Jacketed Rounds, How far into the future?

Hello All

Long time barfly, first time Weber...bar..fly.ie.

Anyways.

like the title says, how far off from the end of HFaF would jacketed rounds and either bolt or lever action, do they need to hit breech loading first? or can they go straight to self loading rifles

Brian

BrianC wrote:Hello All

Long time barfly, first time Weber...bar..fly.ie.

Anyways.

like the title says, how far off from the end of HFaF would jacketed rounds and either bolt or lever action, do they need to hit breech loading first? or can they go straight to self loading rifles

Brian

Hello BrianC! Welcome to the forums. Hope you enjoy it here. I know I have. In answer to your question, Charis has a breechloading rifle. The prototype was introduced early in HFaF, but hasn't been used in action yet (that should change next book). Its a single shot model which uses a combustible cellulose-based cartridge. It was not specifically said, but I infered from the description that the cartridge was straight walled, not bottlenecked.

What we don't know if whether or not the cartridge design used in the single shot breechloaders is strong enough to be used in a repeating design such as a bolt action or lever action. Personally I doubt they would be strong enough. If this is so, they'll need to go to metallic cartridges. I think that being able to make the ammunition might hold up the process more so than the actual rifle design. They'll get there eventually, but I think they are a few years away from being able to make the millions of metallic cartridges a year that would be needed to substain a major land war.

Personally, I'd like to see a pump action rifle just because it could be designed for quicker operation without taking your hand from the triger, more ergonamic.

BrianC wrote:Hello All

Long time barfly, first time Weber...bar..fly.ie.

Anyways.

like the title says, how far off from the end of HFaF would jacketed rounds and either bolt or lever action, do they need to hit breech loading first? or can they go straight to self loading rifles

Brian

BrianC wrote:Hello All

Long time barfly, first time Weber...bar..fly.ie.

Anyways.

like the title says, how far off from the end of HFaF would jacketed rounds and either bolt or lever action, do they need to hit breech loading first? or can they go straight to self loading rifles

Brian

Hi Brian,

One of the problems that they have come up against is lead being left in the groves of the bore. This normally requires a different type of gun power then black power. The metal jackets protected the bore and allowed the bullet to travel faster. They have a prototype single shot lever action rifle in the works. They might change the possition of the lever as it sounded like it was on the side of the gun fom the discription.

iranuke wrote:Personally, I'd like to see a pump action rifle just because it could be designed for quicker operation without taking your hand from the triger, more ergonamic.

BrianC wrote:Hello All

Long time barfly, first time Weber...bar..fly.ie.

Anyways.

like the title says, how far off from the end of HFaF would jacketed rounds and either bolt or lever action, do they need to hit breech loading first? or can they go straight to self loading rifles

Brian

At this point, because it is still using black powder, repeating rifles are not feasible. Black powder weapons have to have their bores swabbed after every shot in order to maintain their accuracy. Cartridges containing the primer, powder and bullet or sabot can certainly be manufactured to make the loading process simple and quick but until they develop a version of 'smokeless' powder, there will be no magazine loaded weapons.

Of course, it is RFCs world and if he wants repeating black powder weapons he can certainly have them.

Dutch46 wrote:At this point, because it is still using black powder, repeating rifles are not feasible. Black powder weapons have to have their bores swabbed after every shot in order to maintain their accuracy. Cartridges containing the primer, powder and bullet or sabot can certainly be manufactured to make the loading process simple and quick but until they develop a version of 'smokeless' powder, there will be no magazine loaded weapons.

Of course, it is RFCs world and if he wants repeating black powder weapons he can certainly have them.

Actually that is not true. The early lever action repeating rifles used black powder. Two of better known examples are the Spencer and the Winchester 1873.

Henry Brown wrote:

Dutch46 wrote:At this point, because it is still using black powder, repeating rifles are not feasible. Black powder weapons have to have their bores swabbed after every shot in order to maintain their accuracy. Cartridges containing the primer, powder and bullet or sabot can certainly be manufactured to make the loading process simple and quick but until they develop a version of 'smokeless' powder, there will be no magazine loaded weapons.

Of course, it is RFCs world and if he wants repeating black powder weapons he can certainly have them.

Actually that is not true. The early lever action repeating rifles used black powder. Two of better known examples are the Spencer and the Winchester 1873.

Jacketed rounds are not necessary for bullets traveling less than about 1,600 fps. (I’d have to check to be more precise, but if memory serves, the velocity is about in that range.) They become necessary because at higher velocities, the bullets begin shedding lead into the rifling, turning the weapon (eventually) into a smoothbore by simply filling it in. I have fire many, many rounds of lead 9mm over the years, and as long as the loads are light enough to hold muzzle velocity below the critical threshhold, they work just fine; as soon as you cross that thresshold, you spend a lot of time with a bore brush cleaning the lead out of the rifling grooves after a range session.

A repeating weapon using black powder and unjacketed lead rounds would be perfectly feasible. In fact, quite a few of them were produced in our own history. The reason a black powder muzzle loader requires periodic cleaning (and not after every round) is because the powder residue building in the barrel makes it harder and harder to force a round down it from the muzzle. With a breechloader, that isn’t an issue, and each round up the spout tends to blow out the powder residue. I don’t believe I’ve ever read of an instance in which a rifled, breechloading, blackpowder weapon became unusable because of barrel fouling. I have read of instances in which that sort of weapon became unusable because the powder residue and “varnish” building up on moving parts and surfaces effectively jammed them solid. This was one reason black powder weapons were designed and built to looser tolerances than smokeless powder weapons; the greater space between those moving surfaces equated to a greater tolerance for fouling.

IIRC, black powder leaves about 1/3 of its total original mass behind as particulate matter — smoke and fouling — with each shot. As a useful rule of thumb for comnparison purposes, given equal weights of black powder and gun cotton, the gun cotton produces three times the volume of gas. And, since it’s the volume of gas trapped behind the bullet which determines the energy imparted to the bullet, the advantages of nitrocellulose over black powder begins to become readily apparent.

Once again you have demonstrated a good ability to answer my question without me ever voicing it.

My first thought in reading this topic was, why do they need that?

Of course you then added even more information that is appreciated.

Thank you,
T2M

runsforcelery wrote:Jacketed rounds are not necessary for bullets traveling less than about 1,600 fps. ...snip for brevity...

Hi BrianC

Welcome to the forums.

I have gatherd from other posts that Safehold should move beyond black powder before jacketed rounds become useful.

R

BrianC wrote:Hello All

Long time barfly, first time Weber...bar..fly.ie.

Anyways.

like the title says, how far off from the end of HFaF would jacketed rounds and either bolt or lever action, do they need to hit breech loading first? or can they go straight to self loading rifles

Brian

Just one more note on the feasibility of repeating weapons firing black powder rounds with non-jacketed lead bullets. Did some research on the early 1880's Maxim gun versions. There was actually a wide range of cartridges used. Two calibers used in early models were the .577/.450 Martini-Henry and the .45 Gatling-Gardner. Both of which are black powder rounds that fire pure lead bullets. All data I read on the trials indicate the gun functioned well with those rounds. Of course by WWI the gun had been converted to the smokeless powder version of the .303 British which performed even better.