The legacy of mr. Pope?

[Spindrift]

My local gun shop has started importing Sabatti rifles, from Italy. Nice, well constucted bolt guns. But what interested me, was their particular «multiradial rifling». Their barrels have no lands and grooves in the traditional sense. The concept looks very much like the barrels of Harry Pope, if I remember correctly from a photo @RicinYakima posted here, once. Might be a good rifle for cast?

A link, for the particularily interested (note what they say about their chamber throats):

Sabatti | The MRR rifling

The Sabatti MRR Multi Radial Rifling

www.sabatti.it

 

[RicinYakima]

You are correct. The style was first used, I believe, by W.E. Metford in the early Lee Metford .303 English service rifle. Pope made this style for his cast bullet schutzen rifles for the same reasons that Sabatti states. Newton used it, the Newton-Pope style, also for the same reasons plus to solve the problem of using cupper-nickel jacketed bullets. The cupper-nickel bullets were fine for the .30 Army (Krag) velocity of 2200 f/s but not the .30 caliber Model of 1906 (30/06) at 2700 f/s. Bullet metal fouling was very bad at those speeds.

My guess is that these would be a real competitor in the "hunting" and "production" class CBA matches.

Attached is a target I shot with my Newton. It is very accurate with the original 1906 Ideal bullets, but will not shoot bore riders at all due to lack of nose support without a flat top land. two ten shot groups at 100 yards, original peep sight. (One of my better days!)

 

[Spindrift]

Thank you for the education!
Very good shooting, by the way. It would be interesting to see how the Sabatti would work with cast.....

 

[CZ93X62]

That MRR/Sabatti system seems like a natural for the Loverin cast bullet designs.

 

[RicinYakima]

That MRR/Sabatti system seems like a natural for the Loverin cast bullet designs.

I think you are right. By the way, the group in the center is the RCBS 165 grain Sillywet bullet.

 

[Bret4207]

I'm not sure where I read this, but I believe Harry Pope used more than one type of rifling over the decades. His earlier rifling was reportedly much, much different than that in later years. Might have been in a copy of "The Single Shot Exchange" or maybe in some older magazines or books in the library here. Sadly, the sole rifle I ever ran across with "H.M. Pope" stamped on the barrel had a bore that resembled a sewer pipe. I should have bought it anyway just for the stamped marking!

 

[CZ93X62]

I have yet to have any Loverin-design bullet shoot poorly for me.

 

[RicinYakima]

Bret4207, You are right in that he tried the "ratchet" style, multi-land and many others in the first 20 years he was in business. Considering it took him over 10 hours to rifle a barrel, he had a lot of investment in every experimental one he made. It really wasn't until his years at Stevens Arms and Tools, and losing everything in the San Francisco earthquake in 1906, that he settled for the radii style for his shop in New Jersey.

 

[Ian]

Interesting. I bet that style of rifling is a lot easier to produce with a button and less stressful to the barrel steel and thus more uniform after the barrel has been profiled. Only problem is we aren't getting any exports from Italy for a while.

 

[Bret4207]

Good point Ian. Poor Italy is reported to have the oldest population with the greatest number of people over 70 in Europe, at least according to the "news". They are getting hit hard.