 grains, and 10 shots were fired. The bullets went to all sorts of places. Only one hit the box, and that must have been by accident. The powder charge was then increased 10 grains, making 45 grains, well tapped, and the bullet seated as far in the shell as it would go by gentle pressure with the hand. The bullets were pure tea lead. Theoretically the soft bullet would be greatly upset by the heavy powder charge. Theory and practice agreed. Two strings of 10 shots each were kept within an 8-inch circle. Several groups of three shots each could be covered by a dime, a quarter, or a half dollar. Taken as a whole, the 20 shots were well scattered over the circle, showing no especial tendency to group as a body. The bullets taken from the box showed a fairly even penetration, the deepest having butted against the back of the box, the shallowest being about 2 inches behind them. Thus, the first named had penetrated 14 inches of closely packed fine, wet sand. There was considerable difference in the shape of the bullets, few of the deepest and many of the shallowest were mushroomed to a great size, hollow hemispheres with the bases within the cavity. The deepest bullets were, as a whole, the least knocked out of shape, and one was nearly perfect. Theoretically, all should have been alike. All showed marks of gas cutting, but not such bad cutting as the 40-grain charge bullets showed. Theoretically this 45-grain charge, with the addition of a wad, would be improved. Practically, it was not. Wads of cardboard, felt, and leather, thick, medium and thin, were tried. Had greater accuracy been shown, the cartridge would not have been a good hunting cartridge, as the great projection of the bullet from the shell caused the bullet to be loose, and insured the loss of the lubricant, or its becoming dirty; also the cartridge would not go into the rifle without pressure sufficient to crush the powder. Seating the bullet in the grooves first, 1/8 inch ahead of the shell, gave rather poorer results. Forty and forty five-grain charges were then tried with patched un-lubricated bullets, wiping rifle after each shot. Some of the bullets were seated ahead of the shell, some were patched spirally in such way that the part outside of shell was same diameter as chamber of rifle; some had one, two, or three turns of thin, tough paper; others had what is known as the Chase patch, one turn of thick paper, edges butted. These patched bullets were tried only to see if they shot accurately in the Ballard and not with the intention of making permanent use of them. No ten-shot string was sure of an 8-inch circle at 150 yards.
Shooting plain .319 bullets and patched bullets was now abandoned, and attention was given to hollow base .319 bullets. The hollow bases were lathe cut. Various powder charges were tried with bullets having cavities of various depths. The natural deduction from previous experiments would be that 40 to 42 grains of powder and a deeply hollowed bullet of 150 to 155 grains would be very accurate. The load was accurate by fits and starts—sometimes astonishingly accurate, as when three successive bullets cut into one hole. But the shooting was not uniform. Three bullets, for instance, might go close together, and the fourth be five inches away. Thus, in shooting at the head of any small animal, like a 'coon or 'chuck, there was no dependence to be placed upon the charge. Recovering the bullets from the box, none of them showed gas cutting; each, however, had six tails upon the circumference, formed by the cutting of the lands upon the thin edge of the hollow base. The bases were very true when fired, and not much injured by contact with the sand. The reason for the wild shooting is beyond me. Verily, there are yet many mysteries to ballistics. So this line of experimenting was abandoned and the .335 bullets were taken up. These, of course, had to be seated from the breech. They seated hard. A white oak stick, cut to fit the chamber, shouldered to go only so far in, was used, and the bullet seated by pounding the stick with a hammer. Thirty-seven, forty and forty-five grains powder were used with cardboard .323 wad. All three charges and all .335 bullets gave about equally good results. These loads were good for shooting constantly into a 4-inch circle at 150 yards. My hope, in buying this rifle, was to get a barrel equal to a Pope. My opinion is that the world never has known such shooting, in spite of all marvelous shooting yarns, as is done at the present time, and that any wonderful shooting barrel except a Pope is a very rare and accidental barrel. Yet, in laying aside, with disappointment, my Ballard, there is not any absolute proof that, with proper brains behind it and a proper load in it, it is not capable of far finer work. Certainly a finer barrel inside, to look at, never was. Great advances have been made of late years in the proper make-up of the powder charge. Had the Ballard given a fine showing at 150 yards, there would have been encouragement to try it at 200 yards with weighed charges of compound load, and if it did well, have it rechambered and spend some money on resizing tools, dies, moulds, etc. But, as it makes no better showing with hand loaded cartridges than a common .32-40 in skillful hands with factory cartridges, the expense is not worth while. Chas. Winthrop Sawyer.
