Recommendations for 1871/79 Dutch Beaumont bullets, loads, etc.

[Hightwelve]

I "bit the bullet" so to speak (bad joke, admittedly) and ordered a Dutch Beaumont from Royal Tiger Imports. I know that feedback on these guys is all over the place so I went the extra money for hand selection and told them not to ship if the rifle is non functional. The guy over on the Forgotten Weapons site bought one and did a YouTube video evaluating it. He was quite happy that his is in reasonable shape and could be a shooter with no problem.

Brand new cases should not be a problem. I could not be happier with the .43 Spanish cases that I bought from Northern Shooters Supply in Australia and they have 11.2 X 50 Beaumont cases in stock. They were glad to take my order for .43 Spanish, the price was great including shipping and the only snag was that it takes them six weeks or so to get an export permit from their government. Their website is worth visiting. I had no idea that there is so much interest in shooting the old black powder calibers in Australia.

I don't plan to spend a small fortune on dies, at least not yet. Hopefully I can figure out a way using my .45-70 dies and/or .43 Spanish dies to load the cases. If anybody by any remote chance has a set of Beaumont dies for sale let me know. I know that there are two 11.2 X 50 variations as the Dutch took the rifles back to the arsenal around 1879 for modification for increased case capacity by moving the neck forward. Whether my rifle got the reamer treatment to rechamber for 11.2 X 50 version #2 I wont know until I do a chamber cast. I plan to slug the barrel first thing, too. There is a rumor on at least one forum that these rifles were made with a very gradual taper in the barrel to the muzzle, amounting to perhaps five thousandths.

Bullets? Loads? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[JustJim]

Did you get a single shot or the one with the Vitali magazine conversion?

I played with one (single shot Chilean) for a while, but I only had 6-7 cases. Best load used Ideal 446109 380-ish grain bullets cast from WWL. (I'd originally cast these to try in a friend's M71 Mauser, but his Mauser preferred 390 gr bullets from an Ideal 451112. Some days I think the recommendations in old Ideal manuals were intended as fiction.) Powder charge was ~70 grains.

If I hadn't disliked the rifle so much, I would have had an adjustable base-pour mould made for a paper-patch bullet--the bore was good enough it would have been worth it. Ultimately though, neither the Beaumont nor the M71 Mauser did anything better than my trapdoors.

(OK, OK. The Beaumont had better extraction. The Springfield trapdoor offered available brass and dies, and was more accurate.)

 

[oscarflytyer]

1871/79 Dutch Beaumont​

know nothing about this one, but do 43 Spanish. And it looks close/maybe? Posting so I can follow the thread.

 

[JustJim]

Round 2.

In the Beaumont I had, and a couple others I've slugged the chambers on, you could get away with using un-sized fired brass and the largest bullet diameter that would fit the case mouth. I did it that way, because dies would have cost me more than the rifle. It was "fixed" ammunition, in a sense--wouldn't want to stuff a bunch of cartridges loaded like that into a cartridge belt, but carried bullet-up in a loading block they worked well.

If you really want to size the necks (and given cost and availability of brass, neck sizing is the only thing that makes sense), you might be able to use the body of a 7.62x54 die to neck size the case. Maybe: a lot will depend on the dimensions of your chamber and the 7.62x54 die you source.

 

[Hightwelve]

Did you get a single shot or the one with the Vitali magazine conversion?

I played with one (single shot Chilean) for a while, but I only had 6-7 cases. Best load used Ideal 446109 380-ish grain bullets cast from WWL. (I'd originally cast these to try in a friend's M71 Mauser, but his Mauser preferred 390 gr bullets from an Ideal 451112. Some days I think the recommendations in old Ideal manuals were intended as fiction.) Powder charge was ~70 grains.

If I hadn't disliked the rifle so much, I would have had an adjustable base-pour mould made for a paper-patch bullet--the bore was good enough it would have been worth it. Ultimately though, neither the Beaumont nor the M71 Mauser did anything better than my trapdoors.

(OK, OK. The Beaumont had better extraction. The Springfield trapdoor offered available brass and dies, and was more accurate.)

Thanks for the reply. OscarFlyTier replied to me separately so perhaps the moderator can combine the threads.

Nope, these are original Dutch Beaumonts that never had the Vitali conversion. Royal Tiger Imports has latched onto a bunch of rifles that were originally exported to Ethiopia. They have the Ethiopian King's crest stamped on the barrel. In the other thread I explained that there were two variations to the case - original and with a blown out shoulder. The Dutch called the rifles back to the arsenal and reamed the chambers out for more powder capacity. I don't know whether the Ethiopean export order was filled with the original case design or the "improved" version. First priority will be to slug the barrel and do a chamber cast when the rifle gets here.

Evidently P.O. Ackley wasn't the first guy who came up with the idea of an "improved" case. So we have the 11.2MM Beaumont and the 11.2MM Beaumont "Improved". Its sort of funny if you thing about it.