"chamber" in percussion barrel

[canadian willie]

Hello,

I have a barrel stamped Remington (that came with a josh golcher lock and a few other parts) and it seems to have a wider chamber like area at the breech end running about 1 - 2 inches into the barrel including the breech plug threads

has anyone seen this before and if so what i the purpose and is it loaded differently?

 

[Bill Hall]

Is this an antique? Not that it matters, but just curious and trying to picture it.

I don't think there's a muzzleloader made, now or ever, that has a wider "chamber" at the breech. What you typically see is thicker metal (same inside dimension, more metal on the outside) at the breech, where pressure is the highest, then a transition to a slimmer barrel away from the breech, where pressure is lighter. The transitions can be in the form of a long taper, Thicker round-to-slimmer round, octogon-to-round, octogon-to-16ths-to round with wedding bands, or even a swamped barrel can fall into this catagory.

Sounds like you may have a round-to-round barrel, just thicker on the outside at the breech. The inside bore should be the same the entire length, not including a possible choke at the muzzle, which would be rare, and not pertinent to your question. Bill

 

[Bill Hall]

Oops, I missed the part saying you just have a few parts, not the whole gun.

 

[hawkeye2]

Is this an antique barrel? I have a percussion fowler that someone had tried to make a lamp out of and the breech end of the bore has rusted out to a larger inside diameter than the breech plug itself.

 

[canadian willie]

yes its antique, from the golcher lock i figure the barrel was made 1850'ish give or take 30 years

 

[canadian willie]

i will try and get a pic of it tonight

 

[zimmerstutzen]

IIRC Elias Remington began making barrels for the gun maker trade in 1811. I too have an old remington smooth bore barrel coupled with a goulcher lock. The shape of the maple butt stock however, appears to be a plain Berks/Lehigh style with no patch box.

 

[Leatherbark]

Is it 43 or 45 caliber. It might be a cartridge barrel that someone used for a muzzleloader and it still has the chamber for the .43 Spanish or 45-70 cartridge. Remington made boo-koo's of these.

Bob

 

[canadian willie]

Here are some pics i took. you can see the light hitting the "shoulder" of the chamber like area.

the chamber goes 1 1/12 inches into the barrel (with 1/2 inch or so begin breech plug threads.

as for caliber i measured 7/16 which i believe is about 43 cal

/Users/billshaver/Desktop/IMG_1107.jpg
/Users/billshaver/Desktop/IMG_1113.JPG

 

[canadian willie]

ok how do you load photos

 

[canadian willie]

Here are some pics i took. you can see the light hitting the "shoulder" of the chamber like area.

the chamber goes 1 1/12 inches into the barrel (with 1/2 inch or so begin breech plug threads.

as for caliber i measured 7/16 which i believe is about 43 cal

 

[Dphar]

Hello,

I have a barrel stamped Remington (that came with a josh golcher lock and a few other parts) and it seems to have a wider chamber like area at the breech end running about 1 - 2 inches into the barrel including the breech plug threads

has anyone seen this before and if so what i the purpose and is it loaded differently?

How many lands and grooves does the barrel have and what is the twist?
Remington sold ML barrel blanks for decades in the early 19th century so Remington marked ML barrels are common. But these probably will not have the address etc as barrels on Remington manufactured rifles will. Just Remington.

Photos of the barrel and any markings would be a help.
I can't see a reason for having a reamed out section at the breech of a ML, it sounds like remnants of a cartridge chamber.
Dan

 

[Dphar]

Here are some pics i took. you can see the light hitting the "shoulder" of the chamber like area.

the chamber goes 1 1/12 inches into the barrel (with 1/2 inch or so begin breech plug threads.

as for caliber i measured 7/16 which i believe is about 43 cal

/Users/billshaver/Desktop/IMG_1107.jpg
/Users/billshaver/Desktop/IMG_1113.JPG

Set up an account at Photobucket.com to put photos in then put the link into the post using the little mountain icon in the panel above the text entry window.

Dan

 

[canadian willie]

 

[canadian willie]

Hey thanks for the reply

it has 6 lands and grooves and looks like about 1 in 30 " twist

the barrel is only marked Remington on the bottom flat

 

[canadian willie]

ok just did a better measurement on the rate of twist and it is closer to 1 in 60

i put a cleaning rod with a snug fitting patch in it and in 30 inches it rotated a hair over half way round

 

[canadian willie]

i guess what i really want to know is ... is it safe to shoot as a muzzleloader with this chamber area. i am worried that with low powder loads there will be air space between the ball and powder Is this an issue? how would i load this barrel

 

[50cal.cliff]

i guess what i really want to know is ... is it safe to shoot as a muzzleloader with this chamber area. i am worried that with low powder loads there will be air space between the ball and powder Is this an issue? how would i load this barrel

I am not understanding your fear as what I see appears to be a normal breech. There should be no problem with loading this barrel.

Not unless you are saying this drum is screwing into the barrel to the point of blocking the barrel.
If it only screws into the barrel and not beyond it shouldn't block the ball from going all the way down to the breech plug. Sort of like you had forgotten to put powder in ( a dryball in other words)!

Once assembled if you have any doubts about the barrel. Proof it! In other words tie it down substantially after loading and use a wick in the drum to ignite the powder instead of a lock mechanism. That way you can be at a safe distance when it goes off and you will know that the barrel will handle such a load. This barrel looks to have some serious surface rust so I think I would look it over carefully before using! That includes closely examining the threads of the breech plug as well as the drum and nipple!

 

[fishspike]

Actually it looks like the bore is counter bored at the breech end past the breech plug theads, making and over bore size powder chamber. What that bottle neck in the bore would do who knows, increase pressure? Certainly a ball pushed down past the bottle neck would be loose in the over size section of the bore, probably not a good idea at all. My guess is that this is and experiment of a past owner, but someone else may have seen this before.

Bob

 

[ol vern]

It looks to me like someone used a cartrige gun barrel to build
a muzzloader. If you are thinking about building a gun around
that barrel I would cut all of that part of the barrel & re breach it with a new plug.

Better yet just get a new barrel and start from there.