Experimenting With A Ballard.
Shooting And Fishing, page 388-389, vol 30, No. 20, Aug 29, 1901
https://books.google.com/books?id=b...nepage&q=Experimenting With A Ballard&f=false
The subject of this article is a Ballard rifle recently purchased in a pawnshop. It is stamped .32-40. The trimmings and action are plain. The barrel is 28 inches long, half octagon, rifled with one turn from left to right in 16 inches. It is sighted with a fine Mogg 'scope, 32 inches long, of about 10 power, having a wind gauge front mounting, and a micrometer, split sleeve, elevating rear mounting with stop. The rifle was purchased because of two inducements: the fine telescope and the unusually good cutting of the rifling. The grooves are un-usually deep, .009. They and the lands are remarkably sharp, clear and true appearing. Apparently the cutter was passed through the bore a great many times, taking a very fine shaving at each cut, and the barrel was left as it came from the cutter, unleaded. There was no bullet mould with the rifle. Ballard rifles, like other articles not now made, and so somewhat difficult to get, are now very fashionable. In their day they were considered extremely accurate. They, like the Maynard, had, however, a serious demerit: rarely were two of a kind bored and rifled alike. Hence factory cartridges were frequently useless for both these rifles. The rifles were carefully chambered to take the shells they were named to take; a mould to cast a bullet to fit the bore was furnished with each rifle, and the rifleman had to reload his ammunition. This was usually the case; there were, of course, exceptions. But the Ballard of this article was no exception. A soft lead core, upset in the barrel, and measured with a micrometer caliper, showed the bore to be .317 in diameter, and the diameter between grooves to be .338. This, of course, precluded the accurate shooting of a .32-40 factory cartridge. The following experiments with this rifle, and the facts stated in this article and in articles on other firearms to follow, are offered with apologies to the many able riflemen who read Shooting And Fishing. Although technical terms and abundant statistics would be acceptable to the experts, there are hosts of readers of Shooting And Fishing who are but occasional readers of the paper, and occasional handlers of firearms, though fond of both. There is also a constant supply of youths attaining to manhood who read to accumulate firearm knowledge, instead of reading to pleasure a mind already stocked with knowledge. For these readers this article is written.
The .32-40 cartridge was originated by the Marlin Company. It has been adopted by other companies, all but two of which, the Remington and the Bullard, consider .319 to be the proper size for the bullet. These two last companies consider that .308 and .311, respectively, are the proper diameters. My Ballard, bored to .317, was chambered to take a shell having a .319 inside diameter at the mouth. Probably the mould made for this rifle cast a heeled bullet, similar in shape to the .22 caliber long-rifle bullet. If not, then the bullet must have had a hollow base, somewhat on the Minié principle, because there seems no other way that a bullet could be contained in the shell and also fill the barrel, when fired, completely to the depths of the grooves. No matter what other relations bullet and barrel have to each other, one relation must always be constant, if accuracy is to be maintained: the bullet, when driven through the barrel by the force of the explosion of the powder charge, must be an absolutely tight fit. A bullet .319 in diameter, starting ahead of an explosion, would have, in this Ballard, six spaces between it and the bottoms of the grooves, each about 3-32 of an inch wide by .008 of an inch deep. The impact of the gas upon the bullet would jam it into the grooves, or upset it somewhat but not enough to make it fill the grooves completely. The gas would, therefore, squirt by the bullet, cut grooves in it and otherwise deform it, and, perhaps, tip it as it left the barrel, so that it would not fly true.
The question was, then, what could be done to or for this fine hunting rifle to make it shoot as accurately as, from appearances, it was capable of shooting? Bullets to fit it seemed the first requirement. Next, in testing the rifle, the possibility of human errors in sighting and holding must be eliminated. For the making of bullets, a hole .335 was bored truly in a block of steel, in which lead plugs could be cast. From these plugs bullets of varying shapes and weights could be made on the turning lathe. For holding the rifle a machine was made of wood and metal on the principle of the machine rest devised by H. M. Pope, but differing entirely in appearance. The apparatus is in two parts, one of which clamps to the rifle barrel near the muzzle, and is a support for it. The other part holds the rifle near the rear of the forearm, is not attached to the rifle but to a firm bench, lets the rifle slide backward at recoil, is loose yet firm, and adjusts vertically and horizontally.
The next step was to lay out and prepare a range. A long and narrow glade in the forest was chosen because of the absence of wind there, Winds, especially when both strong and fickle, would greatly hinder the experiments by blowing the bullets out of line. The longest range obtainable was 150 yards. These ends were marked and stakes 25 yards apart set up between them. Each stake had on top a slender strip of light cloth, to mark what little wind might blow. A large, empty box was finally chosen as a base on which to stand the sand box bearing the target, because it could be easily moved from stake to stake if ranges were wanted less than 150 yards. The box of sand not only was a firm bearing against which to place a target, but served to catch the bullets. The bullets could then be examined for gas cutting, distortion, mushrooming, penetration, and could be remelted. Fifty pounds or more of them would be worth saving. A natural bank in the forest was a buttress to catch stray bullets. At the firing point two holes were dug 3 ½ feet deep. In each was set a stout post 8 ½ feet long and each post was braced. On top a plank, laid horizontally and true, was spiked. The rear end machine rest was screwed to the rear end of the plank. The whole was so laid out that when it lay in the rest the rifle pointed at the sand box, and from target to chamber of rifle measured 150 yards to the inch. A piece of blank white paper was secured to face of sand box, and firing was ready to begin.
There was no need to use Standard targets in the beginning. The rifle was to be shot in strings of ten to eleven if it could group its bullets closely. If a load were found which uniformly gave a close group, then, by adjusting the telescope and barrel correctly, the rifle would play on the target. In order that the telescope should be vertically above the rifle barrel—the sights of a target rifle are so held by aid of a spirit level—a plumb line was drawn on face of sand box, and one edge of target placed to it. By having one of the telescope crosshairs parallel to target edge the desired result was secured. With out the machine rest this would be a necessity, as tipping of sights complicates trajectory and line of sight. With machine rest it was a mere refinement, as, if line of sight is tipped, it is tipped the same each time. Although no good results were expected from .319 bullets, they were to be tried first, because, if by any combination or simple device they could be made to do good work, the money necessary for altering chamber of rifle could be saved. The bullets used varied from pure lead to 10 parts lead, 1 part tin. They were cast in the Ideal mould No. 31944, and weighed within a grain or two of 165 grains. They were selected for their perfect finish from many hundred cast. They were lubricated with a mixture of ozocerite, japan wax and sperm oil, the mixture being of the consistency of medium hard butter. In addition were a few, for trial, of same kind of bullets lubricated with beef tallow. Twenty-five .32-40 Winchester shells were each loaded with U. M. C. No. 2 ½ primers and 40 grains King's Semi-Smokeless powder. Unless otherwise stated, all loads contained this powder, because previous offhand trials had shown excessive fouling of the deep grooves from use of black powders. The powder was loaded into the shells with the Ideal powder measure No. 2. The machine used is not absolutely accurate, as it frequently varies a few grains either way, but is probably as good as any loading machine on the market. If great inaccuracy from any load were found, with the exception of vertical errors showing variation in powder charge, then weighing each powder charge in apothecary's scales would be worth while, but not until then. Five shots were fired as sighting shots, then two strings of 10 shots each. As expected, the result was simply shocking. Many of the bullets failed to hit the face of the sand box, 16x18 inches. Such as struck were variously located. The bullets taken from the sand showed gas cutting. Each ridge on the bullet, corresponding to a groove in the barrel, was deeply channeled. Most of the shots which hit the box were among the last ones fired, showing that the rifle shot better dirty than clean, as expected.
The powder charge was then reduced to 5 grains, and 10 shots were fired. The bullets went to all sorts of places. Only one hit the box, and that must have been by accident. The powder charge was then increased 10 grains, making 45 grains, well tapped, and the bullet seated as far in the shell as it would go by gentle pressure with the hand. The bullets were pure tea lead. Theoretically the soft bullet would be greatly upset by the heavy powder charge. Theory and practice agreed. Two strings of 10 shots each were kept within an 8-inch circle. Several groups of three shots each could be covered by a dime, a quarter, or a half dollar. Taken as a whole, the 20 shots were well scattered over the circle, showing no especial tendency to group as a body. The bullets taken from the box showed a fairly even penetration, the deepest having butted against the back of the box, the shallowest being about 2 inches behind them. Thus, the first named had penetrated 14 inches of closely packed fine, wet sand. There was considerable difference in the shape of the bullets, few of the deepest and many of the shallowest were mushroomed to a great size, hollow hemispheres with the bases within the cavity. The deepest bullets were, as a whole, the least knocked out of shape, and one was nearly perfect. Theoretically, all should have been alike. All showed marks of gas cutting, but not such bad cutting as the 40-grain charge bullets showed. Theoretically this 45-grain charge, with the addition of a wad, would be improved. Practically, it was not. Wads of cardboard, felt, and leather, thick, medium and thin, were tried. Had greater accuracy been shown, the cartridge would not have been a good hunting cartridge, as the great projection of the bullet from the shell caused the bullet to be loose, and insured the loss of the lubricant, or its becoming dirty; also the cartridge would not go into the rifle without pressure sufficient to crush the powder. Seating the bullet in the grooves first, 1/8 inch ahead of the shell, gave rather poorer results. Forty and forty five-grain charges were then tried with patched un-lubricated bullets, wiping rifle after each shot. Some of the bullets were seated ahead of the shell, some were patched spirally in such way that the part outside of shell was same diameter as chamber of rifle; some had one, two, or three turns of thin, tough paper; others had what is known as the Chase patch, one turn of thick paper, edges butted. These patched bullets were tried only to see if they shot accurately in the Ballard and not with the intention of making permanent use of them. No ten-shot string was sure of an 8-inch circle at 150 yards.
Shooting plain .319 bullets and patched bullets was now abandoned, and attention was given to hollow base .319 bullets. The hollow bases were lathe cut. Various powder charges were tried with bullets having cavities of various depths. The natural deduction from previous experiments would be that 40 to 42 grains of powder and a deeply hollowed bullet of 150 to 155 grains would be very accurate. The load was accurate by fits and starts—sometimes astonishingly accurate, as when three successive bullets cut into one hole. But the shooting was not uniform. Three bullets, for instance, might go close together, and the fourth be five inches away. Thus, in shooting at the head of any small animal, like a 'coon or 'chuck, there was no dependence to be placed upon the charge. Recovering the bullets from the box, none of them showed gas cutting; each, however, had six tails upon the circumference, formed by the cutting of the lands upon the thin edge of the hollow base. The bases were very true when fired, and not much injured by contact with the sand. The reason for the wild shooting is beyond me. Verily, there are yet many mysteries to ballistics. So this line of experimenting was abandoned and the .335 bullets were taken up. These, of course, had to be seated from the breech. They seated hard. A white oak stick, cut to fit the chamber, shouldered to go only so far in, was used, and the bullet seated by pounding the stick with a hammer. Thirty-seven, forty and forty-five grains powder were used with cardboard .323 wad. All three charges and all .335 bullets gave about equally good results. These loads were good for shooting constantly into a 4-inch circle at 150 yards. My hope, in buying this rifle, was to get a barrel equal to a Pope. My opinion is that the world never has known such shooting, in spite of all marvelous shooting yarns, as is done at the present time, and that any wonderful shooting barrel except a Pope is a very rare and accidental barrel. Yet, in laying aside, with disappointment, my Ballard, there is not any absolute proof that, with proper brains behind it and a proper load in it, it is not capable of far finer work. Certainly a finer barrel inside, to look at, never was. Great advances have been made of late years in the proper make-up of the powder charge. Had the Ballard given a fine showing at 150 yards, there would have been encouragement to try it at 200 yards with weighed charges of compound load, and if it did well, have it rechambered and spend some money on resizing tools, dies, moulds, etc. But, as it makes no better showing with hand loaded cartridges than a common .32-40 in skillful hands with factory cartridges, the expense is not worth while. Chas. Winthrop Sawyer.
